The book is divided into two sections. The first, Stories from the Northern Road features a quartet of tales set on the world of Penrose, as introduced in Tony's Tor novels Twisted Metal and Blood and Iron. This section has a distinct flavour of the old West about it. if the old West had been populated by a race of sentient robots - think Asimov meets Firefly. The stories are all stand alones but they are thematically linked, combining to provide what amounts to a mythology for the people of Penrose. This first section is entirely original to the collection