The bond between a mother and her child is the strongest in the natural world. So, why would a young woman, dreaming of America, throw her newborn baby into the waves of the wild Atlantic ocean? Life in the Scottish Hebrides can be harsh - 'The Edge of the World' some call it. For Kirsty MacLeod, the love of Murdo promises a new life away from the scrape of the land and the repression of the church. But the Great War looms, and Kirsty is overpowered and raped by an unknown assailant.

A young meteorologist checking a mountain top weather station in Kinlochleven discovers the body of a missing man entombed in ice. Cameron Brodie, a Glasgow detective, sets out on a hazardous journey to the isolated and ice-bound village. He has his own reasons for wanting to investigate a murder case so far from his beat. Brodie must face up to the ghosts of his past and to a killer determined to bury forever the chilling secret that his investigation threatens to expose.

In 1918, after four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia to take a job as the lighthouse keeper on remote Janus Rock. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes only four times a year and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Three years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel is tending the grave of her newly lost infant when she hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up on shore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Libby Snow's great-great-grandmother Ellen was obsessed with the strange legend of Ulla, a Viking maiden who washed up on shore with the nearly lifeless body of her husband. Central to the mystery is an ornate chalice, and Libby, an archaeologist, finally has permission to excavate the site where Ulla is believed to have lived. But what Libby finds in the ancient dunes is a body from the Victorian era, clearly murdered...and potentially connected to Ellen.

Acclaimed author Susanna Kearsley's previous works have won the RT Book Reviews Reviewers Choice Award, and finaled for both the UK Romantic Novel of the Year and the RITA awards.

Eva Ward is a modern woman thrown back three centuries to 1715 - only to find that might be exactly where she belongs. There, she finds true love with Daniel Butler, but the discord surrounding Hanoverian King George plunges the lovers into a world of intrigue, treason, and romance.

Terror haunts a remote Scottish Glen. Heartbroken Anna MacDonald leaves Edinburgh to find peace at the edge of a Scottish loch. Safely ensconced in her late grandmother's cottage, she can finally heal her heart and write the novel that has burned inside her for years. Her peace is short-lived. When debonair artist Luke Tallantyre's yacht gets stranded in the loch, he seeks help at the nearest residence - Anna's croft.

Caretta Rutledge thought she’d left her Southern roots and troubled family far behind. But an unusual request from her mother – coming just as her own life is spinning out of control – has Cara heading back to the scenic Lowcountry of her childhood summers. Before long, the rhythms of the island open her heart in wonderful ways as she repairs the family beach house, becomes a bona fide “turtle lady” and renews old acquaintances long thought lost.

In the summer of 1951, Miranda Schuyler arrives on elite, secretive Winthrop Island as a schoolgirl from the margins of high society. When her beautiful mother marries Hugh Fisher, Miranda’s catapulted into a heady new world of pedigrees and cocktails. Isobel Fisher, Miranda’s new stepsister is eager to draw Miranda into the arcane customs of Winthrop society. But there are really two clans: the summer families with their steadfast ways and quiet obsessions, and the working class of Portuguese fishermen and domestic workers. Then Miranda is caught in a catastrophe and banished....

Then - In charge of her little sister at the beach, Claire allowed Eleanor to walk to the shop alone to buy an ice cream. Placing a coin into her hand, Claire told her to be quick, knowing how much she wanted the freedom. Eleanor never came back. Now - The time has finally come to sell the family farm and Claire is organizing a reunion of her dearest friends, the same friends who were present the day her sister went missing. When another girl disappears, long-buried secrets begin to surface.

Cal McGill is an Edinburgh-based oceanographer, environmentalist and one-of-a-kind investigator. Using his knowledge of the waves - ocean currents, prevailing winds, shipping records - McGill can track where objects came from or where they've gone. It's a skill that can help solve mysteries ranging from disappearances to murder. Two severed feet wash up on two different islands off the coast of Scotland. Forensics shows that the feet belong to the same body.

Tragedy and mental illness have been dark companions of Rae Newborn for more than 50 years. Her life seems to start rebuilding itself, though, when she moves to a deserted island to restore the house her mysterious great-uncle built in the 1920s. But Rae senses powerful forces stirring on the island. Is the skin-crawling feeling she has of someone watching her only in her mind, or has something disturbingly real taken notice of Rae?

From the New York Times best-selling author of Me Before You and One Plus One, a surprising and moving romance set in an old-fashioned seaside town on the verge of unwelcome change. Liza McCullen will never fully escape her past. But the unspoiled beaches and tight-knit community of Silver Bay offer the freedom and safety she craves - if not for herself, then for her young daughter, Hannah. That is, until Mike Dormer arrives as a guest in her aunt's hotel.

Leigh Welles has not set foot in on the island in years, but when she finds herself called home from a disappointing life on the Scottish mainland by her father's unexpected death, she is determined to forget the sorrows of the past and start fresh. Fellow islander Iain MacTavish, a RAF veteran with his eyes on the sky and his head in the past, is also in desperate need of a new beginning. A young widower, Iain struggles to return to the normal life he knew before the war. But this October is anything but normal. This October, the sluagh are restless.

Three men search for some version of home; their lives move inexorably toward a reckoning that will draw them all together. For Farouk, family is all. He has protected his wife and daughter as best he can from the war and hatred that has torn Syria apart. If they stay, they will lose their freedom. Lampy is distracted; he has too much going on in his small town life in Ireland. He has the city girl for a bit of fun, but she's not Chloe. The game was always the lifeblood coursing through John's veins: manipulating people for his enjoyment. But it was never enough.

