Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her bedroom in her family's Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims-a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story-and survive this homecoming.