Cole leads a quiet life in Baltimore, working construction and carving a tiny existence for him and his wife, Amy. What they really want is a child, but because of Cole’s accident with a rebar shard, they are unable. At least, that’s what he tells Amy. When a pair of old childhood friends from Boston come into town unannounced, Cole learns that not all family is blood, and blood cannot save all family.

Double-crosses gone wrong, underage lovers with overprotective brothers, fathers searching for their dead daughters. No one in Bar Scars gets away clean. In Korpon’s Baltimore, whiskey is thicker than blood and the most important question is where to hide the body. It doesn’t matter that these are the normal people you see every day, because whether they’re from a broken bottle of beer or the jagged edge of broken dreams, these scars will always shine through.

“Children climb piles of discarded furniture and chunks of collapsed building in the alley. Mud and ashen water streaked across their faces. One stands at the top, holding a broken table leg in place of a scepter, shouting that she is Queen of The Struggle. The others scramble towards her, hoping to steal her spot. My stomach clenches at the sound of her declaration, the pang of guilt like rusted metal on my tongue. They don’t yet understand that no amount of violence or coercion can replace complacency with the religious fervor sovereignty brings. Their hands are still pristine. The streetlamp flickering alternates their faces between playmate and ghoul.”

Rife with political and religious undertones, By the Nails of the Warpriest follows an unnamed thief who steals memories from the elderly–those who have a a vague memory of The City before The Struggle–and sells them to memory-junkies. He ekes out an existence by ruining the very souls he’d tried to save. As a fallen leader of The People, he’s almost thankful that his family is not alive to witness the depths to which he’s sunk.Then he finds a memory that suggests they weren’t killed in a riot, that someone lied to him. That someone wants to keep him from his family.