The stories Ado and Winter's Tale both refer to William Shakespeare, while Time Out, like her time travel novels, explores the nature of time.
Mission: Impossible | All Things Considered | Mission: Impossible II | Mission: Impossible III | Things to Come | Mission: Impossible (film) | The Pretty Things | Where the Wild Things Are | Wild Things | The Shape of Things | The Impossible Years | Linens 'n Things | Kids Say the Darndest Things | 10 Things I Hate About You | Things Fall Apart | The God of Small Things | My Favorite Things | First Things | Things the Grandchildren Should Know | Things That Make You Go Hmmm... | Things That Go Pump in the Night | Things Behind the Sun | Terrible Things | Mission: Impossible (TV series) | Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol | Emission Impossible | All the Things She Said | Where the Wild Things Are (film) | Where The Wild Things Are | Very Bad Things |
Literary quotations are provided at the start of each chapter, for instance, that for "Single Combat", the chapter detailing the cross-examination of William Jennings Bryan by Clarence Darrow, for which de Camp chose a quotation from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass where Alice and the Queen talk about believing impossible things.