The sins of the past haunt an isolated farmhouse as a snowstorm rages outside . . . It’s not shaping up to be a very merry Christmas. Clover Moon feels trapped in her life as a farmer’s wife. She certainly doesn’t enjoy hosting Fergus’s mother, Violet, who always finds new ways to publicly humiliate her unsatisfactory daughter-in-law. But would Violet ever seek a more violent way of expressing her disapproval?

Widowed London social worker Georgina “Georgie” Jefferson battles guilt and public disgrace when one of her charges, abused five-year-old Angela Hopkins, is beaten to death. She retreats to Furze Pen, an isolated Devon cottage that once belonged to Stephen, the deceased brother she never knew. In this refuge, she hopes to learn something about Stephen. But the hostility of her neighbors and a series of chilling incidents - including the disappearance of her dog.

Abandoned by each of her children’s fathers, Shelley Tremayne’s having a tough time raising six kids alone. When she sees a TV newscast about five boys committing a horrible crime and recognizes her eleven-year-old son Joey in the surveillance camera footage, her life becomes infinitely worse. Although Joey swears he only witnessed the incident, the other boys point to him as the instigator, a charge supported by the evidence. But Shelley simply can’t accept that her Joey could be responsible for such a heinous act.

Money changes everything in this darkly comic tale of romantic revenge. When shy, insecure Liverpudlian Ellie Freeman unexpectedly wins more than a million pounds in the football betting pools, she sees it as a way to transform the life of her bitter, frustrated, and, above all, distant husband Malcolm. She hides the news of her win from Malc, and uses the money to invest in a firm that will give her husband a better job than the warehouseman position he currently holds. And, indeed, the new job does make Malc a new man - a new man who suddenly envisions a life without Ellie.

During their thirty years of marriage, Rose Redfern has confided everything (well, nearly everything) to Michael, and is certain that he would never hide anything from her. That's why it's such a shock when, shortly before Rose and Michael are set to take a romantic trip to Venice, she receives strong evidence that he's having an affair with a woman their daughters' age. Rose feels emotionally unmoored, and her sense of betrayal swiftly turns vengeful. She stumbles across a stash of powerful barbiturates, previously used to medicate an epileptic dog, and wonders if she might not find a new use for them…