Tom Nibley

Homicide detective Melanie Hudson begins a torrid affair with a senator's son who is a suspect in a series of grisly murders.

Things are not going well in the depression-era town of Castle Gate. Mr. Ribaldi, a mysterious rich man with a disfigured face and an abrasive personality, has just bought and moved into a long-vacant mansion. Bonnie, an adolescent girl who loves to sing, ends up working for Ribaldi so that her family can stay in their house. But Ribaldi is quite an accomplished musician himself, and he is soon giving Bonnie voice lessons. Meanwhile, local businesses are being shut down by foreclosures, and the townspeople suspect Ribaldi is responsible.

13 years ago, four men met on the river working as rafting guides.

If you were a brilliant young scientist diagnosed with only months to live, what choices would you make? To have faith that you were taken early for a reason and go quietly, or to use cryogenics to hope you could be cured someday in the future, or to download your consciousness into computer memory where you could still continue to interact with the ones you love?