In the waning months of World War II, a group of children discover an earthen tunnel in their neighborhood. The subterranean space becomes their “secret garden,” where the friends play games and tell stories. Six decades later, beneath a house on the same land, construction workers uncover a tin box containing two skeletal hands. The friends come together once again to recall their days in the tunnel for the detective investigating the case. Is the truth buried among these aging friends and their memories?

In 1905, a tourist agent and amateur antiques collector named Armand de Potter mysteriously disappeared off the coast of Greece. His body is never recovered, and his wife is left to manage his affairs on her own. But as she starts to piece together his life, she realizes that everything was not as he had said.

Maternal, sexy Catt and her beautiful, daring best friend, Bree, are hairdressers at an L.A. salon called Head Hunter, and work out at a gym called Body Farm. They have over a decade of sobriety behind them and are getting close to living the lives they've always wanted. But when Catt's husband, Dash, leaves her, and then her neighbor is brutally murdered, possibly by a man being called the Hollywood Serial Killer, Catt's world begins to come crashing down.
 

Margaret Atwood turns to short fiction for the first time since her 2006 collection, MORAL DISORDER, with nine tales of acute psychological insight and turbulent relationships. A recently widowed fantasy writer is guided through a stormy winter evening by the voice of her late husband in "Alphinland," the first of three loosely linked stories about the romantic geometries of a group of writers and artists.

One snowy night, a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. STATION ELEVEN charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor's first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet.

Liza McCullen will never fully escape her past. But the unspoiled beaches and tight-knit community of Silver Bay offer the safety she craves --- if not for herself, then for her young daughter, Hannah. That is, until Mike Dormer, a mild-mannered Englishman with too-smart clothes and distracting eyes, shows up as a guest in her aunt’s hotel. His arrival could destroy everything Liza has worked so hard to protect.

Jason Fitger is a beleaguered professor at a small liberal arts college. His department is facing cuts and squalid quarters, while another department is getting lavishly remodeled offices. His writing career is in the doldrums, as is his romantic life. In short, his life is a tale of woe, and the vehicle this novel uses to tell that tale is a series of hilarious letters of recommendation that Fitger is endlessly called upon by his students and colleagues to produce.

When Eileen Tumulty meets Ed Leary, a scientist whose bearing is nothing like those of the men she grew up with in Woolside, Queens, she thinks she’s found the perfect partner to deliver her to the cosmopolitan world she longs to inhabit. They marry, and Eileen quickly discovers that Ed doesn’t aspire to the same, ever bigger, stakes in the American Dream. She encourages him to want more, but as years pass, it becomes clear that his growing reluctance is part of a deeper psychological shift.

Twelve-year-old Madan's father works for Avtaar Singh, who owns the largest factory in town and much of the land around it. When Madan’s father's misdeeds jeopardize his sister's life, Madan strikes his first bargain with Avtaar Singh to save her. Drawn into Avtaar Singh's violent world, Madan becomes his son in every way but by blood. Suddenly it looks as if everything will change for Madan and his family until a forbidden love affair has brutal consequences, and he is forced to leave behind all that is dear to him.

When Austin Voronko is wrongly accused of attending anarchist gatherings, his limited grasp of English condemns him to his fate as a deportee, retreating with his new bride to his home in Russia, where he and his young family become embroiled in the Civil War and must flee once again, to Mexico. While Julia and the children are eventually able to return to the U.S., Austin becomes indefinitely stranded in Mexico City because of the black mark on his record.