Joe Talbert

In the highly-anticipated sequel to the national bestseller The Life We Bury, Joe Talbert returns to investigate the murder of the father he never knew, and to reckon with his own family's past. Joe Talbert, Jr. has never once met his namesake. Now out of college, a cub reporter for the Associated Press in Minneapolis, he stumbles across a story describing the murder of a man named Joseph Talbert in a small town in southern Minnesota. Full of curiosity about whether this man might be his father, Joe is shocked to find that none of the town's residents have much to say about the dead man-other than that his death was long overdue. Joe discovers that the dead man was a loathsome lowlife who cheated his neighbors, threatened his daughter, and squandered his wife's inheritance after she, too, passed away--an inheritance that may now be Joe's. Mired in uncertainty and plagued by his own devastated relationship with his mother, who is seeking to get back into her son's life, Joe must put together the missing pieces of his family history -- before his quest for discovery threatens to put him in a grave of his own.

Lila Nash, Joe Talbert's beloved girlfriend from the USA Today-bestseller The Life We Bury and The Shadows We Hide, takes the lead for the first time in this thrilling new mystery, as she races to outsmart a serial killer and to escape the dark hold of her own past. Lila Nash is on the verge of landing her dream job-working as a prosecutor under the Hennepin County Attorney-and has finally settled into a happy life with her boyfriend, Joe Talbert. But when a new case crosses her desk, things take a personal turn. Sadie Vauk has been pulled from the Mississippi River, barely alive. The police believe her assailant to be local photographer Gavin Spenser, but their evidence is slim. Gavin has been preparing for this moment. He knows that Sadie's escape might cause a lesser mind to panic, but he's no lesser mind. After years of working from the shadows, he will finally match wits with the best, and he knows that he will win. But Lila is driven by her own dark secret. Eight years before, she too survived an unspeakable attack. The more determined Lila becomes to put Gavin behind bars, however, the more elusive justice becomes. Battling a new boss and haunted by her own ghosts, the clock is ticking. In a race against an evil mastermind, it will take everything Lila's got to face what she has feared the most-and to put an end to a killer's ruthless plan.