Amid the heralded springtime traditions and fabulous splendor of the Kentucky Derby, two Boston couples—longtime friends—indulge in a once-in-a-lifetime getaway. The weekend feels like a winner. It’s a milestone-birthday present for the newly—and reluctantly—turned forty Drew Starling. Her husband, Nate, has spared no expense, despite the mounting gambling debts that Drew knows nothing about. He’s certain that with his lucky charm, Drew, by his side, he can reverse his misfortunes at Churchill Downs.

Best friends Miranda Montana, Germaine St. Germaine-Chang, and Sicily Bell were the darlings of Hollywood who rose from teen success to in-demand idols of screaming fans and paparazzi. They rode the momentum like there was no tomorrow. But nothing lasts forever. Now Miranda, the wild-child movie star, drifts from rehab to dead-end relationships as she tries for a comeback from a very public fall from grace. Germaine, the daughter of billionaire hotel moguls, has lost her purpose.

When seventeen-year-old Isla Richardson is killed in a hit-and-run incident, a community’s lives are thrown into disarray. For Isla’s mum, Abby, it is her second devastating bereavement, having lost her husband five years ago. As Abby begins to uncover secrets about Isla’s life, she’s forced to rethink everything she thought she knew about her family.

Remi Russell knows this playbook all too well. She’s seen it unfold five times over her six years at The Sophisticate, a once prominent but now struggling women’s magazine. So when the publication needs rescuing yet again, an intriguing new chief digital officer, Jason Ashbloome, arrives with a revolutionary plan beyond the usual workforce cuts. He proposes integrating MAUDE, an innovative AI software, to make the magazine more efficient. Remi fears she could lose her job to a machine, and worse, the magazine she loves might lose its humanity altogether.

In the summer of 1925, the winds of change are particularly chilling for a young woman whose life has suddenly become unbalanced. Devastated by her mother’s death and a cruel, broken engagement, Sadie Halloran learns that her great-aunt Marguerite, a renowned artist now in the throes of dementia, needs a live-in companion. Grasping at newfound purpose, Sadie leaves her desolate Kansas City boardinghouse for Blackberry Grange, Marguerite’s once-grand mansion sitting precariously atop an Arkansas bluff.

The president of the United States has terminal cancer. Chief of Staff Eli James, his faithful consigliere and best friend, is one of the few who know. But just as the president’s condition mysteriously improves, Eli’s hit with another blow: his daughter has cancer too. Hell-bent on helping her, Eli turns to Big Pharma’s top lobbyist for advice, but their encounter yields more questions than answers. As he races along a twisted trail to the truth, he stumbles upon a devastating cover-up worth billions of dollars—and millions of lives.

Traveling nurse Elizabeth May has a promising new home in Santa Cruz. And another new identity. It’s a pattern of reinvention for a woman escaping her traumatic childhood—and hiding from the decades of notoriety and destruction that followed. Invisibility has kept Elizabeth safe. Until now. After all these years, someone sees her for who she is. Threat by threat, a vengeful stalker is dismantling Elizabeth’s carefully constructed lifetime of lies. And no one in her temporary circle can be trusted.

New York City, 1950. Dreams come true for radio personality Maggie Lane when she gets her big break in the exciting new world of television. The Maggie Lane Baking Show is on the air. All she has to do is act like the ideal housewife, create sumptuous desserts, charm the show’s sponsors, and sign a morality clause to ensure that her girl-next-door image remains untarnished. Although newlywed Maggie has never baked so much as a cookie, and knows even less about maintaining a home, keeping up appearances is a necessary ingredient for success. Easy.

In May 2005, authorities discovered the Groene family murdered in their Idaho home. The family’s youngest members—eight-year-old Shasta and her brother, nine-year-old Dylan—were nowhere to be found. As a community prayed for their return, Shasta and Dylan were already miles away in the woods of Montana at the hands of serial killer Joseph Edward Duncan. After a harrowing forty-eight day ordeal, Shasta was rescued. In many ways, her survival story was only beginning.

For two years, Kati Dawes and her teenage daughter, Zoe, have lived off the grid in Hawaii, hiding from a past Kati must forget as if her life depends on it. New names. Anonymous online presence. So far, safe. Until Kati’s fiancé, attorney Eddie Akana, disappears along a popular hiking trail in a Maui national park. Now all eyes are on Kati. Exposure can make a woman with so many secrets very paranoid.

Miranda’s parents live in a dilapidated house in rural France that they share with two llamas, eight ducks, five chickens, two cats, and a freezer full of food dating back to 1983. This wry, propulsive story about a singularly eccentric family and the sibling rivalry, generational divides, and long-buried secrets that shape them, is a glorious debut novel from a seasoned playwright with immense empathy and a flair for dialogue.

Together, Edward and Isabel move to London. They are young and in love, occupied by friends, work and fun. But late on a spring evening when they are thirty years old, their home is invaded by a serial killer. In the wake of this violation, each tries to come to terms with a night that changed everything—and their marriage begins to crumble. Twenty-five years later, their tormentor is caught, and Edward and Isabel reunite for his sentencing. Isabel has waited years for the man who nearly ended her life to be brought to justice. Edward has tried to think about anything else.

Sisters Cassie and Zoe Grossberg were born just a year apart but could not have been more different. Zoe, blessed with charm and beauty, yearned for fame from the moment she could sing into a hairbrush. Cassie was a musical prodigy who never felt at home in her own skin and preferred the safety of the shadows. On the brink of adulthood in the early 2000s, destiny intervened, catapulting the sisters into the spotlight as the pop sensation the Griffin Sisters, hitting all the touchstones of early aughts fame—SNL, MTV, Rolling Stone magazine—along the way.

The four Endicott siblings—Gemma, Connor, Roddy, and Jude—were once inseparable, a bond created by the absence of their dazzling, mercurial mother, who would return for a few weeks each summer to whisk them off on sprawling road trips around the country. Decades later, the unthinkable has happened: the Endicotts haven’t spoken in years . . . until an out-of-the-blue text arrives from Jude, now a famous actress, summoning them to a small town in North Dakota.

Uncertain of what tomorrow brings, Elliott Holland decides to live it up—on the eve of a stem cell transplant to treat her leukemia. It’s destiny when she crosses paths with handsome and charming Jamie Sullivan. The chemistry is magic. So is a beautiful evening that ends with a bittersweet kiss goodbye and no expectations of ever seeing each other again.