"A knockout performance...This one is a classic: Robert Stone at his most unrelenting, with nerve-grating additional material contributed by Jim Thompson and dialogue by George V. Higgins. Lehane shows his talent for narrative economy in a surprisingly rich account (’Gone Down to Corpus’) of Texas high-school football jocks trashing the elegant homes of their ’betters.’ The taut, disturbing ’Until Gwen’ explores the murderous bonds linking a soulless con man, his’hapless son (and sometime accomplice) and Gwen, whose fate drives the story toward its excruciating conclusion. And if all this wasn’t sufficient evidence of Lehane’s virtuosity, there’s Coronado, which expands ’Until Gwen’ into a two-act play that reshuffles its aforementioned characters into three doomed couples who enact a murderous and suicidal progression through dynamic action, flashbacks and harrowing fantasy sequences."

--Kirkus Reviews(starred review)

A small southern town gives birth to a dangerous man with a broken heart and a high-powered rifle...A young girl, caught up in an inner-city gang war, crosses the line from victim to avenger.... An innocent man is hunted by government agents for an unspecified crime... A boy and a girl fall in love while ransacking a rich man’s house during the waning days of the Vietnam War.... A compromised psychiatrist confronts the unstable patient he slept with A father and a son wage a lethal battle of wits over the whereabouts of a stolen diamond and a missing woman

Along with completely original material, this new collection is a compilation of the best of Dennis Lehane’s previously published short stories, including "Until Gwen," which was adapted for the stage in 2005 and appears in this book as the play Coronado.

At turns suspenseful, surreal, romantic, and tragically comic, these tales journey headlong into the heart of our national myths--about class, gender, freedom, and regeneration through violence--and reveal that the truth waiting for us there is not what we’d expect.

Running Out of Dog

ICU

Gone Down to Corpus

Mushrooms

Until Gwen

Coronado: A Play in Two Acts