Brad M. Gilbert

Following a terrible car crash, a woman awakes to find an enigmatic mortician preparing her for burial.

During a 10-year sentence for murdering the leader of a rival South Central Los Angeles gang, Bobby Johnson finds religion and rehabilitation with the help of Muslim inmate Ali. Upon his release, Bobby returns home to find that his young son, Jimmie, has joined the Deuces, his old crew. Tensions rise as Bobby struggles to convince Jimmie to leave the gang that was his only family during the painful years his absent father spent behind bars.

Fisher Willow is the disliked Memphis débutante daughter of a plantation owner with a distaste for narrow-minded people and a penchant for shocking and insulting those around her. After returning from studies overseas, Fisher falls in love with Jimmy, the down-and-out son of an alcoholic father and an insane mother who works at a store on her family's plantation.

Twenty two years earlier, Karen helped convict her father, Frank, for the murder of her mother. With his new freedom, thanks to parole, Frank returns home to seek revenge. Having always pleaded his innocence, Frank soon works his way back into Karen's life.

A struggling writer steals poems written by his mute friend to achieve fame and fortune.

A mysterious stranger with a gun and a bullet wound turns up at the house of an old woman who is a recluse, and who unexpectedly welcomes him as her first visitor in 30 years. A relationship develops between the two, as the man becomes the son the woman lost years ago and she becomes the mother he never had.