When a United States diplomat disappears in front of hundreds of onlookers while attending a religious ceremony in Zimbabwe, Diplomatic Security special agent Dominic Grey, product of a violent childhood and a worn passport, is assigned to investigate. Aiding the investigation is Professor of Religious Phenomenology Viktor Radek, as well as Nya Mashumba, the local government liaison.

All Will Blackwood ever wanted was a little adventure. A fantasy addict and apprentice builder in New Orleans, struggling to make ends meet, he has long wished for an escape from the real world. Late one night, he and his brothers receive a surprise inheritance: a staff with a mysterious stone on top, a pair of rogue's bracers, and a sword that Will can barely lift. A man who stops bullets with a glance shows up to take the sword, and the three brothers barely escape with their lives.

Detective Joe "Preach" Everson, a prison chaplain turned police officer, is coming home. After a decade tracking down killers in Atlanta, and with a reputation as one of the finest homicide detectives in the city, his career derailed when he suffered a mental breakdown during the investigation of a serial killer who was targeting children. No sooner does Preach arrive at home in Creekville, North Carolina - a bohemian community near Chapel Hill - than a local bookstore owner is brutally killed, the first murder in a decade.

Former FBI profiler Adrian West is in Rome for a history conference when she learns that her friend and colleague, Dr. Sebastian Rossi, has been abducted.

Just days before a massive exhibition opens at the popular New York Museum of Natural History, visitors are being savagely murdered in the museum's dark hallways and secret rooms. Autopsies indicate that the killer cannot be human.... But the museum's directors plan to go ahead with a big bash to celebrate the new exhibition, in spite of the murders.