What initially appears to be a low-level mob hit takes on new meaning when a high-ranking crime figure is found dead on Paradise Beach. Jesse Stone and private investigator Sunny Randall team up to solve two cases involving the gunshot murder of Petrov Ognowski and a religious cult holding an 18-year-old girl against her will.

When a mysterious cult moves in on the outskirts of Toussaint, it's up to Du Pré to investigate whether the members are merely eccentric-or murderous The Eides have owned cattle in Montana since 1882, but a few days after they pull up stakes and sell their property, their homestead goes up in flames. When Gabriel Du Pré arrives on scene, nothing is left but the ashes. A serene young man appears, insisting that the fires were set purposefully and...

"Ever since her father was killed when she was just a child, Miranda Crabtree has kept her head down and her eyes up, ferrying contraband for a mad preacher and his declining band of followers to make ends meet and to protect an old witch and a secret child from harm. But dark forces are at work in the bayou, both human and supernatural, conspiring to disrupt the rhythms of Miranda's peculiar and precarious life. And when the preacher makes an unthinkable...

"For 13 years, members of the Holy Family Church have been living in Haven Valley, Tenn., safely tucked away from furies that are cleansing the immoral world of evil and darkness. They live under the protection of Sylous, an angel who warned them of the apocalypse--with the condition they follow his laws and remain pure. Nineteen-year-old Grace has been helping her older brother Jamie slip past the guards to explore beyond the red rope perimeter,...

"When Jasmyn and King Williams move their family to the planned Black utopia of Liberty, California, they hope to find a community of like-minded people, a place where their growing family can thrive. King settles in at once, embracing the Liberty ethos, including the luxe wellness center at the top of the hill, which proves to be the heart of the community. But Jasmyn struggles to fit in. She expected to find liberals and social justice activists...

"A childhood spent in a dangerous cult left Sunday Night never with a bone-deep instinct for survival that's kept her alive into adulthood but left her mostly friendless. Forced into early retirement from the police force due to an injury, Sunnie retreats from an outside world she doesn't trust and sees little use for, until a wealthy woman contacts her with a plea: her teenage granddaughter has been missing since the day of a bombing near a Jewish...

"Revenge isn't the only dish served cold... Ali Reynolds's longtime friend and Taser-carrying nun, Sister Anselm, rushes to the bedside of a young pregnant woman hospitalized for severe injuries after she was hit by a car on a deserted Arizona highway. The girl had been running away from The Family, a polygamous cult with no patience for those who try to leave its ranks. Meanwhile, married life agrees with Ali. But any hopes that she and her husband,...

"Now that she has her driver's license, sixteen-year-old Ruby sets out in search of her birth mother. What she finds is a ramshackle house of castaway women, referred to as 'sisters,' ruled over by a charismatic bully who monitors their every move and her mother with a ten-year-old daughter desperate to escape"--

Siren Song is an isolated island tucked between the mountains and the sea off the wild Oregon coast. Some people call it The Colony. Others whisper it's a cult. For a group of women with extraordinary gifts, it's both home and refuge. Until evil returns to burn it all down.... The note pinned to the dead body found on the remote beach has no name, just Ravinia Rutledge's phone number and the words "Next of Kin." Ravinia insists she doesn't recognize...

When twelve-year-old Fern and her mother abruptly leave their isolated, off-the-grid community, Fern wants nothing more than to return, but things get murky as she slowly adjusts to her new life and discovers unsettling truths about her old one.