1969. When Mattie Taylor’s twin brother was killed in Vietnam, she lost her best friend and the only person who really understood her. Now, news that her mother is dying sends Mattie back home, despite blaming her father for Mark’s death. Mama’s last wish is that Mattie would read some old letters stored in a trunk, from people Mattie doesn’t even know. Mama insists they hold the answers Mattie is looking for.

The year is 1901, and the hustle and bustle of the holidays is descending on New York's Fifth Avenue. For the first time in her privileged life, Adelaide Forsythe couldn’t be happier about the prospect of a quiet Christmas. That’s not to say her transition from Missto Mrs. has been without challenge. Though she doesn’t regret marrying for love instead of wealth, she feels woefully unprepared to run her own household. Then, on the first Sunday of Advent, winter winds bring surprising change, first through a young orphan boy and then a seasoned housekeeper who seems too good to be true.

1961. After a longtime resident at Nashville’s historic Maxwell House Hotel suffers a debilitating stroke, Audrey Whitfield is tasked with cleaning out the reclusive woman’s room. There, she discovers an elaborate scrapbook filled with memorabilia from the Tennessee Centennial Exposition. Love notes on the backs of unmailed postcards inside capture Audrey’s imagination with hints of a forbidden romance . . . and troubling revelations about the disappearance of young women at the exposition.

The folks in the Kentucky Appalachians are scraping by. Coal mining and hardscrabble know-how are a way of life for these isolated people. But when Amanda Rye, a young widowed mother and traveling packhorse librarian, comes through a mountain community hit hard by the nation’s economic collapse, she brings with her hope, courage, and apple pie.

Worie Dressar is 17 years old when influenza and typhoid ravage her Appalachian Mountain community in 1877, leaving behind a growing number of orphaned children with no way to care for themselves. Worie’s mother has been secretly feeding several of these little ones on Sourwood Mountain. But when tragedy strikes, Worie is left to figure out why and how she was caring for them.

Sixteen-year-old Lorena Leland’s dreams of a rich and fulfilling life as a writer are dashed when the stock market crashes in 1929. Seven years into the Great Depression, Rena’s banker father has retreated into the bottle, her sister is married to a lazy charlatan and gambler, and Rena is an unemployed newspaper reporter. Eager for any writing job, Rena accepts a position interviewing former slaves for the Federal Writers’ Project. There, she meets Frankie Washington, a 101-year-old woman whose honest yet tragic past captivates Rena.

New York, 1898. The only thing more shocking than Arthur Stanhope III’s unexpected death is the revelation that his will bestows his company—and most of the vast fortune that goes with it—to the nearest male heir, leaving his mother, wife, and daughter nearly impoverished. His widow, Sylvia, quickly realizes she must set aside her grief to ensure their daughter, Adelaide, is launched into society as soon as the appropriate mourning period passes.

Bertie Jenkins has spent forty years serving as a midwife for her community in the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee. Out of all the mothers she’s tended, none affects her more than the young teenager who shows up on her doorstep, injured, afraid, and expecting, one warm June day in 1943. As Bertie and her four sisters tenderly nurture Songbird back to health, the bond between the childless midwife and the motherless teen grows strong. But soon Songbird is forced to make a heartbreaking decision that will tear this little family apart.

Paris, 1943. The scent of fresh baguettes hangs in the air as Coralie unbolts the door to her bakery with trembling fingers. She must get out of the city. Hiding her precious leather recipe book inside her coat, she promises never to let the secret locations of the people she worked tirelessly to save fall into German hands… Present day. Raven is unhappy about being shipped off to the other side of the country for the summer to stay with the mysterious French grandmother she barely knows.

Mercy Roller knows her name is a lie: there has never been any mercy in her life. Raised by a twisted and abusive father who called himself the Pastor, she was abandoned by the church community that should have stood together to protect her from his evil. Her mother, consumed by her own fear and hate, won't stand her ground to save Mercy either.

