In a Chinese village during the Qing Dynasty, a crippled man acts as a lawyer for the poor with the help of the trickster Monkey King, but his peaceful life is turned upside down when he comes into possession of a book that details atrocities committed by the government.

An assassin begins to question the king's authority after they are forced to kill someone innocent. The assassin must decide if they will still protect the king, who is their brother, against a legendary murderer of royal figures.

A Los Angeles speech pathologist is assigned to the case of a presumably mentally-ill woman who speaks in gibberish that turns out to be Old English. When the woman disappears, deciphering her mysterious writing leads the pathologist to wonder if she has stumbled across a time traveler.

An author discusses with his friend the best way to write about a poor aunt. Their words take on a new power when he manifests a literal poor aunt on his back and draws in spectators.

When a neglected and lonely girl is approached by an illusion-making creature looking for an apprentice, she experiments with her newfound powers and makes a perfect version of herself. She quickly finds out that perfection isn't all it's cracked up to be and searches for a way to end the illusion.

When a mysterious new member joins a group of struggling authors, the friends discover that they may have a supernatural creature in their midst, who can grant a single author success above all the others—but at a cost.

Compiling notes for an English essay, a sixteen-year-old girl recounts her middle-class upbringing, kleptomania, and eventual coercion into prostitution and assisting with drug use. After she suffers violence and abuse, she is eventually rescued — but the experience traumatizes her.

A young man leaves his traditional village behind to travel and work on distant planets. Throughout his interplanetary journeys, he must constantly reevaluate his understandings of truth, tradition, and love as he seeks a fulfilling life of his own, independent of what is expected from him.

A prisoner wrongly accused of bank robbing escapes and is given the power of Ogun to help fight against the enslavement of African Americans.

A teenage servant girl observes as the death of a disguised aristocratic young woman causes her English estate's young heir to emotionally spiral. His subsequent illicit tryst with a mysterious woman leads to another deadly scandal.