Once a rising star in print media, journalist Gretchen Sparks just wants to be left alone. Four years have passed since an IED killed her brother in Afghanistan, and Gretchen has managed to shut out everyone who cares about her-except for Marty Mitnik, her editor at a large New York daily. Hard drinking, cynical and surly, Gretchen no longer takes on challenging assignments but resignedly edits her newspaper's Borough Features blog, writing listicles and puff pieces designed to garner clicks.

But when Marty suffers a heart attack, she follows the last assignment he gave her-to a Coney Island woman who claims to possess a crime-fighting seagull.

Gretchen is determined to ignore the signs of a career-making story, but the facts call to her through a host of New York characters: a former beauty queen with a philandering husband, a state senator accepting suspicious campaign contributions, a nefarious Nashville heart surgeon, and a teen boy who begs Gretchen to find out just how and why his grandmother died in the psych ward of a Brooklyn hospital.

Borough Features is about fighting to bring the truth to light in a world that's been dimmed by grief.