Recounts the connected stories of people from the past and the distant future, from a nineteenth-century notary and an investigative journalist in the 1970s to a young man who searches for meaning in a post-apocalyptic world.

At the edge of the Endless Ice, the four bears Ujurak, Toklo, Lusa, and Kallik reach Star Island, where a large group of bears is in trouble but believes Lusa is destined to help bring back the favor of the spirits.

When a mild-mannered actuary sleeps with the sexy British au pair who's taking care of his children in Seattle in 1962, he sets in motion a tragedy of epic proportions. Their orphaned child, adopted and adored, grow up to be Edward Aaron King, a billionaire Internet tycoon and international celebrity-- who unknowingly hurtles through life toward a fate he may have no power to shape.

It's 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children -- four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness -- sneak out to hear their fortunes. Their prophecies inform their next five decades. Golden-boy Simon escapes to the West Coast, searching for love in '80s San Francisco. Dreamy Klara becomes a Las Vegas...

"Lucy is faced with a life-altering choice. But before she can make her decision, she must start her story--their story--at the very beginning. Lucy and Gabe meet as seniors at Columbia University on a day that changes both of their lives forever. Together, they decide they want their lives to mean something, to matter. When they meet again a year later, it seems fated--perhaps they'll find life's meaning in each other. But then Gabe becomes a photojournalist...

"Toklo, Kallik, Lusa, and Yakone trek onward toward the Melting Sea, the site of Kallik's traumatic cubhood--and prepare to be separated for the first time since their journey began"--

"The millions of readers of Amor Towles are in for a treat as he shares some of his shorter fiction: six stories set in New York City and a novella in Los Angeles. The New York stories, most of which are set around the turn of the millennium, take up everything from the death-defying acrobatics of the male ego, to the fateful consequences of brief encounters, and the delicate mechanics of comprise which operate at the heart of modern marriages. In...

Abigail, a successful cookbook author, hires a new housekeeper, Lila, whose mother once had Abigail's mother as a housekeeper.