Janice Itwaru is an "uncle" --- an undercover narcotics officer --- trying to meet the impossibly high quota of drug busts needed to make detective, or be sent back down to uniformed patrol. With rumors circulating that Internal Affairs has her unit under surveillance, Janice is running very short on luck as her quota deadline approaches. Now she has to decide which evil to confront: the faceless bureaucrats at One Police Plaza, or the violent drug dealers who already may be onto her identity.

Ninety-two-year-old Jossi Goldberg, a Holocaust survivor and an American citizen, is found shot to death execution-style in his house near Frankfurt. The autopsy reveals an old and unsuccessfully covered tattoo on the body’s arm --- a blood type marker once used by Hitler's SS. Two more, similar murders happen, and slowly the connections between the victims become evident: All of them were lifelong friends with Vera von Kaltensee --- baroness, well-respected philanthropist, and head of an old, rich family that she rules with an iron fist.

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.

DESCENT is the story of a family undone by the disappearance of a daughter who went out for a morning run and didn’t come back. The girl’s vanishing is the beginning of the family’s harrowing journey down increasingly divergent and solitary paths, until all that continues to bind them to each other are the questions they can never bring themselves to ask: At what point does a family stop searching? At what point does a girl stop fighting for her life?

Territorial Marshals Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch are back in Appaloosa, where their work enforcing the law has been exceptionally quiet. All that is about to change. An ominous storm rolls in, and along with it a band of night riders with a devious scheme, who show up at the Rio Blanco camp, where a 300-foot bridge is under construction. As clouds over Appaloosa continue to gather, things get much worse for Cole and Hitch.

One weekday afternoon, Jay Johnson is abducted on a Los Angeles Metro train, tranquilized, interrogated, and his paper trail obliterated. What did he see, what terrible crime --- or criminal --- is he keeping secret? Furious and helpless, and convinced that the government has made a colossal mistake, Jay is involuntarily relocated to a community on Catalina Island, where the only way out is through the twisted maze of lies and unreliable memories swirling through his own mind.

The town of Medgar, Kentucky, is beset by a massive Mountaintop Removal operation that is blowing up the hills and back filling the hollows. Fourteen-year-old Kevin's grandfather and others in town attempt to rally the citizens against the “company” and its powerful owner to stop the plunder of their mountain heritage. When Kevin’s friend, Buzzy, witnesses the brutal murder of the opposition leader, a sequence is set in play that tests Buzzy and Kevin to their absolute limits in an epic struggle for survival in the Kentucky mountains.

Robin Monarch is a man with a complicated past and dangerous present, but first and foremost, he is a thief of the highest order. Orphaned at 12, Monarch originally stole for survival, then he stole for his friends and cohorts, now he steals to give back to the woman who saved his life many years ago. Monarch finds a lead on what might be his most audacious exploit ever. A previously undiscovered tribe in South America may well have the secret to the most sought-after knowledge in history --- that of eternal life.

Scotland Yard Detective Joe Sandilands suspects foul play in the violent death of Lady Truelove. He enlists old friend and former constable Lily Wentworth to trail the now-widower Sir James Truelove, and finds an ally in a fellow police officer familiar with the Truelove estate. But as the investigation yields surprising secrets about one of England’s most powerful families, Joe discovers how little he knows about the gilded lives of the moneyed.

From the outside, the house was unremarkable. But inside was a different matter. In all his years on the force, Detective Inspector Phil Brennan of the Major Incident Squad has never encountered a scene like it. As he investigates the murder of an adult woman, he uncovers more bizarre revelations and knows that he must act fast. The next murder has already been planned, and the victim is closer to home than he realizes.