For eighteen years, Professor Anne Waverly has divided her time between teaching theology and working as an undercover operative for the FBI to infiltrate the often dangerous world of religious sects. Once again, she changes her identity and joins a religious community called Change.

Soon Anne -- as the eager, pliable seeker Ana Wakefield -- grows unexpectedly close to two abandoned children fostered by Change. Fourteen-year-old Jason is a tough, wary street kid, and his little sister Dulcie reminds Anne all too much of her own lost daughter.

Traveling from Arizona to the English countryside, Anne confronts not only the distorted goals and values of the community but the phantoms that lurk in her own past.

In A Darker Place, Laurie King masterfully reinvents the novel of psychological suspense, creating a complex and iron-willed woman who, in searching for the truth among the darker places of her past, discovers her own redemption.