Schontag's Short Stories

In TANGO AT TWILIGHT, Bart is offered a promotion to vice chairman in order to work with the chairman in strategizing the Bank's expansion plans. He soon learns, however, that relinquishing his power as president to a younger, ambitious CIO and given lesser responsibilities and duties by the chairman that he is slowly being moved to early retirement. Should he fight back or unhappily retire when he is not ready to? It all depends on the unlikely influence of Carla and the pull of the powerful, sensuous Tango.

In THE STRADIVARIUS, Ann is attracted to Johann, one of the world's foremost violinists. In her privileged world of wealth and status she meets and encourages a relationship with him. Johann then finds he is not only attracted to Ann, but her beloved and priceless Stradivarius as well.

In THE MAGIC PLANT, Stan Wickam, a partner of W&D Pharmaceuticals, hires professors Arthur Pond, an anthropologist, and Tom Davenport, a botanist, to take him to Kalimantan, Borneo, so he can meet with Pond's friend, Makuto, the chief of a small tribe of Penans, and persuade him to sell a few of their "magic" (hair-restoring) plants for research. Although the Chief is hospitable at first and shares some of the tribe's mystical practices with Pond, events change when Wickam challenges the reluctant chief, and he, Pond and Davenport have to leave with fear for their lives.