No one ever thinks the unthinkable will happen... When Grace Hughes’s family was murdered outside their suburban home the police told her it was a senseless tragedy. Just another madman with a gun. Happens every day in America. One year later and still overwhelmed by grief, Grace struggles to make sense of her shattered world. Then Grace meets two abandoned children in desperate need of help and she discovers a newfound sense of purpose. But as Grace starts to heal, secrets about her husband’s past unfold.

Detective Mary Joe Court sleeps with a shotgun beside her bed and a lovable bull mastiff at her feet. For the past 12 years, she’s hidden from a nightmarish past, but with every passing day, her scars fade, and her heart grows lighter. Now, for the first time in her life, she looks forward to her future. She’s happy. Then she finds the body. Someone shot the victim in her chest and left her to die in a cheap motel. Joe knew her well. She grew up with her. They were sisters, of a sort.

Alexandra Bouvier is born in Paris in 1900, at the dawn of a new century. From an early age, she is encouraged to think for herself by her enlightened family: her father, a French doctor; her mother, an American nurse; and her maternal grandfather a highly regarded newspaperman back in the Midwest. At age fourteen, Alex's comfortable life is upended as war erupts across Europe. Her parents follow their sense of duty to the front, performing triage at a field hospital and confronting the horrors of poison gas and trench warfare.

He was my high school crush. Now he’s pretending to be my boyfriend—and I’m pretending I’m not falling for him. When Hoyt McNamara stepped in to rescue me from a drunk with grabby hands, pretending to be my boyfriend, I knew two things: One, I still hadn’t outgrown the way I felt about him. Two, it was a terrible idea to let him get involved.

Paradise Alden's childhood in Nova Cambridge, Alabama, was idyllic until the night her parents were murdered. Since then life has left her scarred. After fifteen years, returning to her hometown is a last resort to finding her life again. She's hoping the wildlife refuge where she's accepted a veterinarian job will be the perfect place to heal from her recent traumas and unlock her memories about the night her parents died. But on the day she arrives at The Sanctuary, a body is discovered on the grounds.