Enraged by a sexist article in the Pittsburgh Dispatch, Elizabeth Cochrane pens a furious letter to the editor that results in a job offer! Saddled with the name Nellie Bly, she struggles against the male-dominated newspaper industry to report what no one else will—stories of women. Bly can break into New York’s Newspaper Row if she can nab a major scoop—life inside a madhouse! Feigning madness, she is committed to the Insane Asylum on Blackwell’s Island, where matters are far worse than she dreamed.

Pioneering undercover journalist Nellie Bly is rightly famous for exposing society's ills. From brutal insane asylums to corrupt politicians, she used the pages of the New York World to bring down all manner of frauds, cheats, and charlatans.

In a small harbor town in Maine, police officer Reese Link’s first day on the force begins with a bang: the first homicide this town has seen in years. Reese hopes to step into her dead brother’s shoes, but with her newly assigned partner having just shot himself and a diabolical killer on the loose, Reese wonders: does she have what it takes to outwit him—and to save another life?

Clara Newton is the new Housemother of Shilling Grange Orphanage. Many of the children have been bombed out of their homes and left without families, their lives torn apart by the war, just like Clara’s. Devastated by the loss of her fiancé, a brave American pilot, she is just looking for a place to start again. But the orphans are in desperate need of her help.

Pioneering journalist Nellie Bly is best remembered for two "stunts": her undercover expose of the Blackwell's Island insane asylum, and her race around the world to beat the record set in Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days. Yet those events do not begin to grasp the scope of her career as a reporter.