Essie, a biographer, finds out she has more in common with her subject Matthew Corley, a sleeper agent, when she recreates him as a simulated figure that can be accessed with the purchase of her book.

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

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

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

A maid, silently and in thought alone, contemplates her own position in a house full of opulent, decadent lives.

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