A woman invites a famous artist to use her guesthouse in the remote coastal landscape where she lives with her family. Powerfully drawn to his paintings, she believes his vision might penetrate the mystery at the center of her life. But as a long, dry summer sets in, his provocative presence itself becomes an enigma?and disrupts the calm of her secluded household.

The New York Times best-selling author shares six stories based in New York City, which consider the fateful consequences that can spring from brief encounters, and a novella set in Golden Age Hollywood, told from seven different viewpoints, which stars the indomitable Evelyn Ross.

"Hannah Martin's life isn't shaping up into much of anything. Since graduating college eight years ago, she has lived in six different cities and held countless meaningless jobs. At the age of twenty-nine, she is starting to see crow's feet, and yet, she still has no idea what she wants to do with her life. On the heels of leaving yet another city, Hannah moves back to her hometown of Los Angeles to regroup. She takes up residence in her best friend...

Deadly storms have ravaged Mina’s homeland for generations. Floods sweep away entire villages, while bloody wars are waged over the few remaining resources. Her people believe the Sea God, once their protector, now curses them with death and despair. In an attempt to appease him, each year a beautiful maiden is thrown into the sea to serve as the Sea God’s bride, in the hopes that one day the “true bride” will be chosen and end the suffering....

Fourteen-year-old Kezi and Olus, Akkan god of the winds, fall in love and together try to change her fate--to be sacrificed to a Hyte god because of a rash promise her father made--through a series of quests that might make her immortal.

629: A newly orphaned young girl named Mayken is bound for the Dutch East Indies on the Batavia, one of the greatest ships of the Dutch Golden Age. Curious and mischievous, Mayken spends the long journey going on misadventures above and below the deck, searching for a mythical monster. But the true monsters might be closer than she thinks. 1989: A lonely boy named Gil is sent to live off the coast of Western Australia among the seasonal fishing community...

"Two teens--Daniel, the son of Korean shopkeepers, and Natasha, whose family is here illegally from Jamaica--cross paths in New York City on an eventful day in their lives--Daniel is on his way to an interview with a Yale alum, Natasha is meeting with a lawyer to try and prevent her family's deportation to Jamaica--and fall in love"--

"Casteel Da'Neer knows all too well that very few are as cunning or vicious as the Blood Queen...Nothing will stop Poppy from freeing her King and destroying everything the Blood Crown stands for...Together, Poppy and Casteel must embrace traditions old and new to safeguard those they hold dear...But war is only the beginning. Ancient primal powers have already stirred, revealing the horror of what began eons ago. To end what the Blood Queen has begun,...

Told in two voices, when Arthur, a summer intern from Georgia, and Ben, a native New Yorker, meet it seems like fate, but after three attempts at dating fail they wonder if the universe is pushing them together or apart.

On her sixteenth birthday, Hazel Stanczak discovers that she is the Chosen One who is meant to save the world with the aid of five alternate-dimension doppelgängers and an exasperated dragon mentor.