It’s Valentine’s Day weekend, and Charlotte and Seth are not looking for romance. Armed with emotional-support bear spray, Charlotte is in self-imposed isolation and on guard from men. Having a stalker can do that to a person’s nerves. Just across the hall and giving off woodsy vibes is Seth, a recently divorced arborist. As in today recently. Heights, he’s fine with. Trust? Not so much.

Smarting from her recently canceled wedding and about to turn forty, Laurie Sassalyn returns to her Maine hometown of Calcasset to handle the estate of her great-aunt Dot, a spirited adventurer who lived to be ninety-three. Alongside boxes of Polaroids and pottery, a mysterious wooden duck shows up at the bottom of a cedar chest. Laurie’s curiosity is piqued, especially after she finds a love letter to the never-married Dot that ends with the line “And anyway, if you’re ever desperate, there are always ducks, darling.”

Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they’re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: To write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years—or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be the Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the 20th Century.

In her second story collection, Sittenfeld shows why she’s as beloved for her short fiction as she is for her novels. In these dazzling stories, she conjures up characters so real that they seem like old friends, laying bare the moments when their long held beliefs are overturned.

As Hollywood prepares for its most glamorous evening, five actresses compete to see who will claim the top prize. With humor, wit, and an insider’s insight, The Talent peels back the layers of women who are in the business of being perceived. And while they work to push their careers forward and maintain the public’s goodwill, all five are forced to confront truths about themselves that they would rather ignore.

Alpine skiing G.O.A.T. Claudine Potts and her daughter Wylie have been bred for gold medal glory. They’re skiing their way to fame, but this gilded future is cut short when a fall forces Claudine’s retirement and Wylie’s debilitating anxiety sends her off the slopes. With the collapse of their ski careers, their relationship falters and now it’s been years since Wylie and Claudine have even spoken. They live on opposite coasts, pursuing different passions, until a chance opportunity to pair up in a European fitness competition drives them back together.

In a sleepy seaside town in Maine, recently widowed Eveleth "Evvie" Drake rarely leaves her large, painfully empty house nearly a year after her husband’s death in a car crash. Everyone in town, even her best friend, Andy, thinks grief keeps her locked inside, and Evvie doesn’t correct them. Meanwhile, in New York City, Dean Tenney, former Major League pitcher and Andy’s childhood best friend, is wrestling with what miserable athletes living out their worst nightmares call the "yips": he can’t throw straight anymore, and, even worse, he can’t figure out why.

Katie Vaughn has been burned by love in the past—now she may be lighting her career on fire. She has two choices: wait to get laid off from her job as a video producer or, at her coworker Cole’s request, take a career-making gig profiling Tom “Hutch” Hutcheson, a Coast Guard rescue swimmer in Key West. The catch? Katie’s not exactly qualified. She can’t swim—but pretends that she can. Plus, Cole and Hutch are brothers. And they don’t get along. Next stop: paradise!

How good are you at keeping a secret? Because I, Juniper Perry, have been keeping a big one. For over a decade, I’ve been crushing on the guy with the easy smile, warm brown eyes, and charismatic charm. He’s all the perfect things that, when you add them up, spell out Man of my dreams. I know that doesn’t sound bad at all, but there’s more to this story. We work together. I’m a lowly intern, and he’s a high-powered executive. He’s my newest neighbor. No joke—he’s temporarily living next door to me. And to top it all off, he’s my best friend’s older brother.

Columnist Anna Appleby has left her love life behind after a painful divorce. Who needs a man when she has two kids, a cat, and uncontested control of the TV remote? Besides, she’d rather be single than subject herself to the hell of online dating. But her office rival is vying for her column, and no column means no stable source of income. In a desperate attempt to keep her job, Anna finds herself pitching a unique angle: seven dates, all found offline, chosen by her children.

Dumped by her cheating ex, fired from her dream job, and about to lose her flat: Clementine Monroe is not having a good day. So when her sisters get her drunk and suggest reviving a childhood ritual called the Breakup Spell, she doesn’t see the harm in it. But now Clemmie has accidentally ruined a funeral, had her first one-night stand, and she’s stuck with a new job she definitely doesn’t want—spending six weeks alone with the gorgeous and very-off-limits rock star, Theo Eliott.

