In 1780s London, a prosperous merchant finds his quiet life upended when he unexpectedly receives a most unusual creature --and meets a most extraordinary woman-- in this much-lauded, atmospheric debut that examines our capacity for wonder, obsession, and desire with all the magnetism, originality, and literary magic of The Essex Serpent. One September evening in 1785, Jonah Hancock hears an urgent knocking on his front door near the docks of London....

Seventeen-year-old Fable joins the young, motley crew of the Marigold to escape the island where her father abandoned her, but she quickly realizes life off the island is more dangerous than she imaged.

Time-travelling Claire Randall returns to her own time, pregnant and weary, and resumes her life, but her memories of her eighteenth-century Scottish lover Jamie Fraser will not die, leading her to a desperate decision to return to him.