As a young mother with a toddler and a live-in boyfriend, Maggie Fisher's job at a checkout counter in downtown Phoenix doesn't afford her much financial flexibility. She dreams of going to college and becoming a teacher, options she squandered when she fled her family home as a teenager. When Maggie stumbles onto an ad offering thousands of dollars to women who are willing to gestate other people's babies, she at first finds the concept laughable. Before long, however, she's been seduced by all the ways the extra money could improve her life.

Haunted by demons past and present, geologist Ann Salter seeks sanctuary on the exotic island of Lanzarote. There, she meets charismatic author Richard Parry and indigenous potter Domingo, and together they explore the island. Ann’s encounters with the island’s hidden treasures becomes a journey deep inside herself, as she struggles to understand who she was, who she is, and who she wants to be.

Mary Roberts is an impoverished child living in a council flat in 1950s London. When she and her sister are left at an orphanage by their mother, they don't think their lives can get any worse. Harry Evans is an orphan who finds himself, with Mary and her sister, on board a ship bound for Australia. They're sent to a farm school for children, where abuse and neglect are rife. A journey that will change their lives forever and from which they’ll never return.

Since adolescence, 58-year-old Beth has lived her life with blinkers on, repressing the memory of a teenage trauma. Her mother, Marian, took control of that situation, and of all else in their family life—and as much as she could in the small town of Miner's Ridge as well. Now Marian is dead, and Beth, unemployed and in the middle of a humiliating divorce, is living with her gentle-hearted father in the family home. Beth feels obliged to take over her mother's involvement in the local town hall committee.

Olivia Montag is a professor who doesn’t have all the answers. The devastating loss of a child ended her marriage, and she’s been overlooked for a job promotion one time too many. Not sure what comes next, she leaves it all behind and volunteers to teach English to schoolchildren in India. Ten thousand miles away, she connects with fellow volunteers and finds purpose in teaching. Until one by one, the girls in her classes stop showing up. Then she meets Mukesh, an Indian man with a heart for invention, who may be the only one who can help her students. 

As friends and family gather for the funeral of charming and charismatic Seb Cooper, three women sit in the congregation, mourning his loss. Three women who loved Seb in their own different ways. Three women whose lives have now changed forever. But only one woman knows what really happened at the end...and only one truly had his heart.

In 1958, 19-year-old Kat Caswell loses her best friend in a brutal accident. In an attempt to flee from her past, she hops a freight train, leaving rural Indiana behind. Kat soon discovers that the extreme danger of train jumping is a welcome distraction from her pain.

College student Toby is desperate for direction. Pausing his higher education, he relocates to Portland and rents a townhouse in hopes of reconnecting to his roots. But he didn't expect his passion for soap operas to lead to the relationship he's always needed. At 87-years-old, Jo's mind and body aren't what they used to be. But even at her senior age, she's sharp enough to know her nursing aids are after her generous family trust. So when a kind and honest young man moves in next door, she quickly enlists his help in catching the sneaky bandits.

Sylvie is a lover of words and a collector of stories, only she has lost her own. She has no words for that night at the lighthouse when their lives changed forever. What happened to cleave her apart from her best friend and soul mate, Kase? Sylvie yearns to rekindle their deep connection, so when Kase invites her to the wild Tasmanian coast to celebrate her 40th birthday, she accepts - despite the ghosts she must face. Through an inscription in an old book, Sylvie and Kase discover their mothers have a history, hidden from their daughters. 

Maeve Maloney may be nearing 80, but she keeps Sea View Lodge as shipshape as her parents did during Morecambe's heyday. But now only her employees recognise the heartbreak hidden beneath her spikiness. Until, that is, Vincent shows up. He is the only man alive to have known her twin sister, Edie. If only Maeve could confront the secret past she shares with Vincent, she might finally see what it means to love and be loved - a lesson that her twin may have been trying to teach her all along.