Ivy is in trouble. A recent break-up has left her humiliated and raw, so when her best friend, Regan, offers her a month-long escape in the form of a trip to Australia, it feels like a lifeline, one that Ivy grabs with both hands. Regan is everything Ivy’s not. But Ivy is drawn to a calmer type of holiday, so when she spots an ad for crewmembers on a small yacht being sailed by a doting father and his daughter, the girls decide to take the job. Together with a handsome third crewmember, they set off north into tropical heat, but it's not long before doubts start to creep in.

In the heat of the city, a man is out of time: speeding in a beat-up Ford Tempo, blasting easy-listening music. Reporter Steve Everett drinks too much, makes love to his boss' wife, and has just stumbled upon a shocking truth: A convicted killer is about to be executed for a crime he didn't commit. In the cold confines of Death Row, Frank Beachum is also out of time. Ready to say good-bye to the wife and child he loves and hello to the God he still believes in, Beachum knows he did not kill a convenience store clerk six years ago.

Mead House was once our childhood home. Despite my fears, I always knew we would have to return to face the demons of our past. Back to the place where it happened, to where, as carefree teenagers, we lost our elder sister in the most brutal of circumstances. As executors of our grandmother’s will, my twin brother, Ollie, and I needed to empty the house for resale. What I didn’t expect to discover was my sister’s secret journal that contained her most private thoughts and shocking dark secrets.

Raised in the wilderness by her late great-uncle, Vida is a young woman with an almost preternatural affinity for nature, especially for the wolves that also call the forested mountains home. Formed by hard experience, by love and loss, and by the prophecies of a fortuneteller, Vida just wants peace. If only nearby Kettleton County didn’t cast such a dark shadow.

It was a mistake to trust him. Shivering and bruised, a teen wakes up on the side of a dirt road with no memory of how she got there—or who she is. The police don’t know where she came from until a frantic man arrives at the station. He’s been searching for her for hours. He has her school ID, her birth certificate, and even family photos.