A young man cares for his younger sisters after their mother is imprisoned for murdering their abusive father. When he strikes up an affair with a married woman, long-dormant family secrets bubble to the surface.
When his young son vanishes, a widower enlists help from his estranged father, a retired detective who put away the serial killer now linked to the case.
Massachusetts, 1892. An unmarried woman of 32 and a social outcast, Lizzie lives a claustrophobic life under her father's cold and domineering control. When Bridget Sullivan, a young maid, comes to work for the family, Lizzie finds a sympathetic, kindred spirit, and a secret intimacy soon blossoms into a wicked plan.
Teen skater Ken Park (nicknamed Krap Nek; his name spelled and pronounced backward) kills himself at a Visalia skate park; his death bookends the lives of four other young people who knew him: Shawn, the most conventional; Tate brims with psychotic rage; Claude is habitually harassed by his brutish father and coddled, rather uncomfortably, by his enormously pregnant mother; and Peaches looks after her devoutly religious father, but yearns for freedom. They're all rather tight, or so they claim.
Sara is a teen girl who is looking forward to her 18th birthday to move away from her controlling father Don. But before she could even blow out the candles, Don imprisons her in the basement of their home.