Three people--a suburban housewife, a talented documentary photographer, and a detective--living lives they never wanted, hiding secrets that even those closest to them would never suspect, will find that the past doesn't recede ... and that desperation and hunger can lurk behind even the prettiest facades.

While covering a series of grisly murders in Portland, freelance photographer Marissa Mo finds her past coming back to haunt her when a note is left behind at one of the scenes that is just for her, forcing her to face her fears to catch a killer. "It's only by confronting who she was then that she can understand who she is now. I was born in captivity ... Two decades ago Marissa Mo escaped a basement prison--the only home she'd ever known. At twenty-seven,...

Claire McKenna knows about loss. The bullet wound that ended her promising professional tennis career drove her to make a quiet life for herself working with fabric samples, chatting with her book group, and spending time with her parents in her sleepy coastal Connecticut hometown. There was a boyfriend who dumped her to pursue her adventurous childhood friend. Claire's business has hit a financial snag, but she's up to the challenge. After all, she...

"Archaeologist Fiona Carver has unfinished business in the Aleutian Islands. After an emergency evacuation cut her first expedition short, she's finally back. But time is not on her side as she races to finish documenting the remnants of a prehistoric village, recover missing artifacts, and track down missing volcanologist Dylan Slater. Having bluffed his way onto Fiona's team with fake credentials, wildlife photographer Dean Slater is willing to...

"When Ava Green turns twenty-eight, she discovers this will be her last birthday. The cancer she thought she'd beaten three years ago is back, only this time it's terminal, and she's not going to waste any of the time she has left. There's one thing she's been dreaming of since she was a little girl: her wedding. There's only one problem. She doesn't have a groom. Ava's friends and family rally around her and decide they will help her throw the wedding...

"Lona kills her days by sneaking into the dark room at her old art school to develop photographs. She kills her nights DJ-ing the roller disco at Planet Skate. She is in inexplicably, debilitatingly love with a bespectacled Doctor Who-obsessed former classmate, and in comfortable, platonic love with her best friend Tab. Lona works hard to portray a permanent attitude of cynicism and ennui but will her carefully constructed persona be enough to protect...

After ten years in Paris, where she learned photography and became part of the movement that invented modern art, Chicago-born, Irish-American Nora Kelly is at last returning home. Her skill as a photographer will help her cousin Ed Kelly in his rise to Mayor of Chicago (1933-1947). But when she captures the moment an assassin's bullet narrowly misses President-elect Franklin Roosevelt and strikes Anton Cermak in February 1933, she enters a world...

"Layla Beckett has a secret. For the past ten years, she's run the most trafficked fan site on the Internet for her favorite band--under an alias, naturally. When she lands a job at the prestigious New York City music magazine The Rock Paper, she's suddenly thrust into the world she's only observed from the cheap seats. Now that she's brushing elbows with sexy guitarists and hot frontmen, she wants to play it cool and keep her superfan status on the...

"It's impossible to ignore Vince Novak. He's all anyone can talk about--speculating on the reason for his transfer to our school, celebrating his future career as a soccer star, or gushing over how tall, dark, and handsome he is. Even my parents mention him in hushed, angry whispers, fearful he's going to shatter my brother's records and destroy the legacy left behind when he died. However, I avoid Vince Novak at all costs, hiding from him and the...

"But was it really an accident? Was it suicide? A murder? Six mysterious characters, who rent units in, or are connected to, the self-storage facility, must now reevaluate their lives. We meet Serge, an unstable but brilliant street photographer who lives in his unit, which overflows with thousands of undeveloped pictures; Zach, the building's owner, who develops Serge's photos as he searches for clues to the accident; Marta, an undocumented immigrant...