In this strange tale, the frustrated wife of an invalid finds herself both attracted to and tormented by a live-in handyman with a criminal past, a former flame, and a wealthy, mysterious visitor.

A young man invites a tourist to his favorite London café and recounts the strangest affair he’d ever had with a woman he picked up there; a woman who challenged and changed him. A young, beguiling man picks a tourist out of a group and invites him to see the real sites of London, not the tired and disappointing spectacles. He takes the tourist to the Café de Paris, an old but grand establishment with the promise of dancing and young ladies. The man admonishes his companion to loosen up, stay and drink, and while they wait for the evening to unfold the man begins a story.

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.

A middle-aged man in a small Northern town is desperate to escape his mundane routines and imagines rash and violent actions that might give his life meaning.

A high school boy makes a habit of stealing cars, picking up girls, and skipping school. When he begins to worry that he is getting into too much trouble, the boy must decide whether to seek help or continue his criminal lifestyle.

Asked by his therapist to tell a fable, a man recounts his unenchanting life as a lawyer married to a depressed, drug-abusing woman, with a disabled son he's struggling to raise. By filling his unremarkable story with sorceresses, magic, and true love, he attempts to romanticize a life he's desperate to escape.

A quasi-reformed stalker worries about the influence of his creepy behaviors on his son.

In an unlikely encounter, a homeless teenage boy recounts harsh events of his life to a writer. He nonchalantly tells of an employer whose assignments caused him to have permanent physical and mental damage.

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.

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.