After the death of his son, Judge Coleman uses his influence and connections to foster and adopt 9-year-old African-American Anton, convincing his mother Anton is happier with the Colemans. She’d been kidnapped and drugged by her dealer, leaving Anton locked in their apartment during a heat wave with little food, until he escaped a week later, unaware of his mother’s whereabouts. Judge Coleman’s position and wealth boost Anton up through the ranks of politics, with Anton choosing to have no contact with a mother he believes rejected him. The secrets seep out eventually, damaging the Coleman’s marriage and Anton’s relationships with all of his parents, as Anton desperately tries to determine his identity.
The crux of the story is that a black mother’s son is stolen from her by a white man, whiffs of slavery nipping at her heels. As Umrigar presents white privilege and systemic racism within the judicial system, she attempts to garner sympathy for a man in a powerful position based on the loss of his son and his emotional distress debating his desire to have a child and the ethical choice to keep a family together. He chooses poorly and everyone struggles with his decision.
Blackbird House witnesses unusual love stories throughout its lifetime, from the young wife waiting for her husband to return from the sea to the orphaned young woman who had no home coming to live with the disfigured man who believed he would never feel the warmth of a woman. Often the yearning is only fulfilled when it can later refuse to be acknowledged. The townspeople care for the inhabitants of the isolated home.
Greer must find a perfect beach town for her next director to redeem her reputation after the fiasco of her last project. Cypress Key fits the director’s creative dream, complete with abandoned casino for the climax explosion, but Eben, the town’s mayor, seems to be in charge of everything, thwarting her every request to sustain his own vision for community growth rather than commercial development. Greer becomes torn between the townspeople and the movie crew that includes a spoiled star who attempts to scam on the mayor’s daughter. Betwixt unscripted stunts, the town’s resentful socialite, and the contrary agendas, Greer squeaks out with her wits and her sanity, finding more than she expected was possible in a small town.
Maddie and Ellis are trapped by money—his family’s—while a second world war rages in Europe, as he cannot serve in the war due to a medical condition. When his father kicks them out of his family home for their unseemly behavior, Ellis determines to win back his love by redeeming the family name from his father’s loutish attempt to prove the Loch Ness monster. In Scotland, Maddie is alienated by her husband, whose loyalty is to his best friend and their travel companion Hank. She discovers more about her marriage and their friendship than Ellis does about Nessie, and she begins to question everything about her life, and even her husband’s “medical condition.” As Ellis and Hank display boorish behavior toward the locals, Maddie finds comfort in their compassion for her. She ends up caring for an injured employee of their inn, endearing herself to the innkeeper and his employees.
Aubrey is alone, with only her position as psychic consultant to law enforcement to distract her from the fact that her husband Levi has taken their son away in the hope that he can somehow circumvent the inherited psychic ability unfolding in frightening ways in their only child. As Levi reports on a mysterious murder connected to a crime family, Aubrey reconnects with Zeke, her first love, who visits her unexpectedly, and has always understood her psychic power better than anyone, perhaps even her spouse. Levi suspects her friend is involved in the homicide, but Aubrey knows better, as their jobs lead them to the same crime. Spinella keeps the reader guessing about Zeke’s motives and actions. When their son is kidnapped, Levi questions Aubrey about Zeke, but she maintains focus, and they reunite to save him.
Ocular albinism defined Sam Hill’s life, earning him the nickname “Devil Boy” in his private catholic school and his mother’s consistent reassurance that it was “God’s will.” He believed God sent his best friends Ernie, the only black child in the school, and Mickey, a girl who chose to not fit into the school. A tragedy lifts him out of his pragmatic life as an ophthalmologist wearing brown contacts into one of atonement in a developing country. He removes the contacts in an epiphany of self-acceptance.
This is not the first child Rachel Shepherd has lost, but it’s the one that stayed with her the longest, becoming a stillborn baby with a name rather than a miscarriage. She is heartbroken and feeling adrift after losing this baby, her mother recently, and possibly her marriage. She longs for family, for her roots, and so begins searching for her long-lost, journalist father, following the trail to a mysterious woman from his past, an American who raises orphans in Rwanda. Her father’s history is complicated, with her birth being the catalyst for the seemingly wrong turn in his youth. Ambiguous feelings arise with each new discovery, the hurt surfacing to be dealt with and move toward healing. Rachel’s need for family dredges up old wounds in Lillian, the inscrutable, second wife of her father, who does her best to stay above the quagmire of these ancient pains. Things have changed, and everyone finds something they didn’t know they were looking for, and didn’t know they needed.
Zanna is accepted into the St. Pommeroy’s School for Gifted Children, where she learns that she is a Scientist, who can bend the rules of physics. A mysterious woman attempts to prevent her from attending the school, and Zanna must draw upon her new abilities, resources, and friends to fight her. The secret she discovers about the woman must be setting Zanna’s story up for a series.
Megan’s health changes drastically with a heart transplant, yet she still feels unable to challenge herself. When she meets the donor’s parents, who share their daughter’s diary, she decides to fulfill the girl’s bucket list of traveling desires. Her mother is horrified, her father supportive, and her twin sister Crystal asking to go with her to resolve their estrangement and remove herself from her own problems. The destinations exceed Megan’s expectations and the journey allows the sister to open up to each other, enabling Crystal to fully become her own person, not merely part of her sick sister’s support system.
A fairy falls in love with a king’s son doomed to die by the hand of his older brother in the land of stories. A troll sends him to the land of humans in banishment rather than kill him, allowing the fairy to follow with the caveat of never contacting him. She watches him age as she maintains the appearance of a teenager. He spends his entire human life trying to return to the land of stories. The fairy monitors his transition to the son of a kindly couple who own a marshmallow shop in order to enter the military. In his old age, he is encountered by a young boy who meets him again as a young man when he is fighting again for his life. The fairy elicits the young man to record their tale for proof.