For Gideon Mack, faithless minister, unfaithful husband, and troubled soul, the existence of God, let alone the Devil, is no more credible than that of ghosts or fairies - until the day he falls into a gorge and is rescued by someone who might just be Satan.

Libby Snow's great-great-grandmother Ellen was obsessed with the strange legend of Ulla, a Viking maiden who washed up on shore with the nearly lifeless body of her husband. Central to the mystery is an ornate chalice, and Libby, an archaeologist, finally has permission to excavate the site where Ulla is believed to have lived. But what Libby finds in the ancient dunes is a body from the Victorian era, clearly murdered...and potentially connected to Ellen.

For years, the Stranger House has stood in the village of Illthwaite, offering refuge to travellers. People like Sam, a brilliant young mathematician, who believes that anything that can't be explained by maths isn't worth explaining. And Miguel, a historian running from a priests' seminary, who sees ghosts. Sam is an experienced young woman, Miguel a 26-year-old virgin.

Leigh Welles has not set foot in on the island in years, but when she finds herself called home from a disappointing life on the Scottish mainland by her father's unexpected death, she is determined to forget the sorrows of the past and start fresh. Fellow islander Iain MacTavish, a RAF veteran with his eyes on the sky and his head in the past, is also in desperate need of a new beginning. A young widower, Iain struggles to return to the normal life he knew before the war. But this October is anything but normal. This October, the sluagh are restless.

For Gideon Mack, faithless minister, unfaithful husband, and troubled soul, the existence of God, let alone the Devil, is no more credible than that of ghosts or fairies - until the day he falls into a gorge and is rescued by someone who might just be Satan.

This breathtaking novel travels more than a century between two love stories set in the Australian seaside town of Lighthouse Bay. In 1901, a ship sinks off the coast of Lighthouse Bay in Australia. The only survivor is Isabella Winterbourne - escaping her loveless marriage and the devastating loss of her son - who clutches a priceless gift meant for the Australian Parliament. Suddenly, this gift could be her ticket to a new life, free from the bonds of her husband and his overbearing family.

The charm of spending the Christmas holidays in South Wales, with its crumbling castles and ancient myths, seems the perfect distraction from the nightmares that have plagued literary agent Lyn Ravenshaw since the loss of her baby five years ago. Instead she meets an emotionally fragile young widow who's convinced that Lyn's recurring dreams have drawn her to Castle Farm for an important purpose - and she's running out of time.

Broome, Australia, 1893. It's the wild and passionate heyday of the pearling industry, and when young English bride Olivia Hennessy meets the dashing pearling master, Captain Tyndall, their lives are destined to be linked by the mysterious power of the pearl. Sydney, Australia, 1995. Lily Barton embarks on a search for her family roots which leads her to Broome. But her quest for identity reveals more than she could have ever imagined.

1943: the world is at war, and the villagers of Tyneham are being asked to make one more sacrifice: to give their homes over to the British army. But on the eve of their departure, a terrible act will cause three of them to disappear forever. 2018: Melissa had hoped a break on the coast of Dorset would rekindle her stagnant relationship, but despite the idyllic scenery, it’s pushing her and Liam to the brink.

Acclaimed author Susanna Kearsley's previous works have won the RT Book Reviews Reviewers Choice Award, and finaled for both the UK Romantic Novel of the Year and the RITA awards.

Eva Ward is a modern woman thrown back three centuries to 1715 - only to find that might be exactly where she belongs. There, she finds true love with Daniel Butler, but the discord surrounding Hanoverian King George plunges the lovers into a world of intrigue, treason, and romance.

When farmers cutting turf in an Irish peat bog make a grisly discovery, the perfectly intact body of a young woman with long red hair, archaeologist Cormac O'Callaghan and pathologist Nora Gavin are thrown together by their shared scientific interest in human remains. Because of the preservative effect of the bog, it is difficult to tell whether the body has lain there for two decades, two centuries, or two millennia.

Alex Hyde is the leaders' leader. An executive coach par excellence, she's the person the great and the good turn to when the pressure gets too much; she can change the way they think, how they operate, she can turn around the very fortunes of their companies.

Ralph and Anna Eldred are an exemplary couple, devoting themselves to doing good. 30 years ago as missionaries in Africa, the worst that could happen did. Shattered by their encounter with inexplicable evil, they returned to England, never to speak of it again. But when Ralph falls into an affair, Anna finds no forgiveness in her heart, and 30 years of repressed rage and grief explode, destroying not only a marriage but also their love, their faith, and everything they thought they were.

Mary J. Macleod and her husband left the London area for an idyllic place to raise their young children in the late '60s, and they found the island of Papavray in the Scottish Hebrides. There they bought a croft house on a "small acre" of land, and Mary J. (also known as Julia) became the district nurse.

Ellen Trawton is running away from it all. She hates her job, she doesn't love the aristocratic man to whom she is engaged, and her relationship with her controlling mother is becoming increasingly strained. So Ellen leaves London, fleeing to her aunt's cottage in Connemara. Cutting ties with London society, Ellen gives in to Ireland's charm and warmth, thinking her future may lie where so much of her past has been hidden.

The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal.