New York psychologist Will Hardy had it all --- a loving family, a flourishing career, a bestselling book. Until the night it all ended in a tempest of fire and ash, leaving only Will and his 15-year-old daughter, Bernadette, to stand in the ruins. Haunted and grief-stricken, Will accepts an enigmatic invitation from his family’s past to begin their lives anew in the small town of Abbeville, Ohio. Meanwhile, Abbeville Chief of Police Ivy Holgrave is investigating the death of a local girl, convinced this may be only the latest in a long line of murders dating back decades --- including her own long-missing sister. But what place does Will's new home have in the story of the missing girls? And what links the killings to the diary of a young woman written over a century earlier?

Killing is in Billy's bloodline, as a member of Philadelphia's dangerous Farren crime family. Plagued with a rare disease that prevents him from recognizing faces, Billy carries a photograph in his pocket that is his only way of identifying his next target. While Billy stalks Philadelphia, Detective Kevin Byrne is assigned to a series of bizarre home-invasion cases and is joined by his former partner-turned-assistant district attorney, Jessica Balzano. Their investigations circle Byrne's childhood neighborhood of Devil's Pocket, and they find themselves revisiting a crime from Byrne's past that has haunted him for decades. What Byrne witnessed as a child in Devil's Pocket jeopardizes the Farren family --- which makes him the next target on Billy's hit list.

A murdered girl is found posed on a newly painted bench. Beside her is a formal invitation to a tea dance in a week's time. Seven days later, two more young victims are discovered in an abandoned house, posed on painted swings. At the scene is an identical invitation. This time, though, there is something extra waiting for Detectives Kevin Byrne and Jessica Balzano: a delicate porcelain doll. They have just seven more days to find the link between the murders before another innocent child is snatched from the streets.

Luther Wade grew up in Cold River, a warehouse for the criminally insane. Two decades ago the hospital closed it doors forever, but Luther never left. He wanders the catacombs beneath the city, channeling the violent dreams of Eduard Kross, Europe's most prolific serial killer of the 20th century. A two-year-old girl found wandering the streets of Philadelphia by detectives Kevin Byrne and Jessica Balzano may hold the key to solving a string of murders committed in and around Priory Park.