After a middle-aged murderess is pardoned and released from prison early, she goes to live with a friend in Wisconsin who helps her begin her new life, until the local doctor shows interest in the murderess and threatens to come between the two women.

An Algerian university professor and former prisoner of France struggles with the symbolic implications of getting advice from an elite French visiting professor.

In the mid-twentieth-century South, a black mother's greed has haunting consequences for her and her coveted son.

Set around the 1940s, a thirteen-year-old boy pursues the purchase of a puppy he saw in a newspaper ad, and receives an unexpected sexual experience from the woman who sells him the dog.

When his deceased son is accused of thievery, a grieving grocery store owner condemns the world for making him rethink the innocent memories he had of his son.

A middle-aged, divorced man learns of three deaths of people he once knew. The news of each brings him slight relief from the shame he feels about his failed marriage.

Struggling to write a letter to her old, formidable Mississippian aunt, a woman considers her shame, guilt, exhaustion, and trauma in her Philadelphia apartment that is far from her family and her childhood home.

A high school boy struggles with his adolescent sexual desires alongside his devotion to Jehovah's Witness as he navigates a budding friendship with a female schoolmate.

A bitter recent divorcee and her partner embark on a cruise to the Great Barrier Reef. Over time, the woman’s disdain for her loud fellow passengers turns to one of admiration and she leaves with a more positive attitude.

A young boy suffering from OCD-like symptoms grapples with self-hatred, bullying, and sexual abuse and frequently flaps his hands and constricts his throat to escape reality. His compulsions and coping mechanisms follow him through elementary school, middle school, high school, and college.