Grace Divine, almost 17, learns a dark secret when Daniel Kalbi, her childhood friend--practically a brother--returns, upsetting her minister-father and the rest of her family, around the time strange things are happening in and near their small Minnesota town.
To free herself from an upcoming arranged marriage, Claudia, the daughter of the Warden of Incarceron, a futuristic prison with a mind of its own, decides to help a young prisoner escape.
In a future North America, where the rulers of Panem maintain control through an annual televised survival competition pitting young people from each of the twelve districts against one another, sixteen-year-old Katniss's skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her younger sister's place.