Four blistering novellas, drawn together by themes of strife, violence, and humanity, from esteemed crime fiction writer George Pelecanos; “Like his hero Elmore Leonard, Pelecanos finds the humanity in the lowest of lowlifes.”(Chicago Tribune)

When the son of the Carusos is involved in a hold up, the family home comes under siege in the form of a no-knock warrant. Months after the cops destroyed their home, the Carusos struggle to return to normal. Elsewhere, two former inmates reunite by chance on the set of a TV production. Both have found their way on the straight and narrow path, that is, until one sees the potential for an easy grift. A teenage boy must step into the man he’d like to be as a hostage crisis grips his hometown. A woman adrift meets a man tied to her grandmother’s past, an encounter that awakens her to a bloody history that undergirds the place she grew up.