In the depths of his mind, a writer tries to uncover the autonomous, nefarious motivations of his own characters.

Searching for a muse to inspire a novel he is attempting to write, an author in San Francisco finds his passions ignited by something much more sinister.

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.

A rambunctious teenager with an inquisitive mind causes much grief for all his New England family and neighbors when he visits them in the summer of 1914, on the eve of World War I.

Having sacrificed his dream job to financially support his marriage, a man realizes there is sexual tension between his wife and his friend. Ultimately, he makes tough decisions about both his friendship and his marriage.

In a dystopic future on Earth, as a woman comes home from vacation, she hears about a continent emerging from the sea as old ones sink, and returns to find her husband released from Rehabilitation Camp. He and his fellow researchers discover how to make a “sun tap” to channel the sun’s energy into power, but then he is again forced away by the government, into a hospital.

When a young Black woman shows up at her crazy dead aunt's apartment in New York City with her on-again, off-again boyfriend, she finds none of the money she'd been hoping to inherit. Instead, in a hidden treasure chest, they discover a dead body, a shotgun, and a machete, sealed with a tempting offer from the Devil. The couple takes the deal and, hungry for blood, sets off to wreak havoc on the blue suits that have violently policed their communities for so long.

A Canadian graduate student and his wife are living in France and often socialize with their peers at concerts and dinner parties. They soon make friends with an established novelist, but as the student continues to meet people he begins to question who he can trust and who his real friends are.

A Boston-based publicist believes that he has found the next hit novel and signs a deal with the author. Later, he feels betrayed upon learning that the true author of the book is less than human.

A man recalls his intimate friendship with his former English professor, who resolved to fuel his unsatisfied desire for playwriting during the time they were apart. In their reunion decades later, instead of the brilliant play he promised, the professor shows his former student a disturbing product of his mental instability.