Fifteen-year-old Faith Wilson takes her little sister Hope’s hand. In worn-down shoes, they walk through the choking heat of the Dust Bowl, toward a new life in California. But when a storm blows in, the girls are separated from their parents. Starving and forced to sleep on the streets, Faith thinks a room in a small boarding house will keep her sister safe. But the glare in the landlady’s eye, as Faith leaves in search of their parents, has her wondering if she’s made a dangerous mistake.

Born the daughter of an enslaved woman and a Louisiana plantation owner, Jeannette Bébinn is raised alongside her white half sister—until her father suddenly dies. His vindictive wife refuses twelve-year-old Jeannette her inheritance and sells her into slavery. Now on her own, Jeannette must fight the injustices she faces because of her mixed race. She escapes enslavement and travels from Mississippi to Philadelphia to New York to Ohio, all while searching for purpose, love, and her place in a country torn asunder by the burgeoning Civil War.

In 1998, the American Jorgenson family had been on a year-long road trip in Australia. One humid, storming night, the mother - Elsa Jorgenson - vanished in an isolated stretch of Australian everglades. Elsa was never seen again. That night, twelve-year-old Lily Jorgenson was left alone and terrified in the family camper—even her teenage sister Iris is missing. When Iris comes racing back through the rain, she refuses to tell where she’s been. Lily is certain her sister is hiding a dark secret.

No one expects to meet their father at their mother’s funeral. But for Gabby Medina, that’s exactly what happens. Her dad abandoned her when she was a baby, and now he’s back. And he wants to give her a house. Gabby doesn’t want the house—or him. But she could use the money. So Gabby agrees to take it under two conditions: First, she can sell the house whenever she wants. Second, accepting it doesn’t mean she accepts him.

Chesapeake Bay, 1980. Eighteen-year-old Verity Vergennes is the captain of the USS Nepenthe, and her seven younger siblings are her crew. The ship - an oyster boat transformed into a make-believe destroyer - is the heart of the Vergennes family, a place both to play and to learn responsibility. But Verity’s had it with being tied to the ship and secretly applies to a distant college. If only her parents could bear to let her go. Maeve and Arthur Vergennes already suffered one loss when, five years earlier, their eldest son, Jude, stormed out and never returned.

When Megan discovers photographs of her estranged identical twin sister on her husband's phone, she wants answers. Leah already has everything Megan ever wanted. Fame, fortune, freedom to do what she wants. And when Megan confronts Leah, an argument turns to murder. The only way Megan can get away with killing her twin is to become her. But then lockdown hits. How can she continue living two lives? And what happens if someone else knows her secret?

Spencer Brooke always knew she was destined to be CEO of her grandfather’s business—the most respected and luxurious department store in New York City. Brooke’s has been at the center of every happy memory she has, but it hasn’t been an easy journey. Seven years after her father’s death, her life is very different from the days when she walked through the store with her grandfather as a young girl. She may be the owner of Brooke’s, but she’s also now a divorced single mother of twin boys.

Blood and power bind three generations of women in the Ozark Mountains. So does an evil that’s followed them across the decades. 1931. Gracelynn Doherty lives peacefully on Tin Mountain, helping her adoptive granny work her cures. Despite whispers that the women are witches, the superstitious locals still seek them out, whether to remedy arthritis or a broken heart. But when evangelist Josiah Bellflower comes to town promising miracle healing, full bellies, and prosperity, his revivals soon hold Tin Mountain in thrall—and Granny in abject fear. Granny recognizes Josiah.

Babur “Bobby” Singh, single parent and owner of fledging Uber business “Move with Bobby,” remains ever hopeful about ascending the ladder of American success. He lives in an affluent suburb of New York with his daughter Angie, an introverted teenager who is uncomfortable in her own skin unless she’s swimming.

It’s the summer of 1994, and all Maeve Murray wants are good final exam results so she can earn her ticket out of the wee Northern Irish town she has grown up in during the Troubles—away from her crowded home, the silence and sadness surrounding her sister’s death, and most of all, away from the simmering violence of her divided community. And as a first step, Maeve’s taken a summer job in a local shirt factory working alongside Protestants with her best friends, kind, innocent Caroline Jackson and privileged and clever Aoife O’Neill.

