Melinda Holonbrook’s grandmother Ellen always wears the same necklace—one shaped like a small house with transparent walls that’s filled with little clear, white diamonds. Ellen has often told Melinda that she is the only one who can wear the necklace and that if anyone else tried, terrible things would befall them, as they did Ellen and her siblings many years ago.Melinda doesn’t believe her grandmother, until she begins coveting the necklace herself.One day, when her siblings and parents are away from home, Melinda tries to steal the necklace from Ellen and ultimately resorts to stabbing her with a fireplace poker and pushing her out of her bedroom window to get her hands on it. Ellen falls to her death, and the necklace she has worn for the past sixty years drops onto the floor and bursts open, scattering the diamonds.Before Melinda can snatch up the diamonds and the necklace, her parents and siblings, having heard the commotion as they entered the house, burst into the room. Melinda and her ten brothers and sisters end up killing their parents to take possession of the necklace and bury their corpses in the backyard along with Ellen’s. Melinda’s older brother Ash Holonbrook becomes the new head of the family, and—for a time, the Holonbrook siblings live happily together at their estate with the diamonds they have split evenly among themselves, until one day, Melinda’s little sister kills her twin brother and steals his diamonds.Then begins a fight among Melinda and her siblings over who will have the most diamonds—all of which are worth millions of dollars apiece. Even with the occasional truces in the household, it’s a hard thing to hide from the outside world when your siblings are disappearing one by one—especially with a pair of nosy homicide detectives snooping around.