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.

It doesn’t take long for ambitious freshman and aspiring engineer Jessie Ahuja to learn about two university legends. One is the haunted history of Davidson Tower, where more than fifty years ago, two ill-fated lovers disappeared in a devastating fire. The other is Ravi Kumar, a privileged billionaire nepo baby who’s aggravatingly charming and occupying more brain space than Jessie has room for. Things change when a campus prank locks them both in the old tower’s ghostly library.

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?

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. 

While it lived, the tamarind tree stood at the crossroads of a small village in Southern India. For more than fifty years it was a benevolent observer, offering shade without discrimination. It bore witness to laughter and tears, to tragedy and simple pleasures, and to the history of the village itself as it transformed from the old ways of bullock-led carts to a bustling community of social, political, economic, and ecological change.

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.

Widower Noah Shilling considers Clarion Court to be less an independent living community and more a prison. But there may be hope for the place yet. The newest resident is bold, eccentric, rule-breaking Cassandra Joyce—whom, as it turns out, Noah met long ago in college. As Noah and Cassandra get reacquainted, major changes at Clarion Court force them both to reevaluate their living situation. When Noah invites Cassandra to rough it with him at his Cape Cod cottage, the old friends must decide whether they should risk embarking on the next stage of their journey together.

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.

1939, India. Bindu holds her baby close, listening to the monsoon raging outside. She tries to hide her tears behind her sari as she hands her baby into a stranger’s arms, wondering if she will ever see her child again. When their small savings run out, Bindu reluctantly accepts an offer of marriage from the landlord’s entitled and often unpredictable son. In return, he promises to provide medical care for her beloved grandmother, but alone in a world she doesn’t understand, Bindu is desperately lonely. She soon finds solace in writing recipes and creating new spice mixes.

The daughter of proud Napa Valley hoteliers, Asha “Poppy” Patel chose a different line as a Paris perfumer, gifted with a nose for fragrances and business. Until her heightened sense of smell disappears. Her career in jeopardy, her world now muted, Poppy returns home. Maybe tending to her grandmother’s massive aromatic garden, where Poppy’s gift first flowered, will bring restorative hope. But when she arrives, Poppy discovers that the land upon which the beautiful garden once thrived has been uprooted and destroyed.

Stella Park is elated to celebrate her best friend’s wedding in the Italian countryside—and maybe she also needs this escape from her personal and her professional life. Writing recipes for a living isn’t all it’s cooked up to be. But the revelry is short lived when she runs into the ex she hasn’t seen since she broke his heart ten years ago, Samuel Gordon. As her past gets propelled to the forefront, Stella tries not to question the choices she made a decade ago.

Home has always been a temporary arrangement for Samara Mansingh, a wayfaring wedding photographer and the daughter of a diplomat. When her father is uprooted once again, Samara needs a place to stay in Delhi. Next stop: the Khanna family. Samara’s memories of the Khannas are vague at best, but she doesn’t remember their home feeling so much like a war zone. And the last thing their surly eldest son, Sharav, wants is a houseguest eavesdropping on the chaos.

Eighteen years ago, teenage Amy fled England, pregnant and heartbroken, to start over in New Zealand with her parents. Now Chris, the love she left behind, has walked into her beloved café by the beach and thrown her life into turmoil. As far as Amy’s concerned, Chris chose to ignore the child she was carrying when they last met. She brought up their daughter alone and created a happy home for them both on the other side of the world. But with Chris suddenly back in her life, she can no longer ignore the past and begins to wonder what really happened all those years ago.

In the 1990s, Carter Wills was the lead singer of the English alt-rock band Mayluna, securing his place among music legends. His tortured-heart lyrics struck a chord. And so did his secret connection to a woman whose love changed all their lives. Who was she? Evie Waters’s two grown children discover an iconic photo in an old magazine of a “mystery girl” with Carter: their mother. It all started in a wistful time and place for Evie, her twenty-fifth summer.