Two childhood best friends have trouble reconciling the nature of their friendship—and the different worlds they now live in—after having grown up together.

A man succumbs to shock as an important friend betrays him, despite the friend not being visible to the human eye.

Vignettes of a number of relationships, most of them troubled, are glimpsed through the descriptions of creatures in this bestiary of the imaginary.

A boy wonders who his real friends are.

Years after facing abuse from the hermit overseeing a nature preserve, two children—now adults—enact their revenge.

A mother, her two children, and their stepfather come over to a friend’s for a dinner on Labor Day.

A woman, living with her husband, is overcome with a strange, inexplicable ailment to her body.

A daughter, on the verge of becoming a mother, learns a great deal in spending time with her own mother.

The ex-wife of a famous male writer considers a story he wrote about a neighbor they once had.