Painters Mill, Ohio may be a sleepy, rural town with both Amish and English residents, but it's also the place where a series of murders shattered the lives of an entire community. When the killing stopped, it left a sense of fragility and for the young Amish girl, Kate Burkholder, a realisation that she didn't belong.

The sound of a scream at dawn leads to a case that will change Chief of Police Kate Burkholder's life irrevocably. When the police arrive at the Amish farmstead in Painters Mill they can't imagine the horror that awaits them. An entire family slaughtered: the men shot, the young women tortured and killed.

Chief of police Kate Burkholder is back

A rainy night, a father returning home with his three children, a speeding car hurtling toward them out of nowhere. What at first seems like a tragic, but routine, car accident suddenly takes on a more sinister cast as evidence emerges that nothing about the crash is accidental. But who would want to kill an Amish deacon and his children? He leaves behind a grieving widow and a young boy who clings to life in the intensive-care wing of a hospital, unable to communicate. He may be the only one who knows what happened that night. Desperate to find out who killed her best friend's husband and...

Everyone in Painters Mill knows the abandoned Hochstetler farm is haunted. Ghost stories abound, but no one knows what really happened that terrible night thirty-five years ago when an Amish father and his four children perished-and his young wife disappeared without a trace. When Chief of Police Kate Burkholder is called to the scene of an apparent suicide-a man found hanging from the rafters in his barn-evidence quickly points to murder. She finds herself following an elusive trail that points back to the tragedy of that long ago incident. Meanwhile, Kate has moved in with state agent John...