Professor Kate Walker is a tenured, world-renowned engineer. She has a job she loves, a daughter she adores, and friends who've been with her through thick and thin. It's a fulfilling life that doesn't really need anything—or anyone—else. Especially not a charming, downright amazing woman who happens to be twenty years her junior.

On the surface, my life is a flawless performance. I stay home, keep the house spotless, and play the role of the devoted wife. It doesn’t matter that behind the curtains, the truth is darker than anyone could imagine. I’ve mastered the art of concealing the bruises, spinning lies to explain the tears, and burying the horrors of what happened behind closed doors. Until her.

Emerson Riis has a job she loves, friends she considers family, and her goofy malamute Sasha for company. As far as she's concerned, life in the small town of Mystic is pretty much perfect. Enter Mari Davenport, a Hollywood screenwriter with a dozen blockbusters to her name, who arrives in a car that is completely unfit for the north woods of Minnesota.

For Audrey Lind, working with clay still evokes memories of her favorite professor. The woman’s zeal for art history ignited Audrey’s own academic career—and her tweed blazers and British accent kindled her first female crush. After fate brings Audrey back to Northshire University to teach, she’s thrilled to be working alongside her former mentor, but the grumpy woman she encounters upon her return is nothing like the dynamo she remembers.

Emilia Drakon was once the youngest and kindest of the dragon sorcerers, but she's now the last of her kind. Betrayed and angry, she trades her meekness for a sword and embarks on a quest for vengeance that will lead her straight into the arms of the legendary Captain Maria Welles. Captain of the famed pirate ship, the Wicked Fate, Maria is every bit as treacherous and bloodthirsty as they say. She has her own vendetta and practically jumps at the chance to trick Emilia into joining her crew.