When a letter arrives at a small North Carolina newspaper from a man claiming a connection between his missing daughter and the recent murder of another young woman, life gets even more complicated for feature writer Abby Burlew, a recovering drug addict who has bipolar disorder. Since no one else at the paper is available for the assignment, the editor reluctantly sends Abby to a remote barrier island to investigate. What seems like an open-and-shut case quickly turns into a tangle of mysterious goings-on, hidden motives, and unlikely suspects. Abby's problems are compounded when she becomes...

When Tom Sinclair, an enthusiastic but inexperienced young minister, arrives at his first parish in a small North Carolina town in 1962, he has no idea what troubles lie ahead. One weekend he is called unexpectedly out of town and returns to find that a murder occurred that morning in his parish house office. Since the victim was killed while sitting at Tom's desk, the sheriff thinks Tom might have been the intended target and warns him to watch his step. Tom, however, has recently learned an ugly secret about the victim which could have led to his murder, and he doesn't take the warning...