Chad Pelley’s Four-Letter Words, his collection of award-winning short stories, presents us with characters haunted by one four-letter word or another: love, hate, lust, or loss. A father drives across the island hoping to find his missing son, a hitman considers the life of his female victim while watching her through his scope, a lonely man frequents hospital emergency rooms to diagnose the pain of others, and another clings to a buoy at sea. Whether documenting the ways in which we become obsessed with our current situation or our fascination with the lives we could have lived, these stories, told in Pelley’s decidedly contemporary style, form unique portraits of how we are led astray and how we often find ourselves at a crossroads, uncertain and entirely lost.