Kay Scarpetta and her colleague Pete Marino investigate the case of a man killed by a shotgun blast to the chest, while a woman is trapped in an abandoned house in the South after being kidnapped by an unknown captor.

"Minnesota, 1862: As a woman fleeing from a dark and secret past, Sarah Wakefield leaves Rhode Island quietly and quickly under cover of night for the long journey to Minnesota where she has been advised there is good work to be had. She soon finds a husband who becomes a resident physician for a Sioux town there but the political backdrop of that moment is volatile: white settlers are breaking treaties, Native American land is shrinking, and mass...

Something scary is happening to boys today. From kindergarten to college, they are less resilient and less ambitious than they were a mere twenty years ago. As for young men, it turns out the film Failure to launch is not far from the truth. Fully one-third of men ages 22-34 are still living at home with their parents--about a 100 percent increase in the past twenty years. Boys nationwide are increasingly dropping out of school; fewer are going to...