Growing up in the inner-city projects, DeShawn is reluctantly forced into the gang world by circumstances beyond his control.

Told in multiple voices, when popular Mike Parker's girlfriend informs North Bay Academy's principal that he has been hitting her, students react differently, revealing their own insecurities and problems.

What has to happen so that we are forced to redefine our idea of childhood? The appearance of thirty-two violent children of unknown origin completely disrupts the life of San Cristóbal, a small tropical city encased between the jungle and the river. Twenty years later, one of its protagonists wrote this luminous Republic, a chronicle woven of facts, evidence and rumors about how the city was forced to reformulate not only its idea of order and violence...

"Inside a luxury housing complex, two misfit teenagers sneak around and get drunk. Franco Andrade, lonely, overweight, and addicted to porn, obsessively fantasizes about seducing his neighbor-an attractive married woman and mother-while Polo dreams about quitting his grueling job as a gardener within the gated community and fleeing his overbearing mother and their narco-controlled village. Each facing the impossibility of getting what he thinks he...

Zachary, living with his divorced mother in California, finds violence gradually invading his life and making significant changes in his day-to-day existence.

Events leading up to a night of terror at a high school dance are told from the point of view of various people involved.

"As darkness blankets the holy city of Charleston, South Carolina, Brack Pelton, an Afghanistan War veteran, steps out of a rundown bar after a long night. Before he gets to his truck, he finds himself in the middle of a domestic dispute between a man and a woman on the sidewalk. When a little girl joins the couple and gets hit by the man, Brack intervenes and takes him down. But the abuser isn't finished. He pulls a gun and shoots the woman. Brack...