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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

A father facing mental and physical debilitations has his sights set on capturing a drop of sunlight to bring joy to everyone in his small hometown. Despite his good deed, the town finds it necessary to deliberate: is this man an alcoholic, mentally ill, or a criminal?

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.

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.