A man's lonely life focused on the pursuit of reason and music leaves him questioning what more there may be in the lives of other people and of religion.

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.

In intense discussion a group leader ponders aloud, asking why hermits hide and what defines outcasts, among other cerebral queries. A group of friends discusses the oddities they have seen and perceived in their lives leather-clad hermits and criminal astronauts among them. They debate the purpose of hermitage, the classification of outcasts, and the purpose of their own reflections.

A lonely man in his forties imagines a domestic life with a woman he briefly met who is interested in his furniture, but not his marriage proposal.

After spending his adult life under the shadow of his father, a former NSA whistleblower, a man comes to terms with his complicated family history and what he wants for his own future.

Upon returning to Paris after a decade-long hiatus wandering the French countryside and writing an epic, a poet encounters an enigmatic young woman who believes he is a god and wants to be his disciple,

A lonely maiden is constantly reminded of her single status, working as an advertiser for a baby bed in New York. Seeking to make something of herself, she takes on both work and love with a passion, but only succeeds in one.

In this metafiction, the many lives of an unnamed man are scrutinized as he passes through millennia.

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.

The impact of an absent father emerges in the gruesome stories of a young daughter as her alcoholic mother listens and reflects on the struggles of raising her alone.