Mary Higgins Clark, America's #1 bestselling author of suspense, always excels in exploring the quirks and twists of the human psyche, and in this new thriller she takes a journey into the uncharted territory of the criminal mind. Anxious to relocate after an acrimonious divorce, Emily Graham decides to buy her great-grandmother's childhood home -- an old Victorian house in the New Jersey seaside resort town of Spring Lake. The family had sold the house in 1892, after one of Emily's great-aunts, then still a young girl, disappeared. Now, more than a century later, as the house is being renovated and the backyard excavated for a pool, the body is found. But as one mystery is solved another begins, for next to those skeletal remains lies another body -- that of eighteen-year-old Martha Lawrence, who disappeared from her Spring Lake home only nine years ago. It soon becomes apparent that by trying to reclaim some part of her family's past, Emily has stumbled upon secrets that will threaten a devious and seductive killer. She will soon learn that he has chosen her as his next victim.