Jimmy just wanted to live a normal life—until he found his girlfriend barely alive, bound in his own basement. As a clean-cut teenager, Jimmy does everything right: Gets good grades. Stays out of trouble. Keeps his head down. But there’s one thing he can’t control. With an addict mother chasing her next fix, a gluttonous father glued to the couch, twin siblings with unsettling closeness, and a cold-hearted uncle who delights in others' pain...

Jillian Harper thought moving to the quiet little town in Montana would be the fresh start her family needed. A charming farmhouse, friendly neighbors, and endless open fields—it was supposed to be perfect. Until the bodies are found. Buried deep on their land. Hidden for years. The police are everywhere. The town is whispering. And Tucker—her devoted husband—is acting . . . strange. He won’t tell her where he was all day. He won’t explain why his phone was off. And worst of all—he won’t meet her eyes.

Private Investigator Martina Monroe has no room for grief. Nearly a year after she failed to prevent her husband’s death, a battered woman depends on her for safety. But when she arrives too late and finds the female dead, the tormented detective’s only solace is a deeper relationship with the bottle. Struggling with sobriety and doing her job, Martina still has to protect another client battling a stalker. And if she doesn’t get her act together soon, one more victim may pay the price for her mistakes.

New Orleans Detective Nikki Mayeaux has decided it’s when a technicality sets a serial rapist free. Jaded and frustrated, this latest injustice brings her to a boiling point. She arrives at the monster’s home intending to end his reign of terror, only to find someone else got there first. His throat slit, his lifeless body left in the front seat of his car. Only one person wanted him dead more than her—his final victim—a girl of only sixteen who has vanished in the seedy underbelly of the French Quarter where residents will go to great lengths to protect their own.

In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis' parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there's no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents - telekinesis and telepathy - who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and 10-year-old Avery Dixon.