Svoya chuzhaya zhizn

A high school and its students are in shambles and far from anything anyone would describe as doing well. The thugs of the Akimotogumi yakuza decide to take the matter up and assert themselves and their codes upon the students. They do make a difference, but nothing as easy as that. Two yakuza members are about to persist or abandon hope.

The newest tycoon Robert wants to gets his hands on the land where the driving school stands and build a modern shopping center in it's place instead. It is during this acquisition that lands him in an altercation with Instructor Joze, whose wife left him and Robert's daughter Lija. Lija is determined to go to driving school in spite of his father's prohibition. Besides the tense that portray the ruthlessness of our world, the story offers a range of warm and interesting human relationships seen as part of our everyday lives.

Friends named Kitchen and Screw are looking for someone who could dig up the treasure of the Russian prince and go to the speculator-butcher Barinov and the chic Russophobe Dzhigarkhanyan for their assistance.

When the box-office manager takes off with all the money belonging to a traveling theatre-troupe, the show's promoters and leading performers, Bill Potter and Jim Truman, have to sell off of the show's assets to a theatre in Newcastle in order to pay the actors. They have enough money left over to open up a bookie's stall in London taking bets on greyhound-racing. The local bookies send a stooge around to give them some false inside-information and they can't cover the losses they garner using the incorrect-odds, and have to sell everything they own. All that is left is a greyhound puppy which Bill determines he will train for racing and make a fortune. And then bad things really begin happening to Bill including having to escape prison, on a trumped-up charge, as part of the rubbish carried off in the garbage lorry.

Stories of a Madman is a collection of short stories with each story taking place in a different hotel room at the same hotel on the same night: Christmas Eve. Each story shares the theme of 'Crime Story with a supernatural twist'.