Briarwood House watches as detectives arrive to interrogate seventeen people after two bodies are discovered following a Thanksgiving dinner.

Pete shows a new tenant named Grace March to a small attic apartment at Briarwood House.

Grace invites all the tenants to weekly Thursday night communal dinners, asking only for one canned good as the price of admission.

Nora Walsh begins a romance with Xavier Byrne, a man with deep connections to Washington's Irish mob.

Xavier Byrne kills Nora's abusive ex-boyfriend George Harding after George breaks into his home, and is subsequently arrested and convicted.

Detectives discover a second murdered body in the parlor after Grace's cat slips through a closed door.

Arlene secretly reports Reka to her employer as a communist sympathizer, causing Reka to lose her library job.

Reka recovers her stolen Klimt sketches from Sydney Sutherland's bedroom during a late-night visit to the senator's son's home.

Fliss secretly escorts an abused senator's wife to her uncle's Massachusetts clinic so Sydney can participate in a contraceptive trial.

Grace uses her baseball-connected boyfriend's contacts to arrange a scouting job interview for Bea with the Washington Senators.

Grace's former Soviet spy partner Kirill crashes the Thanksgiving dinner wielding a garden scythe and slashes Fliss across the throat.

Grace kills Kirill by slashing his throat with the scythe after her pistol misfires during their struggle on the fourth floor.

Arlene beats a drunken Barrett Sutherland to death with Bea's baseball bat, believing him to be a communist operative.

Harland destroys Grace's stolen Soviet documents and fabricates a robbery cover story that protects the entire Briar Club from prosecution.

Pete receives a postcard from Grace in New York confirming she has found a permanent home in her adopted country.

Grace March's arrival at Briarwood House transforms a collection of isolated strangers into a tight-knit community through weekly communal dinners she names the Briar Club. As each tenant navigates private struggles during the McCarthy era, Grace supports them quietly from the background while concealing a dangerous secret of her own. The story alternates between the aftermath of a Thanksgiving murder scene and the years leading up to it, gradually revealing how the tenants became entangled in each other's lives. When Grace's Soviet spy past catches up with her at the Thanksgiving dinner, the bonds she has spent years nurturing are put to the ultimate test. The Briar Club members choose friendship over ideology, covering up two murders to protect one another. Each tenant ultimately builds a fulfilling life, a testament to the community Grace built inside those boarding house walls.

The headline events that drive the Briar Club's story from beginning to end.

Two detectives incorrectly assume that the brutality of the Thanksgiving murder means no woman could have committed it.

Grace gives each boarder an irreverent nickname and begins painting flowers and vines on Briarwood House's gloomy corridor walls.

Nora witnesses Xavier shoot off the finger of her abusive ex-boyfriend George at a poker table outside the Amber Club.

Nora ends her relationship with Xavier and returns his mother's five-carat diamond ring after he is convicted and sent to prison.

Investigators suspect two separate killers when they realize the two Thanksgiving victims were killed with entirely different weapons and methods.

Reka confronts Senator Sutherland's son at his Georgetown home, accusing the senator of having stripped her of her valuables upon her immigration.

Sydney Sutherland greets Reka late at night showing fresh bruises on her face and invites her in to take the hidden Klimt sketches.

Arlene refuses to share a Briar Club meal with Grace's Black musician boyfriend Claude when he cooks Louisiana gumbo for the group.

A police raid disrupts Grace, Fliss, and Claude's evening at an integrated nightclub, and someone paints the word 'communist' on the windows.

Detectives find a baseball bat hidden under a parlor couch and demand to know which tenant it belongs to.

Bea and Harland bond unexpectedly over baseball at Griffith Stadium after he ends his relationship with Arlene over what she did to Reka.

Sydney is prevented from meeting Claire at Union Station by an unannounced visit from the Sutherland in-laws, leaving Claire waiting alone.

Grace reveals to the assembled Briar Club that she entered the United States as a deep-cover Soviet spy named Galina Stepanova.

Every member of the Briar Club votes to protect Grace from arrest, declaring that friendship and humanity matter more than political ideology.

Sydney departs for Bermuda with her son to live near her maternal family, and Claire joins her as her social secretary.

While Grace's Thursday dinners slowly transform Briarwood House, the daily lives of the other tenants play out in vivid and often dangerous detail. Nora navigates the blurry line between gangsters and lawmen, Reka fights to recover what a corrupt senator stole from her, and Fliss builds a clandestine friendship with an abused senator's wife who desperately needs help. Through Claude's racially charged dinner visit and a police raid at an integrated club, the novel exposes the racist underbelly of the era's so-called all-American values. The Thanksgiving investigation moves in fits and starts as two bumbling detectives fumble through evidence and miss the real story right in front of them. By the story's end, the women of the Briar Club have each found their way to freedom entirely on their own terms.

The significant secondary moments that shaped the Briar Club's world.

Grace tells a young Pete that he does not have to obey every one of his mother's rules and simply needs to learn to work around them.

Reka clashes with Harland Adams at a Briar Club dinner, declaring that dogmatic authority is dangerous regardless of which ideology it serves.

Nora stands up to her family at a gathering, refusing her brother's demand for money and rejecting her mother's pressure to return home.

Briarwood House listens in growing alarm as Mrs. Nilsson loudly announces her intention to sell the building to a furniture store.

Reka picks up a paintbrush and begins creating new original artwork for the first time in decades after her stolen sketches are returned to her.

Fliss breaks down in relief when Grace reassures her that exhaustion does not make her a bad mother and organizes the Briar Club to provide childcare.

Fliss's husband calls from his overseas posting to assure her that they do not need to have more children if she does not want them.

The Briar Club celebrates joyfully together when the news breaks that Joseph Stalin has died.

Bea immediately rejects Harland's marriage proposal the same evening she wins her dream job as a talent scout for the Washington Senators.

Barrett Sutherland beats Sydney again, and Claire resolves to sacrifice her entire life savings to fund Sydney and her son's escape from the marriage.

John Nilsson attends Lina's baking competition and reveals he has been sending money and letters to his children for years, all intercepted by their mother.

Grace shows Harland the stolen Soviet flight program documents she kept hidden from her superiors as proof that she genuinely defected.

Arlene slips away from the Briar Club debate and secretly telephones the police to report Grace as a communist before returning to the room.

Grace takes a shaken Arlene under her wing after the killings, promising that neither of them will go to jail if Arlene follows her lead exactly.

John Nilsson returns to the neighborhood and, holding his name on the property title, permanently blocks Mrs. Nilsson's plan to sell Briarwood House.

Beneath the Briar Club's communal dinners lie a series of private revelations and hard-won turning points that quietly transform every character in the house. Grace's early advice to Pete plants a seed of independence, while Reka's confrontation with Harland and Nora's stand against her family show women learning to claim their own ground. Moments of joy — Stalin's death, Lina's baking triumph, Bea's dream job — are balanced against moments of terror, as Barrett's violence and Kirill's arrival force each character to act on what they truly believe. The investigation's pressure mounts as Mrs. Nilsson threatens to sell the house, raising the stakes for everyone who has made Briarwood their home. Grace's decision to show Harland the stolen Soviet documents and Arlene's fatal phone call to the police set the final confrontation in motion. When the dust settles, it is the small acts of courage built up over years that save the Briar Club and give each member a future.

The key turning points and revelations that changed everything for the Briar Club.