From the best-selling author of Before We Were Yours comes a dramatic historical novel of three young women searching for family amid the destruction of the post-Civil War South, and of a modern-day teacher who learns of their story and its vital connection to her students’ lives.

Orphaned during her passage from Ireland, young, white Lavinia arrives on the steps of the kitchen house and is placed, as an indentured servant, under the care of Belle, the master's illegitimate slave daughter. Lavinia learns to cook, clean, and serve food while guided by the quiet strength and love of her new family. In time Lavinia is accepted into the world of the big house, caring for the master's opium-addicted wife and befriending his dangerous yet protective son. She attempts to straddle the worlds of the kitchen and big house, but her skin color will forever set her apart.

The hardscrabble folks of Troublesome Creek have to scrap for everything - everything except books, that is. Thanks to Roosevelt's Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, Troublesome's got its very own traveling librarian, Cussy Mary Carter. Cussy's not only a book woman, however, she's also the last of her kind, her skin a shade of blue unlike most anyone else. Not everyone is keen on Cussy's family or the Library Project, and a Blue is often blamed for any whiff of trouble.

It is 1936, and Nancy Wake is an intrepid Australian expat living in Paris who has bluffed her way into a reporting job for Hearst newspaper when she meets the wealthy French industrialist Henri Fiocca. No sooner does Henri sweep Nancy off her feet and convince her to become Mrs. Fiocca than the Germans invade France and she takes yet another name: a code name. As Lucienne Carlier, Nancy smuggles people and documents across the border and earns a new nickname from the Gestapo for her remarkable ability to evade capture: The White Mouse.

Anne Gallagher grew up enchanted by her grandfather’s stories of Ireland. Heartbroken at his death, she travels to his childhood home to spread his ashes. There, overcome with memories of the man she adored and consumed by a history she never knew, she is pulled into another time. The Ireland of 1921, teetering on the edge of war, is a dangerous place in which to awaken. But there Anne finds herself, hurt, disoriented, and under the care of Dr. Thomas Smith, guardian to a young boy who is oddly familiar.

1863: In a small Creole cottage in New Orleans, an ingenious young Black woman named Stella embroiders intricate maps on repurposed cloth to help enslaved men flee and join the Union Army. Bound to a man who would kill her if he knew of her clandestine activities, Stella has to hide not only her efforts but her love for William, a Black soldier and a brilliant musician.

Fifteen-year-old Faith Wilson takes her little sister Hope’s hand. In worn-down shoes, they walk through the choking heat of the Dust Bowl, toward a new life in California. But when a storm blows in, the girls are separated from their parents. Starving and forced to sleep on the streets, Faith thinks a room in a small boarding house will keep her sister safe. But the glare in the landlady’s eye, as Faith leaves in search of their parents, has her wondering if she’s made a dangerous mistake.

Sara King has nothing, save for her secrets and the baby in her belly, as she boards the bus to Memphis, hoping to outrun her past in Chicago. She is welcomed with open arms by Mama Sugar, a kindly matriarch and owner of the popular boardinghouse The Scarlet Poplar. Like many cities in early 1960s America, Memphis is still segregated, but change is in the air. News spreads of the Freedom Riders. Across the country, people like Martin Luther King Jr. are leading the fight for equal rights.

On a cold December evening, Mattie Banks packs a suitcase and leaves her family home. Sixteen years old and pregnant, she has already made the mistake that will ruin her life and disgrace her widowed mother. Boarding the 2857 bus, she sits with her case on her lap, hoping that the driver will take her away from disaster. Instead, Mattie witnesses an act of bravery by a woman named Rosa Parks that changes everything. But as Mattie strives to turn her life around, the dangers that first led her to run are never far away.

When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left behind his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation's capital. In setting up his household, he took Tobias Lear, his celebrated secretary, and eight slaves, including Ona Judge, about which little has been written. As he grew accustomed to Northern ways, there was one change he couldn't get his arms around: Pennsylvania law required enslaved people be set free after six months of residency in the state. Washington decided to circumvent the law.

It was supposed to be the highlight of her career, the pinnacle for which she’d worked all her life. And as Hattie McDaniel took the stage in 1940 to claim an honor that would make her the first African-American woman to win an Academy Award, she tearfully took her place in history. Between personal triumphs and tragedies, heartbreaking losses, and severe setbacks, this historic night of winning best supporting actress for her role as the sassy Mammy in the controversial movie Gone With the Wind was going to be life-changing. Or so she thought.

