Rosa Rivera-Ortiz is an up-and-coming lawyer in a San Diego firm. Held back by her ethnicity and her gender, she works twice as hard as her colleagues, and she's as surprised as anyone when she's requested specifically1 for a high-profile case. Bron Welty, an A-list actor and action star, has been arrested for the murder of his live-in housekeeper. The cop heading the case is older, ex-military, a veteran of more than one war, and an occasional sufferer of PTSD. Rosa's hired to defend the movie star; and it seems like an easy win until she uncovers some secrets that not only make her believe her client is guilty, but may be one of the worst serial killers in the past two decades... and he knows she found out.
Zion Jones is a police interrogator in Miami's overburdened police department. He's up to his eyeballs in paperwork and really doesn't have time for another case, but when his best friend and fellow cop is shot in a burglary-gone-wrong, he's willing to take on a few extra cases. The next interrogation was supposed to be routine: a murder, a suspect, a suspicious amount of transferred cash. But the moment he gets in the room, he knows something is wrong. This suspect isn't scared. This suspect is laughing, and proceeds to tell Zion personal, too-intimate-to-be-hearsay details on cold case murders going back nearly a hundred years. It gets weirder: for reasons unknown, the digital recording came up blank, as if no conversation had taken place. Of course, everything Zion has to report is dismissed—it's nonsense, nothing that can be proven, and it was just an attempt to mess with his head. Right? If that's so, then why does Zion feel like someone's watching him everywhere he goes, as if just waiting for him to make a move on the terrible details he's been given?
It's the Cold War. Sergei, a double-agent for the CIA working in Berlin, is about to retire when he's given one final mission: he's been asked to "defect" to the USSR to help find and assassinate a suspected double-agent for the Kremlin. Sergei is highly trusted, and he's given to understand that this mission is need-to-know only between him and very few superior officers. But as he falls deeper into the folds of the Iron Curtain, he begins to suspect that his superior officer might just be the mole, and the mark Sergei's been sent to kill is on the cusp of exposing the leak.
It's 1952. A small town in the Midwest is rocked by the brutal murder of Mary, a "colored" eleven-year-old girl, who's been bludgeoned until nearly unrecognizable. The sheriff, Joe Everyguy, is an upstanding and well-respected man who is determined to get to the bottom of what might be the grisliest case of his career. But as the crime unfolds, revealing prejudice, covered up abuse, and sexual philandering in and around the school, he begins to realize two things: one, there's such a hotbed of crime and immorality in the heart of his small town that if he doesn't root it out, it could destroy them all. And two, all the evidence points toward one suspect: his own daughter, Linda, Mary's classmate and supposed friend. The town wants to hush this up, less concerned about a black girl's death than about ruffling feathers. Sheriff Everyguy is terrified the truth will destroy his family if he keeps pushing for answers—he can't uncover the cabal without exposing his daughter. If he quits now, he abandons a lifetime of intentional integrity and the town he loves as home. But if he keeps going, he might just be sacrificing his little girl's life.
It's 3012 AD. The Earth has long been left behind as uninhabitable. Justice Jones, retired special forces (think MacGyver + Marines), enjoys his quiet new employment as art appraiser on Tethys, one of Saturn's lovely terraformed moons. He's a staunch agnostic, which makes him stand out; most of Tethys' population ascribe to one of two religions: the Cats, who believe that mankind should stop exploring and be content with the two dozen or so moons and planets occupied, and the Dogs, who hold to a sort of demented Manifest Destiny that humankind should populate the whole universe. Justice ignores all of this ninety percent of the time; unfortunately, when he walks into the museum late one night to inspect a possible forgery of 1000-year-old Martian sculpture, he finds two dead bodies: the leaders of the Cats and Dogs, respectively. Each side blames the other for their leader's death, and before long, the arguments erupt into violence. There are innocents on this small moon; there aren't any major forms of government, or military presence. As the tensions grow thicker and the body count grows higher, Justice finds himself coming out of retirement to save the innocents on this moon who are about to be caught in the crossfire. The Cats and Dogs may be out for blood, but they've never encountered anything like Justice Jones.
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