Under cover of night in Richmond, Virginia, a human monster strikes, leaving a gruesome trail of stranglings that has paralysed the city. Medical examiner Kay Scarpetta suspects the worst: a deliberate campaign by a brilliant serial killer whose signature offers precious few clues. With an unerring eye, she calls on the latest advances in forensic research to unmask the madman.

A new reign of terror has fallen on the unsuspecting residents of Cocoa Beach. They think their worst nightmare is the environmental catastrophe causing the thousands of dead fish in the river until the first body turns up among the dead fish. Young girls are being kidnapped. Behind these kidnappings stands a ghostly person who calls himself the Boxer. He stalks the girls and chats with them until he decides whom to pick up and sell.

Life is not done throwing Eva Rae Thomas curveballs. A phone call turns her life upside down - once again. The call is from her father, the man she hasn’t seen in 36 years, not since he kidnapped her sister in a supermarket. Now, he is back in Florida, and he needs her help. Her younger brother - who she didn’t know existed - has been arrested on Amelia Island. The boy is in a coma after being shot by an officer during the incident. But his father doesn’t believe the police, and he asks for Eva Rae’s help to prove it.

Peter and Mary Marshall went on a vacation with their son and daughter, but returned without their children. They went missing from their hotel room one night while the couple was downstairs in the restaurant for dinner. They never saw them again. Ten years later, the Marshalls have put the murder of their children behind them, moved to a different state, and had another child - a son.

Emma Frost is tied up in a murder mystery that seems out of this world. When a young girl disappears one night from the park, then turns up again the next morning in a different place on the island, people start to talk about her. Was she drunk and just unable to remember what happened? Did she go home with a guy and won't admit it? What happened to her, and why is she insisting that she doesn't know?

Ian Marks is terrified of ghosts. Especially the ghost that moved into his shed in the backyard of his house in New Orleans. Everyone else thinks he is just a drunk, but when his girlfriend is killed at night by a man with an axe, he knows he was right to be afraid. Mary Mills and Joey Wilson are going to New Orleans to find their son Salter. Mary’s brother was spotted there, so together with her ex-husband, she is willing to fight Blake to get her son back.

Ex-agent Eva Rae Thomas is on the run. The past month, she has done things she never knew she was capable of while hunting for her kidnapped daughter. Eva Rae has risked everything: her career, her newfound love, her freedom. She’s looking for the man they call the Iron Fist. The trail has led her to Miami. Meanwhile, Miami is under attack. Hundreds of passengers in the Metrorail are exposed to a deathly nerve gas on a peaceful Monday morning. When Eva Rae Thomas sees her daughter on the surveillance footage from the attack, she knows it is no coincidence.

What if a stranger told you that she believed your child is about to be killed? What if that woman was an ex-FBI profiler with a disputable reputation? Would you believe her? Eva Rae Thomas is chasing down a vicious killer, but no one will believe he even exists. If there are no unexplained dead bodies or missing persons, then how can there be a killer on the loose? What they don’t understand is that the perfect murder is the one that doesn’t look like murder. Can Eva Rae convince local law enforcement to help her with this case before the killer strikes once more?

While her life is going from bad to worse, journalist Mary Mills receives a phone call from her father telling her that her brother has been arrested for murder. Mary decides to go back to her hometown of Cocoa Beach, Florida, which she left 20 years back and has never visited since. Working with her old friends from the 7th Street Crew, she tracks down the most disturbing and surprising killer this town has ever faced before a shocking conclusion turns everything upside down for them.

Detective Harry Hunter of Miami PD’s homicide squad throws himself into a case no one asked him to solve. Four teenagers from one of Miami's affluent neighborhoods are murdered on a boat. Another is found in a dumpster. All five of them go to the same school and are on a list of witnesses to another crime.

Three girls disappear on prom night at the local high school. One of them is the prom queen. FBI profiler Eva Rae Thomas is chasing her long-lost sister when detective and boyfriend Matt Miller asks her to join the investigation of the three girls’ disappearance. They were last seen walking home together after the dance. When the body of a young girl shows up in her backyard, Eva Rae knows she can no longer watch from the sidelines, and soon, she realizes that not only is she involved in this investigation, she’s also this killer’s target.

They take turns with the knife, cutting their thumbs open. A drop of blood lands on the dark wooden table. Eyes meet across the room. All four thumbs are pressed against each other one by one. Blood is shared, secrets buried. Years later a brutal madman sprays bullets into a crowd at a movie theater in Miami and sends a chill through the entire nation. When human remains are discovered in the dense forest next to a biking trail in Brevard County, it is only the beginning of a series of gruesome murders which will shock the entire Space Coast.

Miss Polly had a dolly. A beautiful daughter that she called her Baby Doll. Every day she dressed her in dresses and brushed her hair before they went outside to show off to the neighbors. On the playground one day her Baby Doll talked to a boy, and for one unforgivable second, Miss Polly let herself be distracted by a woman telling her how adorable she thought her daughter was. When Miss Polly finally turned to look for her Baby Doll, she was gone.

When 12-year-old Sophie Williams went on a Girl Scout summer camp, she never returned home. Three months later, her body is found inside her sleeping bag in the most frequented area of Cocoa Beach, and the town is outraged. The girl isn't just any child. She's the town's most beloved surf idol, and it was believed that she could be the next Kelly Slater. As another child, the son of a well-known senator is kidnapped, and the parents receive a disturbing video. FBI profiler Eva Rae Thomas, who has just returned to her hometown, divorced and out of a job, plunges into the investigation.

Everyone adores Miss May, except the guilty. In a small town where neighbors know each other, lawn chairs come out in the spring; if you sit around chatting long enough, someone brings you pie; and there are still skeletons in every closet. Luckily for Pine Grove, Miss May has a nose for crime. The body was found face-down in the orchard.