The plot of The Stars Shine Down is circular in that the novel concludes where it begins, in the Cameron Plaza in New York City, where a birthday party for Lara with two-hundred distinguished guests is scheduled to take place. The great ballroom is deserted when she arrives and she, believing her career is over, relives her past from her beginnings in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia.

Each important character in her life is given a series of flashbacks which explain how his or her character was formed. Gibellina, Sicily, 1879, is the farthest point in the past in the novel; it is where Paul Martin's Mafia origins are described. Lara's career takes her successively from her native Grace Bay, to Chicago, and finally to New York.

Such shifts in locale are common in Sheldon's fiction.

Mystery, violence, and sex are always part of the package in a Sheldon novel...