Marlowe and Harper share a bond deeper than most sisters, shaped by the loss of their mother in childhood. For Harper, living with what she calls the Up syndrome and gifted with an endless capacity for wonder, Marlowe and she are connected by an invisible thread, like the hum that connects all things. For Marlowe, they are bound by her fierce determination to keep Harper, born with a congenital heart disorder, alive. Now 25, Marlowe is living her own life abroad. Then she receives a devastating call that Harper’s heart is failing.

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the Earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

Recently, Shyamala Mehta’s life in LA feels stagnant: she’s undervalued at work, newly single, and constantly clashing with her marriage-obsessed mother. So when she’s offered a transfer to Mumbai, she travels halfway around the world to the now drought-stricken city her parents left behind.

Melanie Barnett thinks she has it all together. With an ex-fiancé and a pending promotion at a Kentucky bourbon distillery, Melanie has figured out that love and career don’t mix. Until she makes a discovery while cleaning her Jordan MX car, a scarlet-red symbol of the Jazz Age’s independent women that she inherited from her great-great-great-aunt Violet. Its secret compartment holds Violet’s weathered journal.

Single mother Roxy Novak works days at a dentist’s office and delivers food at night, making the best life she can for herself and her son, Aero. When her wealthy ex-husband decides to ask for full custody, telling her Aero will be better off living with him and his Instagram-famous new wife, Roxy is stunned and scared. How can she possibly get the money to fight back? 

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.

Forty years ago, aspiring writer Ann Fawkes left the United States for a Mediterranean adventure that opened her heart to travel and love. After a chance encounter propelled her into the publishing world, she released her first novel, an instant bestseller—and the last book she ever wrote. Now, Ann lives a reclusive life in the San Juan Islands, hiding from the public and its probing questions. But when podcaster Maggie Whitaker convinces Ann to sit for an interview, Ann agrees on one condition: Maggie must keep her story off the record.

It’s 1849 on the west coast of Ireland. Resilient Honora O’Donoghue is accustomed to fending for herself and to reading the language of the natural world. It was always said she’d been marked for something different, but it’s not until she suffers devastating losses in a country gripped by the Famine that Honora begins to understand how that difference will save her. With the hope of a better life in America calling, Honora keeps moving toward her freedom.

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.

Key West, 1886. The booming cigar industry makes it the most prosperous city in Florida. As a rebel base for the anticolonial insurgency in Cuba, it’s also a tinderbox for six young friends with ambitious dreams. They all brim with secrets.

Law school graduate and newlywed Ruth Appelbaum is acclimating to life and marriage in a posh Philadelphia neighborhood. She’ll do almost anything to endear herself to her mother-in-law, who’s already signed up Ruth for etiquette lessons conducted by the impeccably accessorized tutor Lillian Diamond. But Ruth brings something fresh to the small circle of housewives—sharp wit, honesty, and an independent streak that won’t be compromised. 

It’s 1918 in German-occupied Bruges, Belgium. With luck, Evelien will make it to the end of the war and be given what she was promised: a prized painting in exchange for safeguarding her employer’s possessions. Until then, Evelien knows to keep her head down and stay out of trouble. But life never goes to plan, especially in war. A member of the Resistance approaches Evelien: steal a list of names hidden in her employer’s home.

With her thirtieth birthday on the horizon, Anna Kotze has accepted that there are some family secrets she’ll never know. While her mother’s Zimbabwean roots are woven into her life, all her father will say is that he was adopted. But when she finds an engraved necklace hidden among his things, a surprise piece of the puzzle finally falls into place: her father wasn’t just adopted—he was abandoned. The only clue to her grandmother’s identity is the inscription, ‘Indira’, Anna’s own middle name. But who was her namesake and where is she now?

Ever since Beth Bailey was a girl, she’s been in love with her best friend’s older brother, Mark. She’s continued to hold out hope that maybe, someday, he’ll love her back. But now Beth is thirty-five years old, and on the day of Mark’s wedding to another woman, she finally accepts the wake-up call she needs to move on.