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.

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.

An expatriate and veteran of the Jazz Age tries to regain custody of his daughter, but the ghosts of his darkly opulent lifestyle stand in the way.

As a Chinese-American widower and professor of philosophy contemplates the life he has provided his two daughters, he recalls a traumatic memory from his youth as a delivery boy for a Chinese restaurant, riding through the dangerous streets of New York City.

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

In a segregated America at the onset of World War II, strange, explosive “stumps”—formed out of spores and resembling wooden statues of the recently deceased—have begun to appear all over cities. To neutralize and remove these stumps, a new government agency has employed a group of singers whose unique vocal resonance can turn the stumps to dust. But when the only two Black female “exterminators” in Chicago—a God-fearing goody two-shoes and a brash blues singer—uncover the agency's corrupt secrets, they decide to stage a rebellion.

A wealthy man in Chicago suddenly learns about the untimely death of a poor woman he'd been dating. Confronted with her child, whom he'd begun to develop a bond with, he must determine to what extent he will allow his greed to overcome his compassion.

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

In a town so small it can hardly be called a town, a black woman serves a rich white family until a series of horrific events causes the single joy in her life to vanish.

When a young man graduates college and inherits money from his grandfather, he decides to move to France for a year, hoping to feel more at home than he ever did in Chicago.