Ex-IRS agent turned gumshoe-in-training Mortimer Angel is approached by a beautiful hooker, Holiday, in a casino bar in Reno. Mort first met Holiday two months ago, but now learns that she’s not really a hooker. She’s a college engineering student, searching for her younger sister, Allie, who disappeared three months ago. While in the bar with Mort, Holiday gets an unexpected phone call from Allie, who says she’s in Gerlach, a small town in Nevada. The phone call is cut off. Holiday hires Mort on the spot, dragging him off to Gerlach. When Mort finds a connection between Allie and US Senator Harry Reinhart, a presidential candidate who vanished without a trace three days ago, things quickly turn deadly --- very deadly.

Just before the first day of school, second-grade teacher Elle Harrison learns that a former student, Ty Evans, has been released from juvenile detention where he served time for killing his abusive father. Within days of his release, Elle’s school principal, who had tormented Ty as a child, is brutally murdered, along with a teacher at the school and Ty’s former girlfriend. Ty seeks Elle out, confiding that she’s the only adult he’s ever trusted. But when she’s assaulted in the night, she suspects that Ty is her attacker. Is he a serial killer? Is she his next intended victim? Before Elle discovers the truth, she’s caught in a deadly trap that challenges her deepest convictions about guilt and innocence, childhood and family.

La Jolla Chief of Police Tony Moretti is convinced that Private Investigator Rick Cahill killed a missing person. With Moretti on his tail and the bank about to foreclose on his house, Rick takes a paying case that will stave off the bank, but pits him against Moretti and the La Jolla Police Department. Brianne Colton, a beautiful country singer, believes that her estranged husband’s suicide was really murder. Each new piece of evidence convinces Rick that she’s right. He breaks his number one rule and falls for Brianne, even as he begins to question her motives. As Moretti cinches the vise tighter, evil forces emerge from the shadows who will do anything to stop Rick from uncovering the truth.

Charles Lenox has received a cryptic plea for help from an old Harrow schoolmate, Gerald Leigh, but when he looks into the matter, he finds that his friend has suddenly disappeared. As boys they had shared a secret: a bequest from a mysterious benefactor had smoothed Leigh’s way into the world after the death of his father. Lenox, already with a passionate interest in detective work, made discovering the benefactor's identity his first case --- but was never able to solve it. Now, years later, Leigh has been the recipient of a second, even more generous bequest. Is it from the same anonymous sponsor? Or is the money poisoned by ulterior motives?

What if you could choose your heaven now? Thirty-five-year-old Vivienne Marshall does just that, as she lies dying in the ICU. In her final week of life, Vivienne treks through the Heavens of a priest, a best friend, a homeless child, and a lover who never was. Her guardian angel, Noah, who may just be her soul mate, escorts her through selections of Heavens and through the confusion she experiences as she flounders between a doubt of life and the certainty of death. Although her visits to varied afterlives provide peace and beauty, choosing proves not so easy: Vivienne's love for her young son and her earthly father pull her from her colorful journey --- and from her divine love of Noah.

Ex-lawyer Noah Calaway is haunted by the memory of the beguiling young woman who left him at the altar 16 years earlier. Then one day, he receives a troubling phone call. April, the woman he once loved, lies in a coma, the victim of an apparent overdose --- and the lead suspect in a brutal murder. While Noah searches for evidence that will clear April's name, a teenager named Ella begins to sift through the secrets of her own painful family history. The same age that April was when Noah first met her, Ella harbors a revelation that could be the key to solving the murder. As the two stories converge, there are shocking consequences when the truth emerges at last. Or so everyone believes…

Barista Ethan Falk chases a customer into the parking lot and kills him. He tells police that years ago the older man abducted and tortured him. Then Ethan's story takes an even stranger turn: he says he was rescued by a guy named Scorpion. Of course, there is no record of either the kidnapping or the rescue, because Scorpion --- Jonathan Grave --- operates outside the law and leaves no evidence. As Grave struggles to find a way to defend his former precious cargo without blowing his cover, he learns the dead man has secrets that trace to an ongoing terrorist plot against the heart of America.

Hunting along the edge of his property, Landreaux Iron accidentally kills his neighbor's five-year-old son, Dusty Ravich. Horrified at what he’s done, the recovered alcoholic turns to an Ojibwe tribe tradition --- the sweat lodge --- for guidance and finds a way forward. Following an ancient means of retribution, he and his wife, Emmaline, will give their son, LaRose, to Dusty's grieving parents. But when a vengeful man with a long-standing grudge against Landreaux begins raising trouble, hurling accusations of a cover-up the day Dusty died, he threatens the tenuous peace that has kept these two fragile families whole.

Orphaned by an act of senseless violence that took their mother from them, half-brothers Clarence Luckman and Elliott Danziger have been raised in state institutions, unaware of any world beyond its walls. But their lives take a sudden turn when they are seized as hostages by a convicted killer en route to death row. Earl Sheridan is a psychopath of the worst kind, and as he and his two hostages set off on a frenetic path through California down to Texas, Clarence and Elliot must come to terms with the ever-growing tide of violence in their wake.

Jock Algren arrives on Longboat Key in a state of depression and hopelessness. His most recent mission for his secretive U.S. government intelligence agency has been disastrous, and his friends Matt Royal and J. D. Duncan aren’t sure they’ll be able to pull him out of his despair. Duncan is investigating a cold case when the brother of the victim shows up on the island and complicates the investigation. A grizzled sailor brings his boat into a local marina, and bodies begin to accumulate. A Middle East jihadist intent on revenge locks on to Jock’s clandestine past, bringing a deadly chase to the last outpost in the continental U.S. --- Key West.