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It's 1954 down in Mississippi and Jack Branch has finally come home, taking a job as a high school teacher.

The daughter of a poor baker in rural Bengal, India, Sabitri yearns to get an education, but her family's situation means college is an impossible dream.

Until his son was kidnapped and murdered, George Gates was a globe-trotting travel writer. Now he writes boring articles by day and broods at night.

One day in 1952, the strangled body of 10-year-old Cathy Lake is discovered in a public park. A homeless suspect, Albert Jay Smalls, is arrested and held for interrogation.

Nine people get trapped in the basement of an Indian consulate after an earthquake hits their American city. Emotions run high as the building begins to flood and the chance of survival dwindles.

A floundering middle-aged historian reluctantly sits down with the woman he suspects was responsible for his father's murder decades before.

Roy Slater is a young man who 25 years ago ran away from his hometown to escape the consequences of an unspeakable crime.

In 1937 a woman appears in Port Alma, a small sea village nestled on the chilly coast of Maine. Before a year goes by, she will flee Port Alma on the same bus that brought her there.

Cook's novel begins after the 9/11 attacks, when researcher Paul Crane sits down to interview elderly New York City resident Thomas Danforth.