Anticipating suicide only to foil a bank robbery and receive a blackmail note from one of the robbers, Nate, a traumatized former soldier with ALS, is kidnapped by a Russian mobster who threatens Nate's family to force him to complete the robbery he interrupted.

"From her first day as personal assistant to the celebrated Mina Appleton, Christine Butcher understands what's expected of her: absolute loyalty and absolute discretion. For twenty years now, Christine has been a devoted servant, a silent witness to everything in Mina's life. Day after day, year after year, she's been there, invisible--absorbing the secrets floating around her, keeping them safe. Christine is trusted. But those years of loyalty...

This fierce and beautiful story charts the histories of two women: Rae, young, unmarried, and far from home, awaits the birth of her first child. Lila, a fortune-teller with no interest in the future, lost her own daughter more than a quarter of a century earlier in New York. When these two women meet in Southern California, it's earthquake weather-the time when unexpected things happen. Immediately, their lives and fortunes become intertwined, as...

Eighty-four-year-old Florence has fallen in her flat at Cherry Tree Home for the Elderly. Waiting to be rescued, she wonders if a terrible secret from her past is about to come to light. If the charming new resident is who he claims to be, why does he look exactly like a man who died sixty years ago? Only her best friend, Elsie, believes her; everyone else thinks Florence is just confused. But as truths are revealed, the women find out that some memories...

"All Jamie Allenby ever wanted was space. Even though she wasn't forced to emigrate from Earth, she willingly left the overpopulated, claustrophobic planet. And when a long relationship devolved into silence and suffocating sadness, she found work on a frontier world on the edges of civilization. Then the virus hit ... Now Jamie finds herself dreadfully alone, with all that's left of the dead. Until a garbled message from Earth gives her hope that...

Abbe Deighton is a woman who has lost her bearings. Once a child of the African plains, she is now settled in Hawaii, married to a minister, and waging her battles in a hallway of monotony. There are the chafing expectations of her husband's congregation, the constant demands of motherhood, and the leaky roof. But in an instant beginning with the skid of tires, Abbe's battlefield is transformed when her three-year-old daughter is killed, triggering...