"Edward Fosca is a murderer. Of this Mariana is certain. But Fosca is untouchable. A handsome and charismatic Greek tragedy professor at Cambridge University, Fosca is adored by staff and students alike-particularly by the members of a secret society of female students known as The Maidens. Mariana Andros is a brilliant but troubled group therapist who becomes fixated on The Maidens when one member, a friend of Mariana's niece Zoe, is found murdered...

Fifty-year-old Alice Howland, a Harvard professor of cognitive psychology, is at the top of her game. Her kids are grown, her marriage secure, her career on fire, when after mere months of forgetfulness she finds herself in the rapidly downward spiral of early onset Alzheimer's disease. With no cure or treatment, Alice struggles to find meaning and purpose in her everyday life as her concept of self slips away. Without memory or hope, she is forced...

In present-day New Orleans, Polly Deschamps finds herself at yet another lonely crossroads in her life until she encounters architect Marshall Marchand, a lifelong bachelor who spends most of his time with his brother Danny. When Polly's two young daughters from her previous marriage are likewise taken with Marshall, she marries him. But then an ominous prediction by a New Orleans tarot card reader proclaims that Polly will murder her husband, and...

"For Chicago sociology professor Amelia Emmet, violence was a research topic--until a student she'd never met shot her. He also shot himself. Now he's dead and she's back on campus, trying to keep up with her class schedule, a growing problem with painkillers, and a question she can't let go: Why? All she wants is for life to get back to normal, but normal is looking hard to come by. She's thirty-eight and hobbles with a cane. Her first student interaction...

"As an adjunct professor of English with a draining and tedious courseload, Dorothy feels "like a janitor in the temple who continued to sweep because she had no idea what else to do but who had lost her belief in the essential sanctity of the enterprise." No one but her partner knows that she's just had a miscarriage, not even her therapists - Dorothy being the kind of person who begins seeing a second because she's too conflict-averse to break things...