Nikolai Kurkov, a Muscovite, worked at a research institute and dreamed of defending his thesis on agrobiology, but when he arrived in one of the villages of the Non-Chernozem region, he met a childhood friend and stayed, heading a lagging collective farm...

Lyudmila Nikolskaya (in real life, Makievskaya), a noblewoman by birth who graduated from the Smolny Institute, was with those who stormed the Winter Palace. A participant in the armed uprising in Yekaterinoslav, commander and commissar of an armored train, she died in a combat operation to capture the fortified headquarters of the enemy...

Alexey Veryaskin, a new employee, joins the team of concrete carpenters, who left his prosperous family to take an active part in the construction of a large hydroelectric power station.

A mysterious Dark Horseman slays young girls near the village of Dikanka, and he has already butchered 11 ladies. Nikolai Gogol, a scribe from Saint Petersburg has to take charge of the investigation, but the closer he gets to solving the case, the more fits he has, causing macabre visions. When he learns the next victim is his beloved, Liza, he doubts that he can protect her and resist the murderer. Fortunately, he meets somebody who can help him: Khoma Brut, the witch hunter, martial artist and philosopher. Together they spend three dreadful nights in an old chapel reading the funeral service for Ulyana, the witch, and calling upon the ghastly evil spirit Viy.

Soon after Gogol's death, Binh names him guilty for the deaths of the Cossacks and the young women at the hands of the Dark Horseman, since he was the one who ordered them to be hidden in the barn. Bomgart is unable to perform a post-mortem analysis on the Gogol's body, while Vakula's daughter Vasilina (who secretly has magic abilities) proclaims denial about Gogol's demise.

First-grader Valera Ovechkin, who has a strict mother and a strict teacher, is in love with a ninth-grader Olenka. Mom once, when Valerik was in kindergarten, having learned that he had kissed a girl, threatened the amorous Ovechkin with a colony if he kissed anyone else. Valera believes in the possibility of punishment, but, having fallen in love with Olenka, she breaks the taboos.

Former soldier returns to his village only to discover that his girlfriend married another man.

How far will one go to preserve the world they are accustomed to… Olya is unshakable to the blows of fate, she always strikes first instead of being hit. Everyone who is not with her is against her. However one day the moment comes when she has to reconsider her view of life…

Based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Emperor's Nightingale and The Emperor's New Clothes.

Militia Colonel Kornilov is leading a complex investigation related to multiply carjackings.