In the criminal justice system, sexually-based offenses are considered especially heinous. In New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Special Victims Unit. These are their stories.

Raymond "Red" Reddington, one of the FBI's most wanted fugitives, surrenders in person at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. He claims that he and the FBI have the same interests: bringing down dangerous criminals and terrorists. In the last two decades, he's made a list of criminals and terrorists that matter the most but the FBI cannot find because it does not know they exist. Reddington calls this "The Blacklist". Reddington will co-operate, but insists that he will speak only to Elizabeth Keen, a rookie FBI profiler.

A crime she committed in her youthful past sends Piper Chapman to a women's prison, where she trades her comfortable New York life for one of unexpected camaraderie and conflict in an eccentric group of fellow inmates.

Dr. Beaumont Rosewood, Jr. is a brilliant private pathologist who uses wildly sophisticated technology and his drive to live life to the fullest to help a tough-as-nails detective and the Miami PD uncover clues no one else can see.

After visiting her father's grave, Lilly and her mother are involved in a terrible car accident leaving Lilly orphaned and unable to see. In her youth, she struggles with her blindness and begins to hear voices. Unbeknownst to her they don't belong to the living. After years of learning to cope, Lilly is now happily married with a baby on the way. Lilly soon discovers her unborn baby has become a vessel a second chance for souls stuck in limbo to be re-born. She only has until the baby's first heartbeat to decide which soul will be re-born through her. Now the voices she heard in her youth have returned, clamoring for the chance to come back. Among the voices, she befriends the spirit of a little girl tied to a years-old cold case. Lilly finds herself in a desperate struggle with the girl's murderers and the souls vying to be born again.

A jet-setting model leads a freewheeling life in Mexico City until she falls in love with an artist.

Unsatisfied with his his place in New York's art scene, Artist Peter Bjorn relocates to Berlin in search of change. Meanwhile in a remote Polish village, Alicia prepares to become a nun but, feeling home in nature, her reveries continually distract her from her religious path. Both lost in their own ways, their friendship leads them to yet another new beginning.