Owen Thomas

The Johns family is unraveling. Hollis, a retired Ohio banker, isolates himself in esoteric hobbies and a dangerous flirtation with a colleague's daughter. Susan, his wife of 40 years, risks everything for a second chance at who she might have been....

Still grieving the death of his wife, Marlo, and wasting away in a retirement forced upon him under a cloud of suspicion, Raymond “Mack” Mackey finds a new job with the Chandler Illinois Police Department. It might be reason for hope. Or not.

Her parents named her Calico Watts, a name she hates as much as she does the rest of her life. Growing up a child of divorce in Weldon Spring, Missouri has left Cali numb, without identity or purpose, sapped of any ambition for the future and even for the one thing all teenagers crave: freedom....

Raymond Mackey is a struggling crime writer. His friends call him Mack. But friends are in short supply these days. Mack’s 30 years as a homicide detective came to the kind of abrupt, ignominious end that tends to make friends dry up and blow away....