A boy visits the Ulysses County library seeking books that allow him to escape into distant worlds. As the witch-librarian chooses stories for him and senses him becoming more and more desperate, she eventually lends him a book that literally allows him to leave his world.

In an apocalyptic world where a beast-god threatens the survival of the six remaining human colonies, a teenage girl tasked with destroying the beast-god revolts against her commanders.

An Indian accountant loses his job and can't support his wife and child. He aimlessly searches for new income, takes up a mistress and watches as his life spirals out of control.

A famous cook prepares the last meal of a prisoner on death row, abiding his wishes to be poisoned to death by her.

When an anthropology professor moves with his family to a remote home on the Great Plains, a new friendship with an idealist, a landscaping disaster, and a disheartening consultation with an Indigenous man shake his beliefs about cultural relativism to the core.

After a dying mother instructs her children to find their distant aunt and new guardian, they must step outside the home they have always known and embark on a journey toward their new life.