Providence, RI, 1986. Twenty-nine-year-old Danny Ryan is a hard-working longshoreman, loving husband, loyal friend and occasional 'muscle' for the Irish crime syndicate that oversees much of the city. He yearns for something more and dreams of starting over fresh, someplace far away. But when a modern-day Helen of Troy triggers a war between rival mob factions, Danny is embroiled in a conflict he can’t escape. Now it is up to him to step into the breach to protect his family, the friends who are closer to him than brothers and the only home he’s ever known.

The war has come home. For over 40 years, Art Keller has been on the front lines of America’s longest conflict: the War on Drugs. His obsession with defeating the godfather of the Sinaloa Cartel - Adán Barrera - has cost him people he loves, even taken a piece of his soul. Now Keller is elevated to the highest ranks of the DEA, only to find that in destroying one monster he has created 30 more that are wreaking chaos in his beloved Mexico. But not just there.

Detective sergeant Denny Malone leads an elite unit to fight gangs, drugs and guns in New York. For 18 years he's been on the front lines, doing whatever it takes to survive in a city built by ambition and corruption, where no one is clean. What only a few know is that Denny Malone himself is dirty: he and his partners have stolen millions of dollars in drugs and cash. Now he's caught in a trap and being squeezed by the Feds, and he must walk a thin line of betrayal, while the city teeters on the brink of a racial conflagration that could destroy them all.

In six intense, haunting short novels, Don Winslow returns to the themes that are the hallmarks of his acclaimed body of work – crime, corruption, vengeance, justice, loss, betrayal, guilt, and redemption - to explore the savagery and nobility that drive and define the human condition. In Broken, Winslow creates a world of high-level thieves and low-life crooks, obsessed cops and jaded private detectives, dope dealers and government agents, bounty hunters and fugitives.

Japan 1951. After spending the last three years in solitary confinement for the murder of his mentor, Nicholai Hel is offered the chance of freedom - but at a price. Overseen by his American spymaster and the beautiful and mysterious Solange, he must travel to China and assassinate the Soviet Union's commissioner. In a landscape primed for war this is a suicide mission he has no choice but to accept. From the glittering corruption of Beijing to the darkest shadows of the Vietnam jungle, his mission will sweep him through a world of chaos, violence and betrayal.

Neal Carey is not your usual private eye. A graduate student at Columbia University, he grew up on the streets of New York, usually on the wrong side of the law. Then he met a P.I. who introduced him to the Bank, an exclusive institution with a sideline in keeping its wealthy clients happy and out of trouble. They pay Neal's college tuition, and Neal gets an education that can't be found in any textbook, from learning how to trail a suspect to mastering the proper way to search a room. Now it's payback time.

Beauregard 'Bug' Montage: honest mechanic, loving husband, devoted parent. He's no longer the criminal he once was - the sharpest wheelman on the east coast, infamous from the hills of North Carolina to the beaches of Florida. But when his respectable life begins to crumble, a shady associate comes calling with a clean, one-time job: a diamond heist promising a get-rich payout. Inexorably drawn to the driver's seat - and haunted by the ghost of his outlaw father - Bug is yanked back into a savage world of bullets and betrayal, which soon endangers all he holds dear.

East Long Beach. The LAPD is barely keeping up with the high crime rate. Murders go unsolved, OAPs are getting hoodwinked, children are missing. But word has spread: if you've got a case the police can't or won't touch, Isaiah Quintabe will help you out. They call him IQ. He's a loner and a high school dropout, his unassuming nature disguising a relentless determination and a fierce intelligence. He charges his clients whatever they can afford. But now he needs a client who can pay.

Dave Robicheaux has been warned that he's on somebody's hit list, and now the homicide detective is trying to discover just who that is before he ends up dead. Meanwhile he has taken on the murder investigation of a young black girl found dead in the Bayou swamp. Robicheaux uncovers a web of corruption that leads him to a terrifying confrontation with the one horror he fears most of all.

When Bekker's old friend and state prosecutor Carly Simms wakes up next to a murdered young man in a motel room after a night of drinking, she doesn't remember a thing, especially stabbing the young man in the heart. Although all the evidence points to her guilt, Simms hires Bekker to prove her innocence. Bekker soon finds himself ensnared in a deadly game of cat and mouse.

A man shoots his young wife to death. He drives to a freeway overpass, gets out, shoots himself, and drops 100 feet to the freeway below, crushing a Toyota Camry. Inside is an elementary school teacher named Jacqueline Dwyer, who dies at the scene. Ty Buchanan is a hotshot lawyer. Jacqueline Dwyer was the woman he was going to marry. Ty goes into a tailspin. And it gets worse when a mysterious man finds him at the funeral and says Jacqueline's death may not have been an accident after all.

The narrow alleys are brimming with jazz bars, bookies, black-shirts, ponces and tarts, so when a body is found above the Windmill Club, detectives are content to dismiss the case as just another young woman who topped herself early. But Geats - a good man prepared to be a bad one if it keeps the worst of them at bay - knows the dark seams of the city. Working with his former partner, mercenary Flying Squad Sergeant Mark Cassar, Geats obsessively dedicates himself to finding a warped killer.

After five grueling years, Robert Worth is just days away from making partner at a powerful Santa Monica law firm. When a client confides in him that senior partner Jack Pierce sexually assaulted her, Robert breaks two of his mentor's cardinal rules: Never let yourself get emotional about clients. And never make an enemy of Jack Pierce. Robert crosses Pierce and is fired on the spot, losing not only his job but also his reputation. Advised to go quietly, Robert vows revenge against the ruthless man who betrayed him.

Slough House is Jackson Lamb’s kingdom; a dumping ground for members of the intelligence service who’ve screwed up: left a secret file on a train, blown surveillance, or become drunkenly unreliable. They’re the service’s poor relations – the slow horses – and bitterest among them is River Cartwright, whose days are spent transcribing mobile phone conversations.

When Jack Swyteck's estranged father becomes governor, Jack's career as a defense attorney becomes a deadly conflict of interests. As governor, his father refuses Jack's last-minute request for a stay, and Jack's client is executed. Later, Jack is accused of a murder he didn't commit and the governor faces political ruin, the climax of a revenge campaign waged by someone connected to Jack's former client. Neither father nor son can help the other without harming himself.