Swift ironically proposes feeding Irish children to England's rich absentee landlords.

French police attempt to find a stolen letter being used for political blackmail by employing deductive reasoning.

Akaky Akakyevitch is a small, insignificant man who endures ridicule from his co-workers and performs tedious work copying legal papers. When he uses his life savings to buy a custom made overcoat, it changes his life, but also leads to tragedy.

Pepe Torres takes his first trip to town from his isolated farm and kills a drunken man in an argument. He flees to the mountains but succumbs to peril.

This dark psychological fantasy is more than a moral tale. It is also a product of its time, drawing on contemporary theories of class, evolution and criminality and the secret lives behind Victorian propriety, to create a unique form of urban Gothic.

Man can move easily enough in the three dimensions of space - why not the fourth: Time? An intriguing after-dinner conversation takes an unexpected turn when the host produces a small machine, which promptly disappears into thin air. It has been sent into the future, he says. Or maybe the past. As his skeptical guests try to fathom what they have seen, the host unveils a full-size machine, nearing completion. At a similar gathering one week later...