Traveling abroad with her mother at the turn of the twentieth century to seek a titled husband, beautiful, vivacious Cora Cash, whose family mansion in Newport dwarfs the Vanderbilts’, suddenly finds herself Duchess of Wareham, married to Ivo, the most eligible bachelor in England. However: Ivo is withdrawn and secretive, and the English social scene is full of traps and betrayals.
At this novel's center are Milo, a severely wounded veteran of the Iraq War confined to a rehabilitation hospital, and Honor, his physical therapist, a former dancer. When Honor touches Milo’s destroyed back, mysterious images from the past appear to each of them, puzzling her and shaking him to the core.
Dr. Marina Singh is sent to Brazil to track down her former mentor, who seems to have disappeared in the Amazon while working on what is destined to be a valuable new drug. She also hopes to find answers to questions about another friend's death, the state of her company's future, and her own past.
In 1968, a clerical mistake threatens the prestigious but cash-strapped Goode School in a small New England. After a century of all-male, old-boy education, the school accidentally admits its first female student: Carole Faust, a brilliant, outspoken, fifteen-year-old black girl whose arrival will have both an immediate and long-term effect on the prep school and everyone in its orbit.
On a soft summer night in Vermont, 12-year-old Lisa went into the woods behind her house and never came out again. Before she disappeared, she told her little brother, Sam, about a door that led to a magical place where she would meet the King of the Fairies and become his queen. 15 years later, Phoebe is in love with Sam, a practical, sensible man who doesn’t fear the dark and doesn’t have bad dreams --- who, in fact, helps Phoebe ignore her own, but suddenly the couple is faced with a series of eerie, unexplained occurances.
Bess Gray's 35th birthday party is tonight, and she is dreading it. Somehow she has let a friend talk her into throwing a singles party (a blanket invite to her single friends to bring unattached singles) at her own apartment.
