A hot summer on the Northumberland coast and Julie Armstrong arrives home from a night out to find her son strangled, laid out in a bath of water and covered with wild flowers. This stylized murder scene has Inspector Vera Stanhope intrigued. But then another body is discovered in a rock pool, the corpse again strewn with flowers. Vera must work quickly to find this killer who is making art out of death.

Decker has returned to Burlington, Ohio, for a special reason. It would have been his daughter Molly’s fourteenth birthday. Molly was brutally murdered four years ago in their home, along with his beloved wife, Cassie, and his brother-in-law. But then Decker is tracked down by a man he’ll never forget: Meryl Hawkins, his first homicide arrest more than twelve years ago.

In a private room sheltered from the Colombo riots, a seventeen-year-old girl gives birth to a hatechild. At a city gym, an introverted fitness instructor obsesses over his unattainable client. Inside an untended guest-house room, an adolescent cricket champ is caught unawares by his coach’s violent fury. By a rain-drenched gravesite, a special-needs teacher confides in a stranger.