Richard Russo

Monsters is a syndicated horror anthology series which originally ran from 1988 to 1991 and reran on the Sci-Fi Channel during the 1990s. Similarly to Tales from the Darkside, Monsters shared the same producer, and in some ways succeeded the show. It differed in some respects nonetheless. While Tales sometimes dabbled in stories of science fiction and fantasy, this series was more strictly horror. As the name implies, each episode features a different monster, from the animatronic puppet of a fictional children's television program to mutated, weapon-wielding lab rats.

A mid-life crisis tale about the unlikely chairman of the English department in a badly underfunded college in the Pennsylvania rust belt.

The humorous, poignant story of a declining New England town and its inhabitants, whose lives are deeply rooted in and influenced by the Knox River and its vacant mills, their class differences, and ghosts of the past.

A rascally nearing-retirement man juggles a workers' compensation suit while secretly working for his nemesis and flirting with his nemesis' young wife. As his estranged son returns, he faces new family responsibilities, while a banker plots to evict him from his home.

Coleman Silk is a worldly and admired professor who loses his job after unwittingly making a racial slur. To clear his name, Silk writes a book about the events with his friend and colleague Nathan Zuckerman, who in the process discovers a dark secret Silk has hidden his whole life. All the while, Silk engages in an affair with Faunia Farley, a younger woman whose tormented past threatens to unravel the layers of deception Silk has constructed.

A pastor preoccupied with writing the perfect sermon fails to realize that his wife is having an affair and his children are up to no good.

A retired detective accepts a simple task, unaware that it will tear open old, forgotten, but deadly wounds.

A shady lawyer attempts a Christmas Eve crime, hoping to swindle the local mob out of some money. But his partner, a strip club owner, might have different plans for the cash.

A mystery hidden for generations. Now the truth will finally be revealed.

When Hubert Lee decides to open the world's largest drive-in movie theater across the street from a funeral parlor, a feud erupts between Lee and Turner Knight, the owner of the funeral home. As Lee's many promotional ideas become more and more outrageous, he continues to enrage Knight until one of the promotions backfires with grave consequences.