The Spot is an old blacksmith shed in which a gang of men tweeze apart the intricacies of a botched bank robbery. The Spot is a place deep in Riverside Park, along the Hudson River, where two lovers walk with a keen sense that their adultery is about to come to an end. The Spot is at the bottom of Niagara Falls, where the body of a young girl floats as if caught in the tangled currents of her own tragic story. The Spot lies in the eardrum of a madman plagued by a noisy upstairs neighbor on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The Spot is a place in a young father's mind where love, fear, and responsibility merge in the struggle with his son's potentially devastating diagnosis. The Spot is in a dusty encampment in Nebraska where a gang of inept radicals plot a revolution. The Spot is a Depression-era rail junction in Michigan where a young hobo spins the story of his return to a place that reminds him of home. The Spot is in Oklahoma City, where two homeless girls move amid a memorial of outdoor stone chairs, sitting down and standing up, leaving impressions in the snow on the dark stone seats. "The Spot "is the new book by the award-winning, internationally acclaimed author of "Assorted Fire Events," winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and "The Secret Goldfish." "The Spot "is a collection of stories by an author who, according to "The New York Times," "stands among our most gifted younger writers," a writer whose language, in the words of James Wood, "offers an exquisitely precise and sensuous register of an often crazy American reality."