Eleven-year-old Tanya is going out of her mind with boredom. What use is a sunny beach if she has to take care of her little brother Boris all the time? But then, while diving, she finds an old, stone-encrusted tankard. She tries to open it – and suddenly a strange little man creeps out of the bushes. His trousers are tucked into top boots, his shirt is covered in lace, and he is sporting a moustache almost as long as the braid of hair on his head. The little man chases after Tanya, explaining that they have an 'astral connection' and that, unfortunately, he must now fulfil her every wish, for she has broken the tankard in which he has been imprisoned for the last three hundred years. At first Tanya thinks that the man is crazy, but then she remembers a fairy tale and a cartoon film in which a spirit fulfils wishes. Are you some sort of genie? she asks the old man. A genie?!! I am a magician, he replies indignantly. A magician, I tell you – and a great magician at that!

One day, fourteen-year-old Ivan meets a remarkable girl, who persuades him to jump into an ice-cold river in the middle of winter. Believing that this is his chance to pull off a great coup – didn't he overhear the two teenagers whispering about treasure? – a nasty, little crook jumps in after them, his brother in tow. The policeman Peter Bunny – whose surname is a general source of mirth – sees an opportunity to prove his bravery, once and for all, and he too plunges into the icy water. Instead of contracting hypothermia, these crazy five discover The City with the Blue Door, a giant horse answering to the name of Terminator, who can change colour from black to white in a hoofbeat, the terrible dragon Smej Gorynitsch and – last but not least – the silver-grey wolf, without whose help all would be lost.

Xenia has her life completely under control. She leads a happy private life with her husband Sergej and her adolescent daughter Anja. Having just arrived back from a congress in Weimar, she starts organising a New Year's Eve party with her chaotic friend Vera, who is constantly falling in love, Marina, an out-of-work translator, and a few other good friends. Xenia's practice as a psychoanalyst is booming, and she has as many patients as she can possibly cope with. Then a colleague asks her to take over a case that she is having difficulty in handling. Unwillingly, and only because she owes her colleague a favour, Xenia agrees to meet the patient for a preliminary consultation. But the patient soon begins to interest her; in fact, he casts a spell over her with his intelligence and his charm. Xenia is so fascinated by the case that it is a long time before she notices that she is gradually getting out of her depth. This psycho-thriller, which is part of a cycle of three in each of which another of the three women friends is the main character, is Anna Dankowtsewa's debut – and a highly successful one at that.