Four short stories are set along the roads of Donbass during the war. There are no safe spaces and no one can make sense of just what is going on. Even as they are trapped in the chaos, some manage to wield authority over others. But in this world, where tomorrow may never come, not everyone is defenseless and miserable. Even the most innocent victims may have their turn at taking charge.

Sisters Tracy and Lena are sleeping with each others husbands, Von and Alex. The punishment is worse than the crime when all become entangled in more than just lies and deception, but also murder.

Jerry Mason, a young Texan, and Jake Benson, an old rancher, become partners and strike it rich with a gold mine. They then find their lives complicated by bad guys and a woman.

Olga, Katya, and Andrey have known each other since childhood. They moved to Moscow many years ago and have become successful. Olga is an actress, Katya works for a large-scale PR agency, and Andrey is a political analyst. They buy cars, take mortgages, build country houses. Just like everybody else. But their lives bring them neither happiness nor content. The feeling of “something’s not right but I can’t put my finger on it” underpins the lives of today’s thirty-year-olds. Their childhood took place during the Soviet era, when kids dreamed of becoming heroes, believed in spy stories and a bright future. Yet nobody expected that the dream of becoming a hero would be replaced by the dream of stable and predictable existence. People have stopped dreaming of truly grand things. They just play their roles.

Two reasonably young girls want to leave their home town and go to work abroad. However, their dreams are quickly shattered by the cold truth of reality and they find out that every dream must have its cost.

After the Japanese defeat to the Russians, Kaji leads the last remaining men through Manchuria. Intent on returning to his dear wife and his old life, Kaji faces great odds in a variety of different harrowing circumstances as he and his fellow men sneak behind enemy lines.

Facing expulsion from college over a misunderstanding, a bipolar student indulges his misery at a strip club where he befriends a gorgeous, intelligent, outrageous woman and they hatch a madcap scheme to prove his innocence.

A gender-questioning stock market trader is determined to make it in the world of finance — not for the glory or wealth, but because it’s leading them on the path to freedom.

A hard-boiled detective becomes suspicious of an author when the incidents described in his hit novel resemble the inner-workings of an unsolved murder.

The tale of a young writer trying to get over the girl that left him behind and survive the intricacies of the capital’s nightlife with only the help of his hard partying, wisecracking friends as they drag him from one London nightspot and party to the next.

US multi-millionaire Michael Barndon marries his eight wife, Nicole, the daughter of a broken French Marquis. But she doesn’t want to be only a number in the row of his ex-wives and starts her own strategy to “tame” him.

Shortly after Pearl Harbor, a squadron of PT-boat crews in the Philippines must battle the Navy brass between skirmishes with the Japanese. The title says it all about the Navy’s attitude towards the PT-boats and their crews.