Violets are blue.
Roses are red.
One of you bitches
Will soon be dead.

Those lines weren't quite what greeting-card entrepreneur Molly Masters had in mind when she encouraged her weekend workshop students to write a bit of verse, anonymously. Eerily, within hours, one of her aspiring writers is murdered, apparently without rhyme or reason.

Or so Molly thinks until a storm and a blackout isolate the group in their mountain retreat. Katherine the professor, Nancy the shrink, Lois the doting mom, Julie the dog breeder, and Celia the big pest. Behind each one's suburban facade lurk passions unfit for family greeting cards, and a rage for life—and death. . . .