All it takes is one mistake. For Jimmy Paccini, savvy and cool-headed, it was joining the Brooklyn mob, the easy way out of a nowhere life that – for arranging the execution of the head of a rival crime family—rewarded him with a quarter-century of hard time. For Milena Cossutta, sexy and smart, it was selling out her dreams to marry a handsome but hot-headed made man, Vinnie DeNunzio, which left her on the run from the feds in Sicily, a stranger in a strange land. And sometimes the mistake is crazy, forbidden love—like the one between Jimmy and Milena. Or could it be their salvation? Spanning three decades and two continents, soaked in passion, blood and the garish colors of the mean streets, Lowdown is a vivid, gripping romantic thriller that follows a twisting road strewn with sorrow and desire, deceit and ecstasy, shocking violence and intimate tenderness, to arrive at a surprising, bittersweet redemption.

ANTHONY SCHNEIDER has been published in McSweeney’s, Conjunctions, Mid-American Review, and Details. Born in South Africa and educated in the United States, he divides his time between London and New York.