Even when the streets are half-deserted, we may still encounter that one person or happenstance that can change our life. That's what simmers underneath each story in the short fiction collection "Half Deserted Streets."

Author Barrington Jackson focuses on how people interact when they face the unlikely or uncomfortable. He puts those interactions under a microscope to produce suspenseful short stories that make us question what people are capable of and unearth what lies below our polite exteriors.

Can a nun be a sexually driven serial killer-and if so, will anyone ever believe it?...