At Vermont's coziest, most popular book lover's holiday destination, four women reflect on the circumstances and expectations that have led them to this Christmas season feeling uncertain about their futures.

On the Finfarran Peninsula on Ireland's west coast, at the Lissbeg Library, a group of women gather together for the first book club of the summer where they'll all face difficult choices and hope to get the happy endings they all deserve.

"Sisters Bernie and Libby Simmons run a catering business in their upstate New York town, and they're delighted for the chance to provide tasty desserts for the local mystery lovers' book club. But when fiction spills into a reality and the sisters find themselves investigating a suspicious death, it's up to them to figure out whodunit"--

"A trio of women break bad after after too much wine, too many secrets, and too perfect inspiration from the bestseller they discussed at book club. No one is exactly sure what happened when night fell, but in the morning there's one dead body and three women with a lot to lose. Somehow these women begin discussing the ways they might bury the body of an unfaithful husband. Of course, it's nothing more than a joke. None of them would ever mistake...

In 1942, an impulsive promise to her brother before he goes off to the European front puts Avis Montgomery in the unlikely position of head librarian in small-town Maine. Though she has never been much of a reader, when wartime needs threaten to close the library, she invents a book club to keep its doors open. The women she convinces to attend the first meeting couldn't be more different--a wealthy spinster determined to aid the war effort, an exhausted...

"Most folks aren't forced by court order to attend a library-book discussion group, but that's just what happens to B and B proprietor and ex-Manhattanite Bea Cartwright, hippy cat lover Chandra Morrisey, and winery owner Kate Wilder after a small-town magistrate has had enough of their squabbling. South Bass, an island on Lake Erie, is home to an idyllic summer resort, but these three ladies keep disturbing the peace. The initial book choice is Agatha...

"For decades, the Hollander Estates winery was Long Island's premier destination for lavish parties and romantic getaways. Now the Hollander family fortunes have suffered, and as Vivian Hollander prepares for the arrival of her daughter Leah, and granddaughter Sadie for their annual summer reunion, she fears it might be their last. When Sadie discovers that her grandmother once ran a book club dedicated to scandalous women's novels, it gives her insight...

A Shakespeare scholar leaves her research summer in England to attend her mother Hildy's funeral in North Carolina and sell her mother's bookstore, only to find threatening notes addressed to Hildy: "Sell the bookstore or die." Summer Merriweather's career as a Shakespeare professor hangs by a bookbinder's thread. Academic life at her Virginia university is a viper's pit, so Summer spends her summer in England, researching a scholarly paper that,...

"London, 1938: The bookstore just doesn't feel the same to Gertie Bingham ever since the death of her beloved husband Harry. Bingham Books was a dream they shared together, and without Harry, Gertie wonders if it's time to take her faithful old lab, Hemingway, and retire to the seaside. But fate has other plans for Gertie. In Germany, Hitler is on the rise, and Jewish families are making the heart-wrenching decision to send their children away from...