Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files recap

This volume gathers short stories and novellas set at many points across the Dresden Files, most previously published elsewhere. They range from an early case predating Harry's fame to lighter interludes and darker turns: a bodyguard job, a monster loose in a sorority, a day when everything goes wrong at once, a hidden supernatural war seen through his ally Thomas, and a confrontation that tests Harry's friend Michael and his family. Each piece stands on its own rather than forming a continuous plot. The collection closes with a longer novelette told from Karrin Murphy's point of view in the immediate aftermath of the events that ended the preceding novel, following how Harry's closest allies cope with his sudden absence and the dangerous vacuum it leaves in Chicago's supernatural underworld.

Harry Dresden makes his living as Chicago's only professional wizard, taking magical cases the police cannot handle through his contact Karrin Murphy and her Special Investigations unit. Across earlier books he survives clashes with dark sorcerers, vampires, faeries, and fallen angels while navigating the strict laws of the White Council of wizards, of which he is a junior member. He gathers a circle of allies, including the vampire Thomas, the Knight of the Cross Michael Carpenter, and eventually an apprentice, Michael's daughter Molly. A long, brutal war between the wizards' Council and the vampiric Red Court shapes much of his life. It comes to a head when Harry learns he has a young daughter and goes to desperate lengths to save her, striking hard bargains and paying steep personal costs to destroy the Red Court entirely. By the close of that struggle his old life in Chicago has been shattered, and his fate is left hanging in violent uncertainty.