In 1930s Mississippi, Mary Johnson hates the oppressive heat, working on her family farm, and having to attend her minister father's church several times a week. But she loves Mason Carter, her musician boyfriend. Both fantasize about living the high life up north in the big city. When William Bevers, a wealthy old preacher, comes to court her, he promises a life of luxury along with money and status for her family. Mary wants nothing to do with him, but her parents decide for her. Determined to avoid a forced marriage, Mary elopes with Mason to the bright lights of Chicago.

1954: In the quaint town of Mendol, Oklahoma, Bailey Dowery is a Black dressmaker for the wives and daughters of local oil barons. She earns a good living fitting designer gowns and creating custom wedding dresses for the town’s elite. But beyond her needle and thread lies a deeper talent, one passed down from her mother: the gift of insight. With just a fleeting touch or brush against the skin, Bailey has sudden flashes of intuition.

The year is 2004: Lina Sparrow is an ambitious young lawyer working on a historic class-action lawsuit seeking reparations for the descendants of American slaves. The year is 1852: Josephine is a 17-year-old house slave who tends to the mistress of a Virginia tobacco farm - an aspiring artist named Lu Anne Bell. It is through her father, renowned artist Oscar Sparrow, that Lina discovers a controversy rocking the art world: Art historians now suspect that the revered paintings of Lu Anne Bell, an antebellum artist known for her humanizing portraits of the slaves who worked her Virginia tobacco farm, were actually the work of her house slave, Josephine.

It’s 1835 in Utica, New York, and newlywed Helen Galway discovers a secret: Two runaway slaves are hiding in the shack behind her husband’s house. Suddenly, she is at the center of not only the era’s greatest moral dilemma, but her own, as well. Should she be a “good wife” and report the fugitives to her husband? Or will she defy convention and come to their aid? Within her home, Helen is haunted by the previous Mrs. Galway, recently deceased but still an oppressive presence.

Transformative and breathtakingly honest, The American Queen is based on actual events that occurred between 1865 - 1889 and shares the unsung history of a Black woman who built a kingdom in Appalachia as a refuge for the courageous people who dared to dream of a different way of life. Over the twenty-four years she was enslaved on the Montgomery Plantation, Louella learned to feel one thing: hate. Hate for the man who sold her mother. Hate for the overseer who left her daddy to hang from a noose. Hate so powerful there's no room in her heart for love.

Born in West Africa in the mid-eighteenth century, Maryam Prescilla Grace—a.k.a “Momma Grace” will live a long, wondrous life marked by hardship, oppression, opportunity, and love. Though she will be “gifted” various names, her birth name is known to her alone. Over the course of 100-plus years, she survives capture, enslavement by several property owners, the Atlantic crossing when she is only eleven years of age, and a brief stint as a pirate’s ward, acting as both a spy and a translator.

Henry O’Toole sails to America in 1848 to escape the famine in Ireland, only to face anti-immigrant prejudice. Determined never to starve again, he changes his surname to Taylor and heads south to Virginia, seeking work as a traveling blacksmith on the prosperous plantations. Torn from her home and sold to Jubilee Plantation, Sarah must navigate its intricate hierarchy. And now an enigmatic blacksmith is promising her not just the world but also her freedom. How could she say no?

On an April day in 1937, the sky opens and fire rains down upon the small Spanish town of Guernica. Seventeen-year-old Sibi and her family are caught up in the horror. Griff, an American military attaché, pulls Sibi from the wreckage, and it’s only the first time he saves her life in a span of hours. When Germany claims no involvement in the attack, insisting the Spanish Republic was responsible, Griff guides Sibi to lie to Nazi officials. If she or her sisters reveal that they saw planes bearing swastikas, the gestapo will silence them—by any means necessary.

Josephine N. Leary is determined to build a life of her own and a future for her family. When she moves to Edenton, North Carolina, from the plantation where she was born, she is free, newly married, and ready to follow her dreams. As the demands of life pull Josephine’s attention away, it becomes increasingly difficult for her to pursue her real estate aspirations. She finds herself immersed in deepening her marriage, mothering her daughters, and being a dutiful daughter and granddaughter.