There was rarely a time when Phoenix Yuan-Whyller’s mother, Rain, didn’t live with her. Even when Phoenix got married, Rain, who followed her from China to Toronto, came to share Phoenix’s life. Now at the age of eighty-three, Rain’s unexpected death ushers in a heartrending separation.

In post-Cultural Revolution China, in the fading village of Freshwind, the fates of two households are shifting. The Bais, once the most powerful family in the region, have fallen from status. Their beautiful daughter, Snow Bai, an embodiment of tradition, pursues a career in a vanishing art form. The Xias, enthusiastic members of the Party, are on the rise. Their favorite son, Wind Xia, is a citified politician whose marriage to Snow Bai could unite the two families. But in a village casting about for a new road to prosperity, fortunes can change.

Sophie Shah was six when she learned her mother, Nita, had died. For twenty-two years, she shouldered the burden of that loss. But when her father passes away, Sophie discovers a cache of hidden letters revealing a shattering truth: her mother didn’t die. She left. 

In the summer of 1976, an earthquake swallows up the city of Tangshan, China. Among the hundreds of thousands of people scrambling for survival is a mother who makes an agonizing decision that irrevocably changes her life and the lives of her children. In that devastating split second, her seven-year-old daughter, Xiaodeng, is separated from her brother and the mother she loves and trusts. All Xiaodeng remembers of the fateful morning is betrayal.

Nala and Rajan, a young couple, begin their married life in 1946, on the eve of Ceylon's independence from Britain. Arranged in marriage, they learn to love each other and protect their growing family, against the backdrop of increasing ethnic tension. As the country descends into a bloody civil war, Nala and Rajan must decide which path is best for their family; and live with the consequences of their mistakes.

After her parents moved her and her brother to America, Preeti Desai never meant to tear her family apart. All she did was fall in love with a white Christian carnivore instead of a conventional Indian boy. Years later, with her parents not speaking to her and her controversial relationship in tatters, all Preeti has left is her career at a prestigious Los Angeles law firm. But when Preeti receives word of a terrible accident in the city where she was born, she returns to India, where she’ll have to face her estranged parents...and the complicated past they left behind. 

There is no easy path for a woman aspiring to power. A concubine at the palace learns quickly that there are many ways to capture the emperor's attention. Many paint their faces white and style their hair attractively, hoping to lure in the One Above All with their beauty. Some present him with fantastic gifts, such as jade pendants and scrolls of calligraphy, while others rely on their knowledge of seduction to draw his interest. But young Mei knows nothing of these womanly arts, yet she will give the emperor a gift he can never forget.

Sophie was born to be a rebel, raised by parents who challenged the brutal Nazi regime. Determined to follow in their footsteps, she leaves for university, defying Hitler’s command for women to stay at home. She knows instantly that she isn’t alone, that there are more courageous souls like her who will fight against evil. But it is only a matter of time before the Gestapo closes in.... And when Sophie is imprisoned in an interrogation room, staring a Nazi officer in the eye, will she take their secrets to her grave? 

In 1760, Deborah Samson is born to Puritan parents in Plympton, Massachusetts. When her father abandons the family and her mother is unable to support them, Deborah is bound out as an indentured servant. From that moment on, she yearns for a life of liberation and adventure. Twenty years later, as the American colonies begin to buckle in their battle for independence, Deborah, impassioned by the cause, disguises herself as a soldier and enlists in the Continental Army.

Born in the middle of nowhere, Yaqian, a little embroidery girl from Hunan Province, finds her way to the imperial court, a place of intrigue, desire, and treachery. From the bed of an Emperor, the heart of a Prince, and the right side of an Empress, Yaqian weaves her way through the most turbulent decades of China's history and witnesses the fall of the Qing Dynasty.