In Elizabethan London, puritan zealots conspire to persecute a playwright by the name of Christopher Marlowe. In postwar Japan, a ghost haunts the ruins of Hiroshima, and a home to which he can never return. In Cambodia, a woman returns from exile with her American husband, to finally reveal the awkward truth about their relationship. Gregory Norminton’s stories find their characters torn between conflicting impulses—between temptation and fortitude, hubris and shame, longing and regret. Spanning centuries and continents, these stories reveal Norminton as a master storyteller of incredible range, as he alights on moments of doubt and duality to draw scalpel-sharp insights into human nature.