A brutal killer haunts the streets of Kennington, leaving dead bodies in his wake–dead bodies, gruesome murder scenes, and nursery rhymes. The media dubs him NRK, the Nursery Rhyme Killer. When NRK targets his brother, ex-military intelligence analyst Owen Day taps into the skills he developed in the Army to bring the killer to justice–before he strikes again.

Deep in the majestic Northern California woods, hidden in a remote hunting cabin, lies a secret too shocking for words: a mystery that could derail FBI Special Agent Sadie Gray’s career before it even starts. Grass Valley, California, is home to all sorts of people, their darkest secrets, and the shadows where they hide them. It was also the location of a series of abductions, including Sadie's abduction, spanning back nearly twenty years.

When a woman's body is discovered in a cathedral and hours later a young man is found hanging from a tree outside his home, Detective Lottie Parker is called in to lead the investigation. Both bodies have the same distinctive tattoo clumsily inscribed on their legs. It's clear the pair are connected, but how? The trail leads Lottie to St Angela's, a former children's home, with a dark connection to her own family history. Suddenly the case just got personal.

DI Jan Talantire is called to a cottage in Ilfracombe, where the female occupant is found dead, impaled with a crucifix. The woman, who had been renting the house for a few months, is well known locally, but the documents at the house indicate her real name is Ruth Lyle. The name means nothing to the young PC who found her, DI Talantire knows this cannot be the body of Ruth Lyle.

When Audrey Collet’s ex Tyson calls, threatening to expose the skeletons in her closet unless she helps him figure out who is blackmailing him, she wants nothing more than to refuse. Though their relationship ended over a decade ago, the scars are deep. And since his tech company made him a billionaire, he’s become more than a little eccentric . . . and paranoid. But a foot has washed ashore in the Everglades—that’s right, an actual human foot, encased in an Air Jordan—and Tyson is quick to remind Audrey that it’s one whose long-dead owner they both have a connection to.