Juliet Ashton, a thirty-year-old author, writes to her publisher expressing her desire to stop covering the aftermath of WWII, but Guernsey farmer Dawsey Adams invites neighbors to write to Juliet with their stories, which puts her off at first but eventually helps her find inspiration for her next book, and her life.

Follows a fourteen-year-old American girl whose life unexpectedly transforms when she moves to London in 1952 and gets swept up in a race to save the world from nuclear war.

Cora, Nellie, and Michiko, teenaged assistants to three powerful men in Edwardian London, meet by chance at a ball that ends with the discovery of a murdered man, leading the three to work together to solve this and related crimes without drawing undue attention to themselves.