Maggie Fraser has tried to forget. The body of the man she loved. The blood seeping into the snow. The scandalous murder trial. The twelve agonizing years in prison for a crime she did not commit. But now Maggie is free -- and ready to start a new life. Alone. Unknown. On a quiet island off the coast of New England, she accepts a job with the local newspaper. And slowly, she tries to put the past behind her, opening her heart to the paper's ruggedly handsome editor, Jess Herlie. Then the nightmare begins...again. Now she must pay.

Someone is watching Maggie's every move -- and waiting for revenge. Someone who refuses to forgive and forget. Someone who would do anything, even destroy innocent lives, to teach the guilty that there is no sanctuary, no escape, for...

 When Tess DeGraff was nine years old and on a camping trip in New Hampshire with her family, a stranger kidnapped and killed her sister Phoebe. Thanks to Tess's eyewitness testimony, a man named Lazarus Abbott was arrested and convicted for the heinous crime. But twenty years later, a test reveals that Abbott's DNA does not match that of Phoebe's murderer. Driven by her fear that she may have sent an innocent man to his death, Tess and her adopted son, Erny, return to the New Hampshire town in which it all happened years ago. Stone Hill, New Hampshire, is still an idyllic New England town. Tess's courageous mother, Dawn, who suffered the violent loss of her daughter and the early death of her heartbroken husband, now runs the charming Stone Hill Inn. Tess's older brother, Jake, lives nearby with his wife, a local girl he fell in love with during the trial of his sister's killer. While Tess's family stands by her account of the crime, nerves are frayed throughout Stone Hill, and others in town accuse her of lying and view her as a murderer. In a race against time to untangle the truth about her sister's murder, Tess encounters an anti-death penalty lawyer, Ben Webster, who infuriates her but who also might open her eyes and her heart; a biased police chief related to the Abbotts; and an unknown killer who has Tess and Erny in his sights.

A high-school teacher acquitted of sexual misconduct with a student becomes a suspect again after a teenage babysitter turns up dead and a toddler is missing. The teacher's wife, plagued by doubts of his innocence, turns to a priest to help pull her life together, realizing too late that she is in mortal danger.

Maddy Blake is a wife, a mom, and a stained-glass artist who is just getting over a very bad year. Her husband Doug, a high school teacher, has been acquitted of sexual misconduct with a student, but the trial has left the Blakes depleted of their finances and their self respect. When a 15-year-old babysitter turns up dead and the toddler she was watching is nowhere to be found, all eyes look to Doug. Plagued by doubts of Doug's innocence and intrigued by a priest for whom her feelings are anything but spiritual, Maddy is preoccupied with her efforts to keep her life from falling apart, and realizes too late that she is in mortal danger.

Beth Pearson has never much liked her younger sister Francie, and it is with great reluctance that she returns home to Maine to attend the funeral of her equally unlovable father.