In a not-so-distant future, an adventurer takes a risk and travels to Venus only to face a potentially lethal test of his intelligence by the planet's inhabitants.

A white woman talks to several Negro slaves who tell her stories about their personal lives. She learns about their partners and their and families.

An intergalactic space war leads to a gladiator-like fight between a human and a spherical alien. They fight to the death, and whoever wins prevents the annihilation of their race.

A conversation with his former lover opens a man's eyes to his tendency to flee rather than confront the hopeless reality of his own life.

During the Second World War, a woman falls in love with a Merchant Marine and agrees to marry him just before he is deployed - but their whirlwind love story is fated to have a tragic end.

The children in a family grow tired of hosting their middle-aged cousin, but his expulsion brings unexpected strife to the family.

A soldier stationed in Tunisia during World War II reflects on how his perception of death has changed while he buries two of his fellow soldiers.

When a group of boys graduate from Henry Hudson High School in the Bronx in 1944, the ceremony remains largely the same as any other year, despite the country being in the middle of World War II.

A man pursuing his doctorate explores the history of the American South through the journals and letters of a long-dead ancestor who manumitted all the enslaved people on his plantation after an affair gone wrong.

A high-spirited young girl comes to Senlis to be a nanny, but her employers are troubled when she becomes pregnant with several possible fathers and finds herself caught up in a high-stakes murder trial.