Mara Hiddenbridge, film critic at The Villonia Voice newspaper is content to tuck herself away in a movie theater, write screenplays that never see the light of day, and quietly grieve the sudden death of her father. Content, or comfortably numb, perhaps. Her walled-off world is penetrated when she witnesses a body being recovered from her favorite writing corner in Willow Bend Park, and life begins to imitate art. Meanwhile, a Villonia Michigan Mayoral candidate she's slated to interview about a controversial plan to draw the movie industry to the mid-western state, turns out to be Paolo...

From all outward appearances, Jade Nemo is trouble. The jet-black hair. The nose ring. Her father is absent-perhaps even missing, her step-mother doesn't know what to do with her, and now she's been accused of hatching a master plan of attack at her high school, planting explosives in a student's locker. But no one has bothered to ask Jade what her side of the story is. Until her teacher, Ms. Pearson, and the new school counselor, Mrs. Hamelin, give her a chance. Jade swears she has no intention of violence, and the true threat is Cassie Winters, the popular blond lacrosse captain who no one...