Rob has spent her life running from Sundial, the family’s ranch deep in the Mojave Desert, and her childhood memories. But she’s worried about her daughter, Callie, who collects animal bones and whispers to imaginary friends. It reminds her of a darkness that runs in her family, and Rob knows it’s time to return. Callie is terrified of her mother. Rob digs holes in the backyard late at night and tells disturbing stories about growing up on the ranch. Soon Callie begins to fear that only one of them will leave Sundial alive.

Charismatic Marie Antoine is the daughter of the richest man in 19th-century Montreal. She has everything she wants, except for a best friend --- until clever, scheming Sadie Arnett moves to the neighborhood. Immediately united by their passion and intensity, Marie and Sadie attract and repel each other in ways that thrill them both. Their games soon become tinged with risk, even violence. Forced to separate by the adults around them, they spend years engaged in acts of alternating innocence and depravity. And when a singular event brings them back together, the dizzying effects will upend the city.

For Ruthie, the frozen town of Waitsfield, Massachusetts, is all she has ever known. Once home to the country’s oldest and most illustrious families by the tail end of the 20th century, it is an unforgiving place awash with secrets. Forged in this frigid landscape, Ruthie has been dogged by feelings of inadequacy her whole life. As she grows older, she slowly learns how the town’s prim facade conceals a deeper, darker history, and how silence often masks a legacy of harm --- from the violence that runs down the family line to the horrors endured by her high school friends, each suffering a fate worse than the last. For Ruthie, Waitsfield is a place to be survived, and a girl like her would be lucky to get out alive.

Gage Chandler is descended from kings. That’s what his mother always told him. Years later, he is a true crime writer, with one grisly success --- and a movie adaptation --- to his name, along with a series of subsequent less notable efforts. But now he is being offered the chance for the big break: to move into the house where a pair of briefly notorious murders occurred, apparently the work of disaffected teens during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. He begins his research with diligence and enthusiasm, but soon the story leads him into a puzzle he never expected --- back into his own work and what it means, back to the very core of what he does and who he is.

“When I was a child, I loved old men, and I could tell that they also loved me.” And so we are introduced to our deliciously incisive narrator: a popular English professor whose charismatic husband at the same small liberal arts college is under investigation for his inappropriate relationships with his former students. The couple have long had a mutual understanding when it comes to their extramarital pursuits, but with these new allegations, life has become far less comfortable for them both. And when our narrator becomes increasingly infatuated with Vladimir, a celebrated, married young novelist who’s just arrived on campus, their tinder box world comes dangerously close to exploding.

2019: Thirteen-year-old Lila Sawyer has secrets she can’t share with anyone. But when young women around her begin dying, wild speculation ensues. Soon Lila feels haunted from within, terrorized by a delicious evil that shows her how to find her voice --- until she’s in danger for using it. 2004: Caroline Sawyer sees dogs everywhere that no one else seems to notice. As these snarling, teeth-bared delusions begin to take shape in the sculptures she makes in a trance-like state, her fiancé is convinced she needs help from a professional. But Caroline’s past is a dark cellar, filled with repressed memories and a lurking horror that others around her can’t understand. As past and present demons converge, Caroline and Lila must chase the source of this unrelenting power to its core, either to obliterate it or lose themselves forever.

At first, the residents of Kauai Beach Resort took little notice of their new neighbors. The couple seemed to keep to themselves --- until the police knocked on their door with a search warrant. Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell had fled to Hawaii in the midst of being investigated for the disappearance of Lori’s children, Tylee and JJ, back in Idaho. As authorities searched for the missing children, they uncovered more suspicious deaths with links to both Lori and Chad. In June 2020, the remains of JJ and Tylee were discovered on Chad’s property, and the newlyweds were charged with murder. And in a shocking development, horrifying statements revealed that their fanatical beliefs had convinced them the children had become zombies.

Best friends since second grade, Fiona Lin and Jane Shen explore the lonely freeways and seedy bars of Los Angeles together through their teenage years, surviving unfulfilling romantic encounters, and carrying with them the scars of their families' tumultuous pasts. When Fiona moves to New York and cares for a sick friend through a breakup with an opportunistic boyfriend, Jane remains in California and grieves her estranged father's sudden death, in the process alienating an overzealous girlfriend. Strained by distance and unintended betrayals, the women float in and out of each other's lives, their friendship both a beacon of home and a reminder of all they've lost.

Lurking beneath the progressive activism and sex positivity in the 1970-80s, a dark undercurrent of violence rippled across the American landscape. This led the FBI to create a specialized team --- the “Mindhunters,” better known as the Behavioral Science Unit --- that would track down the country's most dangerous criminals. And yet narrowing down a seemingly infinite list of potential suspects seemed daunting at best and impossible at worst --- until Dr. Ann Wolbert Burgess stepped on the scene. In A KILLER BY DESIGN, Burgess reveals how her pioneering research on sexual assault and trauma caught the attention of the FBI, and steered her right into the middle of a chilling serial murder investigation in Nebraska.

Tiny is pregnant. Her husband is delighted. “You think this baby is going to be like you, but it’s not like you at all,” she warns him. “This baby is an owl-baby.” When Chouette is born small and broken-winged, Tiny works around the clock to meet her daughter’s needs. Left on her own to care for a child who seems more predatory bird than baby, Tiny vows to raise Chouette to be her authentic self. Even in those times when Chouette’s behaviors grow violent and strange, Tiny’s loving commitment to her daughter is unwavering. When she discovers that her husband is on an obsessive and increasingly dangerous quest to find a “cure” for their daughter, Tiny must decide if Chouette should be raised to fit in or to be herself --- and learn what it truly means to be a mother.