After another failed attempt to commit suicide, hapless writer William addresses the services of hired assassin Leslie, the inexorable angel of death from the Killers Guild, an organization that is ready to help anyone who needs a quick and painless death. Leslie has a good heart, but an unsteady hand. The authorities want to retire him, and the contract that has turned up is the only chance to postpone the inevitable. However, the case intervenes in the fortuity. The fate suddenly smiled to...

Mr. Turner explores the last quarter century of the great if eccentric British painter J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851). Profoundly affected by the death of his father, loved by a housekeeper he takes for granted and occasionally exploits sexually, he forms a close relationship with a seaside landlady with whom he eventually lives incognito in Chelsea, where he dies. Throughout this, he travels, paints, stays with the country aristocracy, visits brothels, is a popular if anarchic member of the Royal...