Monti Schroeder is on a quest for peace. She has been since the moment she was born. But peace has remained elusive. Living as a nomad, she takes work where she can get it. When her sister calls with a favor for her neurotic boss, Monti agrees to it for a few extra bucks. What Monti finds when she arrives is a woman just as broken as she is. And no matter what, she can't leave Athena to flounder on her own.

Alison Hartmann is a woman with secrets no one wants her to keep. Gold Hill, with its idyllic setting, is the perfect place to hide. Light-hearted Hope Sullivan doesn't see it that way. What else is a small town for if it isn't about strong bonds and a close community? On a gloomy day by the lake, their lives collide, leading both women to question: Is Gold Hill a haven or a bolthole? Can you ever really be safe?

Sutton Spencer's ideas for her life were fairly simple: finish graduate school and fall in love. It would be a lot simpler if she could pinpoint exactly what she should do when she graduates in less than a year. Oh, and if she could figure out how to talk to a woman without feeling like a total mess, that would be great, too. Charlotte Thompson is very much the opposite.

Her hit band Twice Struck topped the country music charts for almost a decade until her high-profile marriage to her bandmate and co-writer publicly exploded. Now she's fading from the spotlight and her own life, just trying to keep her head above water. Brynn Marshall is a little lost. Dropping out of med school made her the black sheep of the family and now she's floating around LA trying to find a sense of purpose. When she falls down on her luck, her best friend—indie musician Noah Lyman—refuses to let her wallow. After all, he's just got his big break: co-writing with a megastar!

Saff, a determined new doctor in the first year of her internship, had clawed her way out of a tumultuous past, only to be dragged back into it when the zombie outbreak hits. Forced to join her estranged father and his band of raiders, she's confronted with the harsh reality that desperation can make monsters out of anyone—even her.

Charlotte Thompson appears to have it all—by forty, her political plans are panning out exactly as she'd always hoped. Now a senator, she quietly came out a couple of years ago, and she's on-track to fulfilling everything she'd ever dreamed of. Perhaps she is a little lonely sometimes, but as the saying goes: it's lonely at the top.

Professor Kate Walker is a tenured, world-renowned engineer. She has a job she loves, a daughter she adores, and friends who've been with her through thick and thin. It's a fulfilling life that doesn't really need anything—or anyone—else. Especially not a charming, downright amazing woman who happens to be twenty years her junior.

Good things come to those who wait and now Sutton Spencer and Charlotte Thompson get to reap the benefits. They spent months circling around admitting their feelings, but the time for denying their love is over.

Lara Bennett is world-famous in Ribbonwood, population 907. She's the woman you don't trust your husband with: a real-life femme fatale. If there's a scandal in town, she's at the center of it, ruining businesses, marriages, and egos everywhere she goes, with her sharp tongue and that body that makes you look twice. Besides… didn't she more or less kill a man?

Nora Gallagher can begrudgingly admit that she and Gray Ferris are both stellar Philadelphia real estate agents, but that's the beginning and the end of the similarities between them. But when the two women begin to learn that maybe they're not as different as they think, they may finally figure out the most important thing they have in common when it comes to finding a life worth living.