After the death of her adoptive mother, Chelsea Kane is a woman consumed by a need to discover her natural heritage. She arrives in the New Hampshire town where she was born, aching for answers. It is while she is looking for them that she finds something quite unexpected: a love she thought she would never know.

The charming vacation house on the coast of Maine was meant to be a heavenly retreat for Danica Lindsay and her husband Blake, a place where they could mend the wounds of a strained and tired marriage. Instead, she finds herself mostly there alone while Blake's political star is rapidly rising back in Boston. Were it not for the companionship of her new neighbor, gentle and caring Michael Buchanan, Danica would surely be overcome by loneliness and despair.

Although Casey never met him, she held an oblique hope that someday her father might acknowledge her. She watched from afar as the illustrious Dr. Cornelius Unger became a celebrated psychologist and teacher. Through it all, she clung to the illusive dream that someday he might take notice of her - and now it is too late. It comes as a shock when she learns that he has left her his beautiful townhouse in Boston's exclusive Beacon Hill. Sensing that her father had an ulterior motive in leaving her the house, Casey searches the house and finds the first part of what could be a novel....

Mackenzie Cooper took her eyes off the road for just a moment, but the resulting collision was enough to rob her not only of her beloved daughter but ultimately of her marriage, family, and friends - and thanks to the nonstop media coverage, even her privacy. Now, she lives in Vermont under the name Maggie Reid. Her only goal is to stay under the radar and make it through her remaining probation. But she isn’t the only one in this peaceful town with secrets.

What if wishes really could come true? It’s the question facing waitress Bree Walker when she awakens in the hospital following a blizzard in sleepy Panama, Vermont. While she can’t recall the near-tragedy that landed her there, she’s overcome with the certainty that she has been granted three wishes. One seems to have come true already: At her side is renowned author Tom Gates, the accident’s only witness, who came to Panama to make sense of his fame - and who now makes Bree his cause.

For Annie Barnes, going home to Middle River means dealing with truths long hidden. But it is a journey she knows she must take if she is to put to rest, once and for all, her misgivings about her mother's recent death. To an outsider, Middle River is a picture-perfect New Hampshire town. But Annie grew up there, and she knows all its secrets - just like her idol, Grace Metalious, author of the infamous novel Peyton Place, which laid a small town's sexual secrets bare for all the world to see.

Along with their husbands, Amanda, Karen, and Georgia are a close-knit circle of friends enjoying seemingly ideal lives in an upscale neighborhood. But when they learn that their lovely younger neighbor, widowed for a year and presumably still unattached, is pregnant, the strains and imperfections of their lives come into full focus. As they ponder who the father might be, each of the women harbors suspicions about her own husband - and each is forced to a crisis point that will strengthen or shatter her marriage.

The Maxwells and the Popes have been friends forever. The women were college roommates, their husbands are partners in the same law firm, their kids have grown up next door to each other, and the two families share both vacations and holidays.

Julia Bechtel's life seems to have reached a dead end. Her daughter, 21, is off on her own. Her husband has grown more and more distant, more and more domineering, and the result has been a further diminishing of Julia's feeling of self-worth. In an effort to buy some time and to try to figure some things out, Julia visits her daughter who has taken a summer job off the coat of Maine. When Julia misses the last ferry boat from the mainland, she catches a lobster boat that carries passengers to the island.

When Natalie Seebring announces plans to marry within months of the death of her husband of fifty-eight years, her son and daughter are stunned. In the face of their disapproval, Natalie decides it's time to talk about the past and reveal the secrets she has kept for decades. She hires Olivia Jones to help write her memoir and invites her to spend the summer at the family vineyard. As summer deepens and the vineyard's crop ripens, Natalie's story unfolds and startles one family member after another....

Once upon a time, she was Robyn Hart, a dogged journalist covering an arson case who saw too much and wasn't afraid to expose it. But that courage nearly cost Robyn her life. Now under the safety of the Witness Protection program, she has a new identity - Carly Quinn - with a new job in a new city. As she struggles to make the best of her new life in Boston, the terror of the past still lingers, and Carly lives in fear that her enemies will find her.

One phone call is all it takes to lure real estate photographer Mallory Aldiss back to her family Rhode Island beach home. It's been 20 years since she's been gone - running from the scandal that destroyed her parents' marriage, drove her and her two sisters apart, and crushed her relationship with her first love. But going home is fraught with emotional baggage - memories, mysteries, and secrets abound. Mal's 13-year-old daughter, Joy, has never been to the place where Mal's life was shaped and is desperate to go.

Charlotte and Nicole were once the best of friends, spending summers together in Nicole's family's island house, but they have since grown apart. When Nicole returns to the island house in order to write a book about island food, she invites her old friend. Outgoing and passionate, Charlotte has a gift for talking to people and making friends, and Nicole would like her help interviewing locals for her book. But what both women don't know is that they are each holding a secret that may change their relationship forever.

After an unscrupulous reporter falsely accuses Boston lounge singer Lily Blake of having an affair with a newly appointed Cardinal, she’s hounded by the press, fired from her job, and robbed of all her public freedom. The humiliation and violation of privacy leaves her no choice but to retreat to her rural hometown of Lake Henry, New Hampshire. In search of refuge, Lily forms an uneasy alliance with John Kipling, a former Boston reporter with trust issues of his own.

When Susan Tate's seventeen-year-old daughter, Lily, announces she is pregnant, Susan is stunned. A single mother, she has struggled to do everything right. She sees the pregnancy as an unimaginable tragedy for both Lily and herself. Then comes word of two more pregnancies among high school juniors who happen to be Lily's best friends-and the town turns to talk of a pact. As fingers start pointing, the most ardent criticism is directed at Susan. As principal of the high school, she has always been held up as a role model of hard work and core values.