It’s a risky move that’s out of character for her, but her thirties are passing quickly—she feels like she's closing in on forty fast—plus she’s got a hole in her roof and no AC. The big payday she’s been promised for this short-term assignment will fix a lot of what’s wrong in her life. The job is at the beach in North Carolina, in a place called Emerald Isle at the end of the Outer Banks. She’s never seen the ocean before and she’d like to, but what's the catch?

Journalist Sadie is home for the first time in fifteen years, staying in her small childhood bedroom as she deals with her estranged father’s death and her surprising inheritance. When Sadie meets Rebecca, the reclusive new owner of the solitary cottage at the edge of nearby Whisper Lake, she’s taken aback by the older woman’s request for help: ‘I need to find my family. Will you help me?’. She’s even more surprised when afterwards, Rebecca acts as if she never made the plea.

Libbie Havens is fine on her own. When she chances upon the secluded house on Cub Creek, she purchases it. She'll show her cousin Liz, and other doubters, that she can rise above her past and live happily and successfully on her own terms. Libbie has emotional problems born of a troubled childhood. Raised by a grandmother she could never please, Libbie is more comfortable not being comfortable with people. She knows she's different from most. She has special gifts, or curses, but are they real? Or are they products of her history and dysfunction? 

It has been twenty-four years since a young Helena spent a magical holiday in Cyprus, where she fell in love for the first time. When the now crumbling house, 'Pandora', is left to her by her godfather, she returns to spend the summer there with her family. Yet, as soon as Helena arrives at Pandora, she knows that its idyllic beauty masks a web of secrets that she has kept from William, her husband, and Alex, her son. At the difficult age of thirteen, Alex is torn between protecting his beloved mother, and growing up. And equally, desperate to learn the truth about his real father.

Thirty years have passed since Greta left Marchmont Hall, a grand and beautiful house nestled in the hills of rural Monmouthshire. But when she returns to the Hall for Christmas she has no recollection of her past association with it – the result of a tragic accident that has blanked out more than two decades of her life. Then, during a walk through the wintry landscape, she stumbles across a grave in the woods and the weathered inscription on the headstone tells her that a little boy is buried here.