It's been years since Meena separated from her husband, Nikhil . . . years since they first laid eyes on each other in their home state of Texas, years since they spontaneously wed in Las Vegas and she felt true happiness. Now a high-powered lawyer on Capitol Hill and ready to move on (at least, she thinks so) with another successful lawyer, Shake, Meena has returned to Texas. This time, finally to obtain a divorce. But there’s one thing Meena didn’t account for: a hurricane forming in the Gulf, veering right toward them and giving them no choice but to hunker down.

The only place small-town outcast Alex Lawson fits in is the online fan forum she built for The Arcane Files, a long-running werewolf detective show. Her dedication to archiving fictional supernatural lore made her Internet-famous, even if she harbors a secret disdain for the show’s star, Devin Ashwood. (Never meet your heroes—sometimes they turn out to be The Worst.)

Twentysomething Frida Rodriguez arrives in Paris in 1991, relishing the city’s butter-soaked cuisine and seeking her future as a war correspondent. But then she writes to a bookshop in Seattle, and receives more than just the book she requests. A friendship begins that will redefine the person she wants to become.

Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone? Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.

Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone? Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.

In this award-winning Audible Studios production, Trevor Noah tells his wild coming-of-age tale during the twilight of apartheid in South Africa. It’s a story that begins with his mother throwing him from a moving van to save him from a potentially fatal dispute with gangsters, then follows the budding comedian’s path to self-discovery through episodes both poignant and comical.

Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).

Separated by 10 years, 3,000 miles, and the unrelenting stresses of adulthood, best friends Janet and Serena plan a 40th birthday girls’ trip to reconnect. But after a massive crash, they’re the only survivors to wash ashore on an uncharted Caribbean Island. Armed with only the clothes on their backs and zero survival skills, they fight to overcome hunger, thirst, deadly wildlife—and most terrifyingly—decades of accrued resentment. Can they find their way home, or will they kill each other first?

We all have things in our life that we should know by now, but don’t. Absences in our knowledge and skillset that are frankly shameful in an adult. Things that would be too embarrassing to ask anyone to explain – except our very best friend. Listen in as Mel and Sue tackle their ignorance head on, asking each other to explain something that they still don’t know - but absolutely, as adults, should - from how to parallel park to fully understanding bread (why has it got all those holes in it? What, honestly, is yeast?).

In a sleepy seaside town in Maine, recently widowed Eveleth "Evvie" Drake rarely leaves her large, painfully empty house nearly a year after her husband’s death in a car crash. Everyone in town, even her best friend, Andy, thinks grief keeps her locked inside, and Evvie doesn’t correct them. Meanwhile, in New York City, Dean Tenney, former Major League pitcher and Andy’s childhood best friend, is wrestling with what miserable athletes living out their worst nightmares call the "yips": he can’t throw straight anymore, and, even worse, he can’t figure out why.

Jennifer Worth lives to escape into the world of her favorite romantasy series Elytheum Courts, where the romance is sweeping and the men are brave, chivalrous . . . and winged. Newly single and craving connection, she travels to an immersive fan experience celebrating all things Elytheum, only to see the last face she expected—Scott Daniels, her work nemesis, whose disinterest in Jennifer’s favorite series and standoffishness have made their publishing jobs feel like a feuding fae court. Except the Scott she encounters there, in his secondhand cosplay outfit, is . . . different.

In her second story collection, Sittenfeld shows why she’s as beloved for her short fiction as she is for her novels. In these dazzling stories, she conjures up characters so real that they seem like old friends, laying bare the moments when their long held beliefs are overturned.

A year after her child is born, Jane suffers a series of strange episodes: amnesia, premonitions, hallucinations, and an inexplicable sense of dread. Three days after her first visit to a psychiatrist, Jane suddenly goes missing. A day later she is found unconscious in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, in the midst of what seems to be an episode of dissociative fugue; when she comes to, she has no memory of what has happened to her.

Jane and Dan have been married for nineteen years, but Jane isn’t sure they’re going to make it to twenty. The mother of two feels unneeded by her teenagers, and her writing career has screeched to an unsuccessful halt. Her one published novel sold under five hundred copies. Worse? She’s pretty sure Dan is cheating on her. When the couple goes to the renowned upscale restaurant La Fin du Monde to celebrate their anniversary, Jane thinks it’s as good a place as any to tell Dan she wants a divorce.

