Two Southern neighbors form a layered bond.

New neighbors meet, told from a unique point of view.

A young woman in a dead-end job searches for direction.

A neighbor's strange procedure; a couple's disintegrating marriage.

A case of peafowl dividing a neighborhood.

A lonely housesitter makes himself at home in slightly inappropriate ways.

"He’s in the master bedroom. There are no decorations—no photos hung on the wall or in frames on the dresser, no other artwork, no decals like Alice bought and had Ben stick-apply to the walls of their own bedroom when they’d first moved into the neighborhood themselves. There’s only the dresser along the wall, with a vanity mirror and neatly organized jewelry atop, and a nightstand on each side of the bed. Neither has anything on it but books, but Ben can immediately distinguish his from hers from the selection, the way they are stacked. Without thinking, without being able to help himself, Ben goes to Helen’s side of the bed and opens the drawer."

An abused woman reacts to her downstairs neighbor's murder.

"Laurie thinks he tries to cry, and she appreciates the effort. She kisses Jimmy in return, pretends it doesn’t hurt when he scrapes his teeth over her collarbone, and ignores the phone when it rings. If it’s her mother, she’ll call again soon enough; if it’s another reporter, well, Laurie doesn’t have much to say."

A gardener unknowingly becomes a pawn between two distant neighors.

"Pat offered to shower with a bucket in her tub, a suggestion she’d read in the paper. This he accepted, and she started leaving the buckets for him on the porch. In the shower, she’d spread out her hands, thinking how the water that ran over her body was helping sustain Kirill’s vegetables."

A mother and infant interact with neighbors and strangers.

"She looked down at the baby who was still nursing and recognized in him then not the unpolluted possibilities of a life not yet led, but instead a blissful unawareness of himself, or of responsibility, which allowed him a serene acceptance of all that was around him. The baby did not feel hungry for she kept him fed, he did not feel cold for she swaddled him, he did not feel wet for she kept him clean and dry, and when he was startled or unsure, she offered him her nipple, which he held tightly in his mouth before drifting off to sleep, where she imagined he dreamt of her, because she was all that he knew, all that he wanted, endlessly and relentlessly into the future."

An overweight teenager's psychological test with an unhappy neighbor.

"Mrs. Butler never commented on my weight. I wanted to believe she didn’t see my layers of fat or hear how my breathing quickened if I exerted much physical effort. My neighbor wasn’t gorgeous like a supermodel, but she moved her long graceful limbs with an elegance I could only envy."

The opening of Jonathan Franzen's Freedom; the complexities and relationships of a wholly American couple.

"For all queries, Patty Berglund was a resource, a sunny carrier of sociocultural pollen, an affable bee. She was one of the few stay-at-home moms in Ramsey Hill and was famously averse to speaking well of herself or ill of anybody else. She said that she expected to be 'beheaded' someday by one of the windows whose sash chains she’d replaced. Her children were 'probably' dying of trichinosis from pork she’d undercooked. She wondered if her 'addiction' to paint-stripper fumes might be related to her “never” reading books anymore. She confided that she’d been 'forbidden' to fertilize Walter’s flowers after what had happened 'last time.'"