A young governess turns up at a country estate in Essex to care for Miles and Flora, two young orphans left in care of their absentee uncle. Soon after her tenure begins, the governess begins to see strangers walking the grounds, and interacting with the siblings in odd and disturbing ways. The governess begins to feel they are not wholly human-but rather are ghosts haunting Miles and Flora, and their influence upon the children has tragic consequences....

A light-skinned African American woman is married to a white man who is ignorant of her racial heritage. Her childhood friend, equally capable of "passing," has chosen to live her life as a black woman and deny the existence of racism. A chance meeting forces both women to confront truths about themselves.

Fading charmer Tommy Wilhelm has reached his day of reckoning and is scared. In his forties, he still retains a boyish impetuousness that has brought him to the brink of chaos: he is separated from his wife and children; at odds with his vain, successful father; failed in his acting career (a Hollywood agent once placed him as “the type that loses the girl”); and in a financial mess. In the course of one climactic day he reviews his past mistakes...

A Beautiful and flirtatious American girl Daisy Miller and a sophisticated compatriot Frederick Winterbourne first meet in Switzerland. They continue to see each other in Rome and meet more American expatriates there, but their relationship does not always flow smoothly. Henry James uses Daisy's story to discuss what he thinks Europeans and Americans believe about each other, and more generally the prejudices common in any culture. The story is one...