In these luminous short stories we meet husbands and wives in conflict, the lovelorn in search of companionship, a beautiful female author hounded by male rivals, a young actor battling alcoholism, an economics professor who can't handle his stock portfolio, an academic couple in the middle of the Battle of Stalingrad, Edgar Allan Poe in his final days, an obsessive art collector, a world threatened by extraterrestrials, friends grown apart, a family beset by cancer, and other people in critical times.