your ex-fiancée

A year after the engagement ended, you've come to her family's house with your friend Murad and his parents for his proposal. Her parents have set the table.

Three weeks ago floodwater took the Thibodeaux twins' truck, and only one brother came home. He's answered to Jules ever since. Today, in a truck-stop parking lot, he's about to collect two million dollars on a ticket the real Jules signed. But Jules, the crop-duster pilot, is alive, and he has a logbook, a cashier who remembers him and a thumbprint his brother can't match.

Seven years ago Anders Whitlock left town without a word. Now his family's cider farm is foreclosed, and the woman who holds the debt is the girl he left. She wants a public engagement or the farm goes to auction. He has the ledger page that could end her revenge, if he decides to show it.

Roz Ibarra promised Nico's dying grandmother forty honest chances. Every lie he's told since has cost one piece of sea glass, dropped into the Chicago River from her drawbridge window. At 2 a.m. there's one cobalt shard left, and Nico is climbing the stairs with a story.

A birthday party in a private room above a London restaurant. Your ex, who vanished seven months ago, is now your best friend Rachel's boyfriend, and he has just seen you.

For three seasons Saskia Marr of Ardent & Sons and Vivienne Kató of a rival atelier have raced each other for every restoration contract in Manhattan. Tonight the prize is a Gilded Age tower clock above Lower Broadway that has been stopped since 1984. Saskia climbs up at dusk to restart it first and finds Vivienne already in the clock room, holding the escape wheel Saskia threw away two years ago.