A string of overdoses in Colorado Springs has Detectives Joe Kenda and Lee Wilson on the lookout for a bad batch of heroin that has been cut with a drug they've never seen before. Meanwhile, at Springs General Hospital, Dr. Blair Moreland --- the notoriously unpleasant head anesthesiologist --- has found a way to feed his deepening addiction to the very same powerful new drug: Fentanyl. But when Dr. Moreland starts supplying the dangerous painkiller to dealer Lula Lopez --- planning to manufacture the drug himself --- he angers a Mexican crime syndicate and sets into motion a cycle of death and violence that threatens to engulf the entire city. Detectives Kenda and Wilson must track down the source of this killer heroin before anyone else can overdose --- and stop Moreland before he can escape the long arm of the law.

It is the Year of the Wood Dragon, and the ingenious Mike Brink has been invited to Tokyo, Japan, to open the legendary Dragon Box. The box was constructed during one of Japan’s most tumultuous periods, when the samurai class was disbanded and the shogun lost power. In this moment of crisis, Emperor Meiji locked a priceless Imperial secret in the Dragon Box. Only two people knew how to open the box --- Meiji and the box’s sadistic constructor --- and both died without telling a soul what was inside or how to open it. Every 12 years since then, in the Year of the Dragon, the Imperial family holds a clandestine contest to open the box. Every puzzle master who has attempted to open it has died in the process. But Brink is not just any puzzle master. He may be the only person alive who can crack it.

Summoned to an abandoned theme park to retrieve a body, Dr. Kay Scarpetta is devastated to learn that the victim is a man she once had an intense love affair with. The murder scene is bizarre, with a crop circle of petals around the body, and Sal Giordano’s skin is strangely red. Scarpetta’s niece, Lucy, believes he was dropped from an unidentified flying craft. Scarpetta knows an autopsy can reveal the dead’s secrets, but she is shocked to find that her friend seems to have deliberately left her a clue. As the investigators are torn between suspicions of otherworldly forces, and of Giordano himself, Scarpetta detects an explanation closer to home that, in her mind, is far more evil.

London, 1949. Amidst the smog of the capital stumbles Dennis Knuckleyard, a hapless 18-year-old employed by a secondhand bookshop. One day, on an errand to acquire books for sale, Dennis discovers a novel that simply does not exist. It is a fictitious book, a figment from another novel. Yet it is physically there in his hands. How? Dennis has stumbled on a book from the Great When, a magical version of London beyond time and space, where reality blurs with fiction and concepts such as Crime and Poetry are incarnated as wondrous, terrible beings. But this other, magical London must remain a secret. If Dennis cannot find a way to return this book to where it belongs, he risks repercussions, such as his body being turned inside out (or worse). Soon he finds himself at the center of an explosive series of events that may alter and endanger both Londons forever.

Psychologist Arles Shepherd treats troubled children, struggling with each case to recover from her own traumatic past. Having just set up a new kind of treatment center in the remote Adirondack wilderness, Arles longs to heal one patient in particular: a 10-year-old boy who has never spoken a word --- or so his mother, Louise, believes. Hundreds of miles away, Cass Monroe is living a parent’s worst nightmare. His 12-year-old daughter has vanished on her way home from school. With no clues, no witnesses and no trail, the police are at a dead end. Fighting a heart that was already ailing, and struggling to keep both his marriage and himself alive, Cass turns to a pair of true-crime podcasters for help. Arles, Louise and Cass will soon find their lives entangled in ways none of them could have anticipated.

A thousand years ago in an ancient Scottish landscape, a woman is on the run with her three companions --- a healer, a weaver and a seer. The men hunting her will kill her --- because she is the only one who stands between them and their violent ambition. She is no lady: she is the first queen of Scotland, married to a king called Macbeth. As the net closes in, what unfurls is a tale of passion, forced marriage, bloody massacre and the harsh realities of medieval Scotland. At the heart of it is one strong, charismatic woman, who survived loss and jeopardy to outwit the endless plotting of a string of ruthless and power-hungry men. Her struggle won her a country. But now it could cost her life.

Emilia Ward lives in suburban London with her husband, their young son, and a teenager from her first marriage. Emilia is an ordinary mom --- and she’s also the bestselling author of the Miranda Moody detective novels. But when writing her 10th --- and most difficult --- book, life takes a disturbing turn: an incident mimicking the plot of one of her novels occurs in real life. Just an unsettling coincidence, right? Until it happens again. And again. Then someone she knows dies in the same way as a victim in the book she's currently writing. Why is someone doing this? What do they want? How could they possibly know what she’s thinking --- and writing? Is Emilia and her family next?

Sydney Shaw has terrible luck with dating. She's seen it all: men who lie in their dating profile, men who stick her with the dinner bill, and men who can't shut up about their mothers. But finally, she hits the jackpot. Her new boyfriend is utterly perfect. He's charming and handsome, and he works as a doctor at a local hospital. Sydney is swept off her feet. Then the brutal murder of a young woman --- the latest in a string of deaths across the coast --- confounds police. The primary suspect? A mystery man who dates his victims before he kills them. Sydney should feel safe. After all, she is dating the guy of her dreams. But she can't shake her own suspicions that the perfect man may not be as perfect as he seems. Because someone is watching her every move, and if she doesn't get to the truth, she'll be the killer's next victim.

In 1914 London, 26-year-old Venetia Stanley --- aristocratic, clever, bored, reckless --- is part of a fast group of upper-crust bohemians and socialites known as “The Coterie.” She’s also engaged in a clandestine love affair with the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, a man more than twice her age. He writes to her obsessively, sharing the most sensitive matters of state. As Asquith reluctantly leads the country into war with Germany, a young intelligence officer with Scotland Yard is assigned to investigate a leak of top-secret documents. Suddenly, what was a sexual intrigue becomes a matter of national security that could topple the British government --- and will alter the course of political history.

Alfred Smettle is not your average Hitchcock fan. He is the founder, owner and manager of The Hitchcock Hotel, a sprawling Victorian house in the White Mountains dedicated to the Master of Suspense. There, Alfred offers his guests round-the-clock film screenings, movie props and memorabilia in every room, plus an aviary with 50 crows. To celebrate the hotel’s first anniversary, he invites his former best friends from his college Film Club for a reunion. He hasn’t spoken to any of them in 16 years, not after what happened. But who better than them to appreciate Alfred’s creation? And to help him finish it. After all, no Hitchcock set is complete without a body.