It’s a Friday night in a campus bar in Berkeley, fall of 2000, and Percy Marks is pontificating about music again. Hall and Oates is on the jukebox, and Percy—who has no talent for music, just lots of opinions about it—can’t stop herself from overanalyzing the song, indulging what she knows to be her most annoying habit. But something is different tonight. The guy beside her at the bar, fellow student Joe Morrow, is a songwriter. And he could listen to Percy talk all night. Joe asks Percy for feedback on one of his songs—and the results kick off a partnership that will span years.

Tilda Finch is a successful businesswoman, a mother to two wonderful adult daughters, and besides an unexpected divorce, she’s living a relatively happy life. Until she wakes up one morning and her finger seems to have disappeared. She thinks back to the kombucha she drank the night before—perhaps it was spiked? Studying herself in the mirror, she discovers one of her ears has also disappeared! She rushes to the doctor, who after a multitude of tests says she’s sorry to inform her that she has invisibility, a disorder that affects millions of women worldwide, mostly after the age of forty.

Max is just your average girl. She works odd jobs, has a soul-crushing amount of debt, and happens to bear an uncanny resemblance to Europe’s youngest female prime minister, Sofia Christensen. Sofia is powerful, beautiful—and unfortunately, someone is trying quite hard to assassinate her. When the CIA approaches Max with a deal, a life-changing amount of money if she pretends to be Sofia on the prime minister’s annual Italian vacation, Max packs her bags for the Amalfi Coast.

In this "celebration of midlife and all its marvelous messiness,” Lisa Darling, a high-flying TV executive and twice-divorced mother of two, is navigating life with an opinionated teenager and a pet-obsessed grade-schooler, organizing PTA events, and supporting her best friend through breast cancer treatment, all while in the throes of perimenopause. It’s no wonder her to-do list is on overdrive and she never has time for Pilates or that DIY interior design project she keeps setting aside.

As a relationship therapist, Nora helps patients explore their feelings honestly. But she’s hiding an embarrassing relationship secret of her own: she’s in love with someone she’s never even met. J edits the advice column Nora’s been writing anonymously for the last seven years. He’s in London, she’s in New York, and they communicate solely through shared files. When he confides that his girlfriend’s out of the picture, and her boss asks her to come to London, Nora takes both as a sign.

Aiden Valentine has a secret: he’s fallen out of love with love. And as the host of Baltimore’s romance hotline, that’s a bit of a problem. But when a young girl calls in to the station asking for dating advice for her mom, the interview goes viral, thrusting Aiden and Heartstrings into the limelight. Lucie Stone thought she was doing just fine. She has a good job; an incredible family; and a smart, slightly devious kid. But when all of Baltimore is suddenly scrutinizing her love life—or lack thereof—she begins to question if she’s as happy as she believed.

Kasey Nottingham needs a splashy idea at her company where they find and develop the next big thing for investors—her job depends on it. Impulsively, she pitches Mags’ Desserts, a beloved small-town business run by her grandma Mags and live-in “best friend” Celia, two women who overcame deadbeat husbands and financial ruin to build a word-of-mouth clientele. Kasey expects her boss to say no. Instead, he sends her home to North Carolina to land the deal…and now she has a problem.

As Hollywood prepares for its most glamorous evening, five actresses compete to see who will claim the top prize. With humor, wit, and an insider’s insight, The Talent peels back the layers of women who are in the business of being perceived. And while they work to push their careers forward and maintain the public’s goodwill, all five are forced to confront truths about themselves that they would rather ignore.

For generations, the fortune-telling women in Lo Zhao-Jensen’s family have foreseen The One—the great loves of their lives—before ever meeting them. Except for Lo, who has zero psychic abilities. Just memories of old rom-coms and a lot of poor judgment when it comes to love. Until now. When Lo finally has the vision she’s been waiting for, her delighted aunties are convinced she’ll meet The One on her backpacking trip in Italy. Vero amore, here she comes.

Clare is supposed to be the grown-up one. Married to the love of her life, with a major deal for her first novel, she has everything she thought she wanted. So then why does it all feel so wrong? When she agrees to a weeklong vacation in Hawai'i with five of her oldest friends as they each approach thirty, she is hoping for an escape with the people who know her best. But when a terrifying news alert shatters their peace, it becomes harder to ignore how much the world has changed since they were teenagers.