Publisher Will Atenton quits a lucrative job in New York to relocate his wife, Libby, and their daughters to a quaint town in New England. However, as they settle into their home the Atentons discover that a woman and her children were murdered there, and the surviving husband is the town's prime suspect. With help from a neighbor who was close to the murdered family, Will pieces together a horrifying chain of events.

In their new overseas home, an American family soon finds themselves caught in the middle of a coup, and they frantically look for a safe escape in an environment where foreigners are being immediately executed.

Cobb, a skilled thief who commits corporate espionage by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible: "inception", the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious.

In a society hypnotized by the glow of the screen, a teenage girl raised in a media-worshipping cult begins to question the system that consumed her family.