In Monroe, Tennessee, Hank Deerfield, an aging warrior, gets a call that his son, just back from 18 months' fighting in Iraq, is missing from his base. Hank drives to Fort Rudd, New Mexico, to search. Within a day, the charred and dismembered body of his son is found on the outskirts of town. Deerfield pushes himself into the investigation, marked by jurisdictional antagonism between the Army and local police. Working mostly with a new detective, Emily Sanders, Hank seems to close in on what happened. Major smuggling? A drug deal gone awry? Credit card slips, some photographs, and video clips from Iraq may hold the key. If Hank gets to the truth, what will it tell him?

Trapped in his mother's Lower East Side apartment, sixteen-year-old Finn wants nothing more than to escape New York and spend the summer in South America studying the Iskanani Indians, or "Fierce People," with the anthropologist father he's never met. But Finn's dreams are shattered when he is arrested in a desperate effort to help his drug-dependent mother, Liz, who scrapes by working as a masseuse. Determined to get their lives back on track, Liz moves the two of them into a guest house on the vast country estate of her ex-client, the aging aristocratic billionaire, Ogden C. Osbourne. In Osbourne's close world of privilege and power, Finn and Liz encounter a tribe fiercer and more mysterious than anything they might find in the South American jungle: the super rich. While Liz battles her substance abuse and struggles to win back her son's love and trust...

David Kirmani,a medical professional, lives in an apartment with his sweetheart, Erica Bain, a radio host, and his dog. They usually take the dog out for a stroll in nearby Central Park and let him run and fetch. One day while at the park they let the dog run without a leash, and when he does not return or respond to their calls, they frantically search for him. They eventually find him being held by three men who want a reward. When David refuses, they start to molest Erica and David intervenes. Two of the men assault the couple, while the third uses a camcorder to film this incident. Erica is knocked unconscious, and regains her senses several days later in a hospital. She is told the shocking news that David was killed and the dog is missing. A traumatized Erica returns home to try and regain her life. She also visits the police station but does not get much help. Fearful of a repeat of this type of incident...