Lochiel Ogle was born with a red-wine birthmark—and it put her life in jeopardy from the moment she entered the world. Mountain folks called it "the mark of the devil," and for all the evil that has plagued her nineteen-year existence, Lochiel is ready to believe that is true. And the evil surely took control of the mind of the boy who stole her as an infant, bringing her home for his mother to raise.

Claire Powell’s life is turned upside down when her beloved husband admits to a “near affair.” But when Stephen accepts a partnership with an Atlanta law firm without consulting her and buys a historic Southern home sight-unseen―it pushes their already-fractured marriage to the breaking point. Claire’s world spirals, and she soon finds herself in a marriage she no longer wants, in a house she never asked for.

What you see isn’t always what you get. Take Ainsley. The gorgeous mother of two lives a picture-perfect life with her husband, Ben—aspiring politician and heir to a candy fortune—in suburban Washington, DC. But in reality, Ainsley has no idea what she’s doing and is terrified someone will figure out who she really is and where she came from.

If any place on God's earth was designed to help one heal, it is Meadowland. Surely here, at her brother-in-law's Kentucky farm, Rose and her daughters can recover from the events of the recent past—the loss of her husband during the 1918 influenza epidemic, her struggle with tuberculosis that required a stay at a sanatorium, and her girls' experience in an orphanage during her illness. At Meadowland, hope blooms as their past troubles become rich soil in which their faith can grow.

As the beloved stepdaughter of the Earl of Castleton, Lady Mariah Lyons cherishes her home at Plumford Manor, but her idyllic world will be threatened when the estate passes to Cyril Lightbourne, a childhood friend she hasn’t seen or heard from in years. Once, Mariah dreamed their friendship would kindle into something more, but that was before she heard Cyril was courting the cruelhearted Lady Pearl. Now Mariah is willing to welcome him as a friend and pray he will be the heir her stepfather needs, but she’ll keep her heart locked safely away from anyone with such poor taste.

England, 2014: Audrey Collins knows only two things about her beloved grandmother's past: She was born into nobility and she immigrated to America at seventeen years old. So when Audrey inherits her gran's home in North Yorkshire, she arrives expecting a sprawling country estate fit for lords and ladies. Instead, she finds an abandoned stone cottage perfectly preserved as Gran left it when she fled in 1941—ration book and all—and begins to uncover what secrets her family has been keeping.

When the Harrington family discovers an abandoned baby deep in the woods, they decide to keep her a secret and raise her as their own. But within days a body is found in the grounds of their house and their perfect new family implodes. Years later, Sylvie, seeking answers to nagging questions about her life, is drawn into the wild beautiful woods where nothing is quite what it seems. Will she unearth the truth? And dare she reveal it?

Present Day. When Hanna returns to Norfolk from years working abroad, the strange dreams of her adolescence return: indistinct figures in tunics, mighty soldiers in armour, gladiators, temples, an Iceni warrior woman leading her people. Gradually Hanna’s dreams begin to slip into the present as visions in the famous mists rolling across the fens, and as shocks of recognition when a new face moves to her childhood home. As Hanna realises that she has a connection with a tragedy that occurred many years before, so Brea has to understand that her fate is bound up with her Roman master.

When the Nazi occupation of Rome begins, two courageous young women are plunged deep into the Italian Resistance to fight for their freedom in this captivating debut novel.

During the reign of Louis XV, impoverished but lovely teenage girls from all over France are sent to a discreet villa in the town of Versailles. Overseen by the King’s favorite mistress, Madame de Pompadour, they will be trained as potential courtesans for the King. When the time is right, each girl is smuggled into the palace of Versailles, with its legendary Hall of Mirrors.

When Caroline wakes up in a Paris hospital with no memory of her past, she’s confused to learn that for years she’s lived a sad, reclusive life in a sprawling apartment on the rue Cler. Slowly regaining vague memories of a man and a young child, she vows to piece her life back together - though she can’t help but feel she may be in danger. A budding friendship with the chef of a charming nearby restaurant takes her mind off her foggy past, as does a startling mystery from decades prior.

