A conversation in a shopping mall ends with a call to security.

A former book thief works with an organized crime group to steal back an Atlas which has the ability to correspond with Hell.

A New Yorker working at a salon spends her time observing people she meets on the subway and at work. Though she meets a lot of people between washing hair and riding the subway to and from work, she avoids talking to them except for the rare occasions when she has to.

Passive and easily satisfied, Roger spends his days managing his secondhand bookstore The Pleiade. He worships modernist classics without fully reading them, he’s gregarious but seldom invited to dinner, and he types novel after novel methodically, but all are rejected. He passes seasons of love and loss in unfailing, impassive routine.

When a librarian finds a moving book of poetry among a donation, she is introduced to fellow lovers of the author's work who strive to preserve the poet's desire for privacy while commemorating her work.

To face the unendurable boredom of her monotonous bookbinding job, a teenage girl sows sexual tension between her fellow teenage coworkers. However, that endeavor can only entertain her for so long, as her grim small town and secret pregnancy threaten to overwhelm her.

In the near-future, people of color have been legally classified as infected, which has led to extreme systemic oppression. Two Black men risk everything to provide their community with a free library, but the police force threatens to shut them down.

An insufferable white man offers advice to a well-read, unemployed Black man holding a sandwich-board sign on a street corner on race relations, physical appearance, and how to improve his handwriting and thereby advance himself in society.

A Black foster teenager looks for escape from his life through books he borrows at a library. A witch-librarian guides his selections along the way, and ultimately gives him an off-limits book to help him literally escape the world.

California has seceded from America, and Molly and her daughter Phoebe run a bookstore that straddles the troubled border of the two countries. When outright war breaks out, Molly and Phoebe must protect their customers - American and Californian alike - but the customers are not all willing to get along.