Outside the gates of a Californian prison, Peter Morgan is released after four long years and vows to redeem himself in the eyes of the young daughters he left behind. Simultaneously, Carl Waters, a convicted murderer, is set on the path of freedom. Three hundred miles south in San Francisco, police detective Ted Lee comes home to a silent house; for twenty-nine years, he has been living for his job - and slowly falling out of love with his wife. Across town, in exclusive Pacific Heights, Fernanda Barnes faces a mountain of debt, a world destroyed, and a marriage lost. Within weeks, the lives of these four people will collide in ways none of them could have foreseen. For Fernanda, whose life had once been graced by security, success, and stunning wealth, the death of her brilliant husband four months earlier was already too much to bear. Now, a devastating crime rocks her family and brings Detective Ted Lee into her life. A man of unshakable integrity, Lee becomes the one person who tries to save Fernanda's family from a terrifying fate. Fernanda must draw on a strength she never knew she had. Racing against time in the underbelly of the criminal world, buffeted by the dark side of power, and unmoored by loss and betrayal, no one can predict where this tragedy will lead them. Danielle Steel brilliantly explores the collision of a shocking crime with the ordinary lives of its victims. "Ransom" is at once a riveting evocation of life's inexplicable turns of fate and a testament to the human will to survive.