Olive Hunt is a crime scene cleaner who channels her childhood traumas into erasing the suffering of others. After nearly 10 years, she’s seen it all. Nothing rattles her anymore. Until now. Two back-to-back suicides. A seedy motel. An upscale Atlanta hotel. Olive discovers the same strange item at each scene. Then a third body drops. Olive knows what the police refuse to see: These aren’t suicides. They’re murders staged to perfection. Then the roses arrive. A vase of bloodred blooms on her doorstep. An anonymous note: Thank you. She’s found him. A serial killer who’s been leaving breadcrumbs only she can see. A killer who’s been cleaning up his work --- knowing she’ll clean up after him. A killer who wants her to follow. And follow she must. No matter how terrifying the trail becomes.

When journalist Holland Tate is granted an interview with Catriona Bouchard, her former best friend turned mega-popular tradwife, she jumps at the chance to also possibly rewrite their bitter ending. But at the Bouchards’ gated compound, what she finds is not the independent woman she once knew. Cat may have six beautiful children and be married to the man she calls the love of her life, but she’s a ghost of her former self. With each passing hour behind those locked gates, Holland uncovers dark secrets, darker obsessions and hidden motives that shine a new light on the events that ended their friendship. Even as danger mounts, Cat sticks to the narrative she’s selling: She lives a perfect life with her perfect husband. Holland came to the compound to get the killer story behind that glossy image. Now all she cares about is getting out of there alive.

When Works Progress Administration editor Millie Lang finds herself on the wrong end of a potential political scandal, she’s shipped off to Montana to work on the state’s American Guide Series --- travel books intended to put the nation’s destitute writers to work. Millie arrives to an eclectic staff claiming their missed deadlines are due to sabotage, possibly from the state’s powerful Copper Kings, who don’t want their long and bloody history with union organizers aired for the rest of the country to read. More than a decade earlier, Alice Monroe created the Boxcar Library in order to deliver books to isolated mining towns. She thought she found the perfect librarian to staff the train car in Colette Durand. Now, no one in Missoula will tell Millie why both Alice and Colette went out on the inaugural journey of the Boxcar Library, but only Alice returned.