Traces the author's experiences as a child born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, describing her participation in her family's paranoid stockpiling activities and her resolve to educate herself well enough to earn acceptance into a prestigious university and the unfamiliar world beyond.

American student Lily Hayes is implicated in the brutal murder of her roommate while spending a semester studying in Buenos Aires, leading to a case that reveals deceptions, secrets, and suspicious DNA.

Falling in love with a beautiful young law student after a chance encounter on a rainy April night, David is discouraged by a bruise on April's cheek that she refuses to explain and is horrified when he is declared a prime suspect in her subsequent murder.

Requesting the help of kidnapping survivor Flora Dane, who has become obsessed with the abductions of other girls, Detective D.D. Warren becomes suspicious of Flora's agenda upon discovering her relationships with other kidnapping victims.

Although they have different backgrounds, Midwesterner Megan Mazeros and Lauren Mabrey, the daughter of a Senator, are close college friends, but their relationship becomes complicated when Megan is the victim of sexual assault at Lauren's summer vacation home.

When a psychopath who held her prisoner for four years escapes from a mental facility and begins a murderous rampage, college student Reeve realizes that she is the only person who knows the killer well enough to stop him.

Spending the summer in the sleepy coastal town of Beaufort to keep close watch on the couple she chose to adopt her daughter, a 19-year-old Chapel Hill college student accepts a position as their nanny and ingratiates herself into the family with the chaotic fervor of a mother separated from her child.

An independent-minded woman accepts a teaching position at Wellesley, an all women's college in 1953, and tries to help her students see the opportunities available to them.

Angel-in-training Harry Mills is sent to Earth to help an insecure student discover her purpose in life.