After a teenage girl from a poor logging family is found dead at a college party hosted at the home of a prominent Michigan family, a detective on her case must negotiate the area’s local politics—at his own peril.

A young man and his widowed mother move to the Midwestern countryside, where the mother runs a deadly get-rich-quick scheme.

A large factory is shut down in a small town in Illinois, and the town's residents face a sudden economic depression — until a prison is built where the factory had been, invigorating the economy but bringing along with it unintended consequences.

When a friend from his drug-dealing past shows up unannounced, a filmographer who lives in the suburbs of Long Island must reckon with how to preserve his suburban fantasy while he tries to save his friend from their former dealer.

A man recounts his life experience in New York, covering the various people near and dear to him, as well as the growth of the city itself.

In Iowa, a young Black man goes to a party where he meets a host of artist types who cause him to reflect on how people relate to each other.

In small town in Iowa, a woman who works at the American Gothic House forms a relationship with a famed serial killer. She begins to think about violence, death, and who has the power to kill.

In Chicago in the 1920s, a young gangster gets a windfall of cash and aims to spend it on his girlfriend and himself before his luck runs out.

Three boys navigate their youth in Chicago, but are forced to grow up quickly when they start cooking drugs for money.

After struggling to appeal to their state governor, a dysfunctional family anxiously awaits the public execution of a relative. As they wait at home new of the execution, tensions and strife erupt in a dispute over the relative's innocence.