When an arranged marriage brings Ada and her spirited daughter to the wilderness of nineteenth-century New Zealand, she finds herself locked in a battle of wills with both her controlling husband and a rugged frontiersman to whom she develops a forbidden attraction.

A family loaded with quirky, colorful characters piles into an old van and road trips to California for little Olive to compete in a beauty pageant.

A stranger's call informs Roberta that her estranged brother Frank has died in a small town under bizarre circumstances. Ben, his best friend from college, also gets the call. Arriving just in time for his funeral, it becomes quickly obvious to them that the little slice of small-town America in which they find themselves is like an episode of The Twilight Zone featuring Frank's eccentric friends, his amazing secrets and his stunning final request. Both Ben and Roberta are shocked to discover that Frank not only had a child, but that he has left them responsible for his son's care.

Architect Alexander Beck has just won an architecture prize. He wants to modernize GDR building blocks in Thuringia. Alex travels to the heart of rural Eastern Germany where he grew up and where people remember him as Alex from the Free German Youth, a pro-GDR youth organization.

Old Captain Bill and his wife have an only son, whom they idolize. He loses all his money at gambling and drinking, and determines to do better in the city. After a short absence he writes his people that he has secured a good position, is saving money, and will be home before long. A year or two later he arrives in town and on his way to his home passes the old saloon he used to patronize. He cannot resist the temptation, and goes in. He falls in with a lot of bad fellows and is robbed. Ashamed to go home, he ships on board a sailing vessel.

Although Kenneth Carmont and Esther Saunders, criminal Bert Saunders' sister, love each other, Esther marries detective Elwood Collins, who agrees to stop pursuing Bert if she accepts his proposal. One night, Kenneth and Esther hide Bert, who has escaped from the police. The same night, Kenneth's father is murdered. The evidence implicates Kenneth, who cannot supply his whereabouts at the time of the crime, as that would give away Bert. Esther cannot clear Kenneth for the same reason, and because it would let her husband know that she was with her former sweetheart.

Finding himself penniless, Lawrence Ashmore, whose late father was ruined on the stock exchange, obtains a position as a reporter. Ashmore is assigned to investigate the reported fatal illness of Jesse Craven, one of Wall Street's financial monarchs.

For Nita Valyez, who is half-Spanish and half-Irish, Carlos represents potential violence and danger, two things to which she is both attracted and repelled. In contrast, she has only a passing interest in Big Jim, the town's honest, good-hearted sheriff. Then, after Carlos kills a faro dealer, he forces Nita to make an escape with him.

After more than 20 years, the marriage of Bevon consultant Thea and car mechanic Rainer has been worn down by years of routine. Thea lacks appreciation from her family and no longer has access to her teenage daughter Janina. Her husband Rainer is still mourning his missed chance of a career as a rock star and is hopelessly at odds with his son Patrick. When Heinrich Bittner, a supposedly close friend of Thea's deceased father, suddenly moves in with the Cronpichels, Thea enjoys his presence and begins to see her life with new eyes. But is the charming and mysterious Heinrich really who he claims to be?

The basic story in Love under the Crucifix is about Ogin, daughter of a tea master, who are both Christians in feudal Japan. Ogin falls in love with a feudal prince, also a Christian who is already married, and that creates problems. Further, when the Shogun bans Christianity, the situation worsens.

The Old Settler is the story of two middle-aged sisters, Elizabeth and Quilly, who share an apartment in Harlem in 1943. The sisters quarrel amiably, but they share a wounded history that becomes revealed as the tale unfolds. An earnest but unworldly young man named Husband travels up from the South to board with the sisters while he searches for his beloved Lou Bessie, who left their small town a few years back to find a new life. Husband would like to bring Lou Bessie back home, but she's enamored with the excitement of the city, and her plans are more complicated. In time, Elizabeth and Husband begin a courtship that may or may not overcome their considerable age difference, while Quilly reacts disapprovingly.

A contemporary story of love, rejection, and triumph as a young Maori girl fights to fulfill a destiny her grandfather refuses to recognize.

When a Mongolian nomadic family's newest camel colt is rejected by its mother, a musician is needed for a ritual to change her mind.

Devoted teacher Anne Sullivan leads deaf, blind and mute Helen Keller out of solitude and helps integrate her into the world.

A biography of artist Frida Kahlo, who channeled the pain of a crippling injury and her tempestuous marriage into her work.

After a canceled tour, flailing musician Jesse Lirette seeks out an old flame in a small town in northern New Mexico. But when an arrogant attempt at inserting himself into her family fails, he must confront the mistakes of his past on his own.

The (mostly) true story of the greatest jazz drummer you've never heard of who stumbled upon a 16-year-old singer and nurtured her into a legend.

In the college play, Tom and his room-mate, "Bunch," take prominent and successful parts, Tom as the hero and "Bunch" as the heroine, in which he is an excellent female impersonator. The day after the performance, "Bunch" makes an engagement to take a real chorus girl to dinner. Unexpectedly his mother comes to college to visit him and he makes Tom take the girl.

"Olivia" captures the awakening passions of an English adolescent sent away for a year to a small finishing school outside Paris. The innocent but watchful Olivia develops an infatuation for her headmistress Julie and through this screen of love observes the tense romance between Julie and the other head of the school Cara in its final months.

Police inspector Sciarra, struggling with an identity crisis, and Domenica, an orphan who would like to know about her mother, spend one day together along the streets of Naples. It's Sciarra's last day of work and he has to take Domenica to the morgue, to identify a man who might have raped her. To Domenica, Sciarra is a father she never had, to him she is the daughter he couldn't have.