"Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters -- Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and more -- as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, fall in love and yet choose to be apart, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, "What does anyone's life mean?" It's autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending...

Banker Doug Fanning, having taken the Union Atlantic from a mid-size Boston bank to an international concern in the early 1900s, is taken to court when he builds a mansion on land donated to Finden, Massachusetts, by the grandfather of retired history teacher Charlotte Graves, and high school student Nate Fuller, who has secret knowledge of both parties, finds himself with the power to sway the decision.

Theodora is disappointed when her family Christmas does not live up to her expectations, until a special guest arrives and helps them all rediscover the Christmas spirit.

Eighty-two-year-old Marina Buriakov, preparing for her granddaughter's wedding in Seattle, finds it more and more difficult to hold onto memories in the present, retreating often to the 1940s when, living in the basement of the Hermitage Museum with other employees during the German siege of Leningrad, she created a memory room in her mind furnished with the museum's priceless masterpieces.

Finished before her death, these entries reflect back on Sarton's life and on her years as a teacher, poet, author, lover, and friend.

"Sister" Jane Arnold, master of Virginia's Jefferson Hunt Club, finds herself on the scent of a killer when she begins looking into the murder of Al Perez, the fund-raiser at the exclusive Custis Hall girls' school, whose body was found among the fake corpses hung as decorations for the Halloween dance.