The Piazza: In The Piazza, the narrator lives in a country house without a piazza, or porch. He has one built and selected the northern side of his house, much to his neighbors' amusement. He thereafter spends much time sitting on the piazza and gazing at the magnificent view of forested mountains. Several times his eye is drawn to a singular spot on a distant mountainside, usually by some play of light. Fancifully imagining the spot must be the home of fairies, the narrator decides to investigate. A fairly lengthy voyage follows, involving sailing and horseback riding, and the narrator eventually dismounts and scrambles through dense underbrush to reach the spot. He finds there a dilapidated house with a few new repairs. Inside he meets a young woman of forlorn countenance who identifies herself as Marianna.

Benito Cereno: On an island off the coast of Chile, Captain Amaso Delano, sailing an American sealer, sees the San Dominick, a Spanish slave ship, in obvious distress. Capt. Delano boards the San Dominick, providing needed supplies, and tries to learn from her aloof and disturbed captain, Benito Cereno, the story of how this ship came to be where she is. Dealing with racism, the slave trade, madness, the tension between representation and reality, and featuring at least one unreliable narrator, Melville's novella has both captivated and frustrated critics for decades.

Lighting-Rod Man: In The Lighning-rod Man, the narrator lives in a mountainous region, and during an intense thunderstorm, is visited by a door-to-door salesman of lightning rods. The salesman points out the concussive lightning storm outside, points out the elevation of the mountainside, and points out the exposed nature of the home. He then strongly urges the narrator to purchase a copper lightning rod to protect himself and his home. The salesman's technique involves acting desperately afraid of imminent electrocution because of the home's location within the storm. The narrator vituperates the salesman's fear, notes that lightning recently struck and destroyed a building sporting several lightning rods and that his own house without a lightning rod has never been struck in many years. The lightning-rod man departs without a sale, but in the ensuing weeks and months does a brisk business with the narrator's neighbors.

The Encantadas: The Encantadas or Enchanted Isles is a novella by American author Herman Melville. The Encantadas was to become the most critically successful of that collection. All of the stories are replete with symbolism reinforcing the cruelty of life on the Encantadas. (Introduction excerpted from Wikipedia)

Bell-Tower: is the dark tale of a crazed genius, his brilliant work and the mystery that binds them together.