A collection of short fiction includes the story of a boy's attempt to help a troubled classmate, a couple's bizarre visit to a real estate broker, and a young archaeologist's research in an American town.
In an alternate world in which Alaska, rather than Israel, has become the homeland for the Jews following World War II, Detective Meyer Landsman and his half-Tlingit partner Berko investigate the death of a heroin-addicted chess prodigy.
Linus Steinman, a 9-year-old mute refugee from Nazi Germany, and his number-spewing parrot appear to be at the center of a mystery in the 1944 English countryside.
Two odd travelers who make their lives as swindlers and hired killers in the Caucasus Mountains in A.D. 950 get hired by a young royal whose throne was usurped by his uncle. Rather than the small-scale scrapes they're used to getting into, this feat will require raising an army and possibly starting a revolution.
