After her husband runs off with his secretary, Terry Wolfmeyer is left to fend for herself -- and her four daughters. As she hits rock bottom, Terry finds a friend and drinking buddy in next-door neighbor Denny, a former baseball player. As the two grow closer, and her daughters increasingly rely on Denny, Terry starts to have reservations about where their relationship is headed.

A prison ship on its way to a remote island prison runs aground on rocks and sinks. Mixed survivors of cons and prison guards struggle ashore, only to discover to their horror that another survivor got there first - the murderous & psychotic Leo Rook. Stranded, with no means of escape or call for help, the survivors must face a night of terror as they struggle to survive.

The circularity of violence seen in a story that circles on itself. In Macedonia, during the war in Bosnia, Christians hunt an ethnic Albanian girl who may have murdered one of their own. A young monk who's taken a vow of silence offers her protection. In London, a photographic editor who's pregnant needs to talk it out with her estranged husband and chooses a toney restaurant.