Joy Blackwood has no idea why her French art dealer husband has left a valuable painting to a woman called Robyn Tessier in Ballycove, a small town on the west coast of Ireland, but she is determined to find out. She arrives in Ballycove to find that Robyn runs a rather chaotic and unprofitable bookshop. She is shy, suffering from unrequited love for dashing Kian, and badly in need of advice on how to make the bookshop successful.

Theresia Dvorak has nothing left of her parents—nothing save her dowry, a priceless crystal vase stolen and sold by her own stepmother. Theresia will do anything to secure what is rightfully hers—even assume a false identity and steal her future back. When she gains entrance to a house party and has a memorable run-in with the handsome navel captain Rolland Reese, her mission is compromised.

On her wedding day 10 years ago, Lena Donohue experienced a betrayal so painful that she fled the small town of Watersend, South Carolina, and reinvented herself in New York City. Though now a freelance travel writer, the one place she rarely goes is home - until she learns of her dad's failing health. Returning to Watersend means seeing the sister she has avoided for a decade and the brother who runs their family's Irish pub - and who has borne the burden of his sisters' rift.

Lolly Blanchard's life only seems to give her lemons. Ten years ago, after her mother’s tragic death, she broke up with her first love and abandoned her dream of opening a restaurant in order to keep her family’s struggling Seattle diner afloat and care for her younger sister and grieving father. Now, a decade later, she dutifully whips up the diner’s famous lemon meringue pies each morning while still pining for all she's lost. As Lolly’s thirty-third birthday approaches, her quirky great-aunt gives her a mysterious gift.

Mrs. Braithwaite, self-appointed queen of her English village, finds herself dethroned, despised, and dismissed following her husband’s selfish divorce petition. Never deterred, the threat of a family secret being revealed sets off hot-foot to London to find the only person she has left - her clever daughter, Betty, who took work there at the first rumbles of war. But when she arrives, Betty’s landlord, the timid Mr. Norris, informs her that Betty hasn’t been home in days - with the chaos of the bombs, there’s no telling what might have befallen her.

In 1947, photographer and war correspondent Janey Everett arrives at a remote surfing village on the Hawaiian island of Kauai to research a planned biography of forgotten aviation pioneer Sam Mallory, who joined the loyalist forces in the Spanish Civil War and never returned. Obsessed with Sam’s fate, Janey has tracked down Irene Lindquist, the owner of a local island-hopping airline, whom she believes might actually be the legendary Irene Foster, Mallory’s onetime student and flying partner.

I’ve gone by many names, though you most likely know me as Milady de Winter: Villainess. Seductress. A secondary player in someone else’s tale. It’s finally time I tell my own story. The truth isn’t tidy or convenient, but it’s certainly more interesting. Before you cast judgment, let me start at the beginning, and you shall learn how an innocent girl from the countryside became the most feared woman in all of Europe.

When Leah and her husband moved to France, it was with the dream of becoming self-sufficient. But in truth, it’s not the ‘good life’ she’d imagined, as three hours of digging barely yield a single straggly carrot. Worse, her teenage daughter is acting up, and her husband seems to find every strange excuse under the hot French sun to disappear. So when her friend entreats her to join the new book club she’s forming, Leah decides it’s something she will do for herself.

On her own since the age of 18, Cass Macklin dated brilliant, troubled Ben McGreavy, convinced he was the smartest person she’d ever known. They partied their way through their 20s, slowly descending into a bleak world of binge-drinking and broken promises, inebriated for most of a decade. Now Ben is dead, and Cass is broke, homeless, scared...and pregnant. Determined to have a healthy pregnancy and raise Ben’s baby, Cass has to find a way to stop drinking and build a stable life for herself and her child.