Creation Lake is told from the perspective of a spy for hire (and former federal agent) known for the purposes of her current assignment as "Sadie Smith". She is in the process of infiltrating an agrarian commune of eco-leftists in France, known as the Moulinards. In order to do so, she has entered into a serious ‘relationship’ with a filmmaker called Lucien, who is close to the Moulinards' day-to-day leader, Pascal.

Black Butterflies focuses on the early part of the Bosnian War (1992-1995), a conflict between national factions that was a significant phase in the demise of the Former Yugoslavia following the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. It is centred on Zora, a Bosnian Serb landscape painter and lecturer who lives with her husband Franjo in Sarajevo at the beginning of the war, and remains behind as the devastating Siege of Sarajevo commences, while Franjo takes her mother to the English countryside, where Zora’s daughter lives with her English husband and their child.

The Road Home focuses on Lev, a middle-aged widower from an unspecified Eastern European country (possibly Poland), as he travels to London with the goal of making money to support his young daughter who stays back home with his mother. The novel begins as one of survival, as Lev acclimatises to the harsh realities of living in London with no money and no job. He initially sleeps rough and makes small change delivering leaflets for a kebab shop, before landing a job as a dish-washer (or “nurse”) in the high pressure kitchen of GK Ashe, a fine-dining, Gordon Ramsey style establishment. He eventually finds himself a (child size) room with recent Irish divorcee Christy, with whom he forms an endearing friendship.