Kate and Pete have been the perfect couple ever since they were teenagers. Fifteen years later, they have two young daughters, live in a beautiful London townhouse, and seem like they have it all. But one day, Pete leaves for work and never comes home. In a note Kate discovers, he confesses that he’s been unhappy for a long time and that he’s met someone else. Distraught, she later learns that he has left everything behind, including his mobile phone, and she sets out to learn the truth about his disappearance.

Married couple Mark and Cecilia seem to have it all—looks, wealth, love. But behind closed doors, things are very different—they live in silent resentment, their marriage broken by the shattering loss of the child they so desperately wanted. Enter Alice: Mark’s idea of the perfect woman. She appears from nowhere and offers Mark the chance of a new life filled with love, passion, and, finally, the joys of parenthood—everything he’s ever dreamed of. But there’s a catch.

Annie feels like she's at a good place in her life: happily married, expecting her first child, enjoying a vacation with her extended family at their beautiful coastal home. But then her sister, Sunday, suddenly goes missing. Annie is immediately concerned, but the rest of the family assure her that everything's fine, this is the kind of thing Sunday does, she'll be back… But Annie knows in her heart that something is very wrong, and she won't rest until she sees her sister safe and well. As Annie digs for the truth, she realizes that some of her family are not what they seem.

Will I have the chance to explain to little Erin why I had to go? Even if I do find the strength to return, what will my mother have told her? Only one person really knows what happened and why I had to do what I did. I know the truth will come out some day. I don’t expect forgiveness. The only thing I hope is that my family can survive the fallout....

Esther has shut herself away in her vine-covered manor house on the top of a hill for as long as she can remember. Everyone in the village whispers about the scandal that broke her heart. She has cut herself off from the world—until now. Now, she needs help uncovering the mystery that has plagued her for decades. On a sunny spring day, 18-year-old Bruno is in the local library when he spots an advert. The old lady on the hill is looking for internet lessons, and Bruno sees his chance.

Anna works two jobs to get herself through college and never, ever talks about her family. It’s easier to keep her distance from everyone until she can finally leave her old life behind. That is, until chance throws her together with Gabe....

Vale Lightner’s dreams turn to ash when the Pittsburgh bar she owns goes up in flames. Just like the past she escaped, very little seems salvageable. Facing unavoidable change, Vale returns to her hometown of Philadelphia to stay with her grandmother. She knows that returning also means facing everything she left behind: a mother and stepfather who shunted her into the background from the day they married, and her charmed and favored half sister, Blythe, who has abandoned a perfect marriage and is now at a crossroads of her own.

The call came on a seemingly ordinary day. But as soon as Rachel heard the pain in her sister’s voice, she had to face the fact that life as she knew it was about to be shattered: “It’s mum. She’s not well. She doesn’t have much time.” Though her heart breaks to leave her husband and children behind, Rachel knows the right thing is to return home to care for her mother, Janet. Their relationship has been strained for years. This may be the last chance for them both to heal.

Alice Hunter is smarting from the raw deal life has thrown her way: suddenly single, jobless and forced to move home to her parents' tiny seaside town. And now she faces an uncomfortable truth. She wants her twin sister Libby's enviable life. Libby's closest friend Jess Dekic has been around the Hunter family for so long she might as well be blood. She's always considered herself a sister closer to Libby than Alice ever could be.

Germany, 1945. As the ground shakes and the air raid sirens wail, Katja holds her tiny baby to her chest. She pictures Karl’s handsome face and kind blue eyes, her breath catching at the thought of him heading back to the front. She must never tell anyone about the letters she delivered for him or the other secret she is hiding....

Cate grips the note with trembling hands, looking down at the delicate bundle on her doorstep. As she reaches down to the baby, she knows she has finally got everything she’s ever wished for. But is he hers to take? Cate tries not to cry as she closes the door on the nursery room once again. All she has ever wanted is to be a mother. Cursed with a medical condition that means she is unable to have children, her only option is to wait for a call from the adoption center. But that call feels like a lifetime away.

Growing up, Joanne suffered at the hands of a violent boyfriend and controlling relatives, as her mother lapsed into a downward spiral following the break-up of her marriage. But the consequences of her mother's lifestyle turned out to be worse than Joanne could ever have imagined. She already knew about the baby buried in a shallow makeshift grave next to the family plot. But when Joanne came across a red plastic bin in her mother's wardrobe in 2009, she realised that the family home held an even more sinister secret.

England, 1939: When Alice marries twinkly-eyed, kind-hearted vicar David, it means leaving everything from her old life behind and moving into the draughty vicarage in the beautiful but remote village of Goswell, Cumbria. Though homesick, she's determined to make a new life there for herself and her husband. But soon tragedy strikes, and Alice is devastated when war breaks out and David chooses to sign up to fight. But everything changes when she's asked to take in a child evacuee, and she makes a promise to protect this girl, no matter what it costs her…

When Emily’s fiancé walks out on her while she’s still grieving the loss of her family in a terrible accident, she escapes back to Hope Haven on the remote Dune Island, where her family vacationed every summer. Emily hopes that fixing up the house will also mend her broken heart, but the cottage holds more than just bittersweet childhood memories. Emptying her father’s antique writing desk, Emily finds a letter that reveals a devastating secret about her parents.

What if the perfect life you envy was rotten to the core? Three brand-new friends. Three very different families. Way too many secrets. Gisela, Sally and Kate become close when they move into the same new housing estate. But behind their shiny front doors, each has something to hide. Three lives collide in this gripping story about friendship, motherhood and marriage and the façade of perfection people present to the world.