An unprecedented collective features pairings by 23 best-selling and critically acclaimed suspense writers, who in short high-action stories pit their most popular characters against one another.

Successful photographer Jo Ellen Hathaway thought she had put the disappearance of her mother behind her years ago, but when she receives a shocking portrait of her dead mother, she is compelled to return to her childhood home of Sanctuary and learn the truth about her family's past.

Jeremy Marsh is now living in Boone Creek, North Carolina, married to Lexie Darnell, and awaiting the birth of their daughter. But, just when things are looking good, an unsettling and mysterious message brings trouble from the past.

Back in the United States and ensconced in a new home on Big Pine Mountain in North Carolina, Myra, Kathryn, Annie, Alexis, Isabelle, Yoko, and Nikki of the Sisterhood are meeting their new employers, who have a dangerous new assignment in mind.

In the northern California town of Coventry, two teenage brothers go into the woods one day, but only one comes back. No one knows what happened to the younger brother, Josh, until twenty years later, when the older brother, Oren, now an ex-investigator for the Army CID, returns to Coventry for the first time in many years and sets out to solve the mystery of his brother's murder.

"Kit Owens harbored only modest ambitions for herself when the mysterious Diane Fleming appeared in her high school chemistry class. But Diane's academic brilliance lit a fire in Kit, and the two developed an unlikely friendship. Until Diane shared a secret that changed everything between them. More than a decade later, Kit thinks she's put Diane behind her forever, and she's begun to fulfill the scientific dreams Diane awakened in her. But the past...

When Jordie Bennet and Shaw Kinnard lock eyes across a disreputable backwater bar, something definitely sparks. Shaw gives off a dangerous vibe that makes men wary and inspires women to sit up and take notice. None feel that undercurrent more strongly than savvy businesswoman Jordie, who doesn't belong in a seedy dive on the banks of a bayou. But here she is . . . and Shaw Kinnard is here to kill her. As Shaw and his partner take aim, Jordie is certain...

St. Bartholomew's Abbey sits in majestic solitude amid the wild peaks of California's high Sierra, a haven for children otherwise abandoned, and a sanctuary for those seeking insight. Odd Thomas has come here to learn to live fully again. But trouble has a way of finding Odd Thomas, and it slinks back onto his path.

When her small 1920s Oklahoma town booms in the wake of an oil discovery, Jill, the niece of the local hotel owner, is harassed by locals before reluctantly accepting protection from neighbor Thad.