In his final novel, which he considered his most important, Aldous Huxley transports us to the remote Pacific island of Pala, where an ideal society has flourished for 120 years. Inevitably, this island of bliss attracts the envy and enmity of the surrounding world. A conspiracy is underway to take over Pala, and events are set in motion when an agent of the conspirators, a newspaperman named Faranby, is shipwrecked there. What Faranby doesn't expect...

"When her fiance's private plane crashes in the Colorado Rockies, everyone assumes Allison Carpenter is dead. But Maggie, Allison's mother back home in Owl Creek, Maine, refuses to believe them. Maggie knows her daughter--or she used to, anyway. For the past two years, the two women have been estranged, and while Maggie doesn't know anything about Ally's life now--not even why she was on a private plane to begin with--she still believes in her girl's...

In the wake of an earthquake that interrupts a celebrity-studded charity dinner dance at the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco, the lives of four strangers are transformed by the tragedy.

With everyone believing he died in a plane crash, Chicago celebrity Charles James re-evaluates his life after narrowly escaping death and decides to walk from Chicago to California, where he hopes to rekindle his relationship with his ex-wife.

The only survivors of a devastating boating accident off the coast of Maine, Julia, Noah, and Kim struggle with their brush with death, their feelings of guilt, and their changed perspectives on their lives.

In the summer of 1914, the transatlantic ocean liner carrying Grace Winter, 22 and her new husband Henry suffers a mysterious explosion. Forced into an overcrowded lifeboat, newly widowed Grace Winter battles the elements and her fellow survivors and remembers her husband, Henry, who set his own safety aside to ensure Grace's. The survivors quickly realize the boat is over capacity. For any to live, some must die.

Jacob Barringer and Jayce Kincaid face the isolation of the frozen north after their ship is lost in the Arctic ice, while back at Last Chance Creek, Helaina and Leah form a special bond as they help each other get through the long wait for the men they love.