A black doctor ex-convict returns to the all-white town he knows as home and discovers a deadly disease threatening the citizens. He must fight prejudice and time if he is to save the town.

A graduate student and obsessive runner in New York is drawn into a mysterious plot involving his brother, a member of the secretive Division.

A snobbish investor and a wily street con-artist find their positions reversed as part of a bet by two callous millionaires.

The Narrator tells us how the radio influenced his childhood in the days before TV. In the New York City of the late 1930s to the New Year's Eve 1944, this coming-of-age tale mixes the narrator's experiences with contemporary anecdotes and urban legends of the radio stars.