Esteemed crime fiction writer George Pelecanos has penned four blistering novellas, drawn together by themes of strife, violence and humanity. 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, 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.

Michael Hudson spends the long days in prison devouring books given to him by the prison's librarian, a young woman named Anna who develops a soft spot for her best student. Anna keeps passing Michael books until one day he disappears, suddenly released after a private detective manipulated a witness in Michael's trial. Outside, Michael encounters a Washington, D.C. that has changed a lot during his time locked up. But what hasn't changed is the hard choice between the temptation of crime and doing what's right. Trying to balance his new job, his love of reading, and the debt he owes to the man who got him released, Michael struggles to figure out his place in this new world before he loses control.

Whether they're cops or conmen, savage killers or creative types, gangsters or God-fearing citizens, George Pelecanos' characters are always engaged in a fight for their lives. They fight to advance or simply to survive; they fight against odds, against enemies, even against themselves. In this, his first collection of stories, the acclaimed novelist introduces readers to a vivid and eclectic cast of combatants.

The job seems simple enough: retrieve the valuable painting "The Double" Grace Kinkaid's ex-boyfriend stole from her. But Grace wants Spero Lucas to find the man who humiliated her --- a violent career criminal with a small gang of brutal thugs at his beck and call. In the midst of a steamy, passionate love affair that he knows can't last, Lucas is forced to decide what kind of man he is --- and how far he'll go to get what he wants.

In 1972, Derek Strange has left the police department and set up shop as a PI. His former partner, Frank "Hound Dog" Vaughn, is still on the force. When a young woman comes to Strange asking for his help recovering a cheap ring she claims has sentimental value, the case leads him onto Vaughn's turf, where a local drug addict has been murdered, shot point-blank in his apartment.

THE CUT is the first book in a series starring recent Iraqi vet-turned-private-investigator Spero Lucas, who recovers stolen property for the clients of a defense attorney for a 40% cut. But he comes upon a web of corruption that even the enticement of the cut cannot top.