Upon his return from serving a ten-year sentence in prison, reformed gang leader, S. Lance Ingram, struggles to adapt to a changed Harlem. Unable to use the technological skills he acquired in jail, Lance is forced to accept a position delivering meals for a local food bank. It is here that he befriends Ms. Maddy, 75, a past beauty with a irreverent and hardened shell to whom he delivers dinners. Through her, Lance finds hope, relearning the joys of life and living despite the outwardly bedeviled society in which they find themselves.
After the gangsters who killed his father come to settle a score, a teenage boy and his mother turn the tables on the killers - one Latino family's quest for honor and revenge as the hunted become the hunters.
Andrew and his older brother Carl enjoy listening to ghost stories that the local undertaker tells them. One night he tells the tale of a local farmer whose wife gave birth to Siamese twins, one being good natured while the other was clearly evil. The farmer, ashamed of them, kept the twins locked in their room. Eventually the twins got sick and died together, so the farmer sawed them in half and buried the good twin in a cemetery and the bad twin in a shallow grave near the house. Later, Carl and his friends decide to hold a séance in the cemetery where the good twin is buried, but they unintentionally awaken the bad twin instead. Gradually, he possesses nearly everyone in town and it is up to young Andrew to stop him.
Albert is an introverted travel agent living a lonely life in New York. When Louie, his best friend from childhood, appears having just escaped from prison, Albert's quiet existence is permanently disrupted. what ensues is one long, crazy night in New York that will change both their lives forever.
When Redmon finds himself out of home and job, his life becomes a series of unpredictable escapades - from dodging gunfire after his uncle makes him deliver a highly suspicious package to pursuing a moody stewardess he thinks has come to save him. Soon Redmond begins to suspect his road of mishap might actually be the path to the truth he has been seeking all along.
After her husband is arrested for looting, Lisette struggles for independence while dealing with her gender-confused sibling, her critical mother-in-law and assorted neighborhood eccentrics.
Jack is in the midst of a major robbery, which leaves him injured and his accomplices dead. Jack manages to hide the $500,000 from the robbery before he makes his way to his death bed.
Chantel Mitchell, a hip, articulate, black high-school girl in Brooklyn, is determined not to become "just another girl on the IRT" (the IRT is one of NYC's subway lines). She dreams of medical school, a family, and an escape from the generational poverty and street-corner life her friends seem to have accepted as their lot. But personal and sexual challenges confront Chantel on her way to fulfilling these dreams.