Years of working in the food industry have made Juana, a working-class Latina, a chef of speed and skill. Searching for financial stability, she stumbles into a high-energy, male-dominated Japanese cuisine kitchen. The new atmosphere re-ignites her passions for food and life and makes her hungry to get mixed up in the flavors of this new world.
In 1896, three survivors of a whaling ship-wreck in the Canadian Arctic are saved and adopted by an Eskimo tribe but frictions arise when the three start misbehaving.
David has to share his room with a stranger, although he is not so fond of the idea.
A desperate socialite seeks her missing husband, troubled by bad investments and debts, with help from a private eye and the high-priced call girl hubby had been seeing.
In 1972, disenchanted about the dreary conventions of English life, 25-year-old Julia heads for Morocco with her daughters, six-year-old Lucy and precocious eight-year-old Bea.
Joe Buck is a wide-eyed hustler from Texas hoping to score big with wealthy New York City women; he finds a companion in Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo, an ailing swindler with a bum leg and a quixotic fantasy of escaping to Florida.
After a one night stand with Alex, Isabel realizes that she is pregnant and they decide to get married. However, along with the marriage comes compromise of one's own cultural traditions.
Salvatore "Sal" Fragione is the Italian owner of a pizzeria in Brooklyn. A neighborhood local, Buggin' Out, becomes upset when he sees that the pizzeria's Wall of Fame exhibits only Italian actors. Buggin' Out believes a pizzeria in a black neighborhood should showcase black actors, but Sal disagrees. The wall becomes a symbol of racism and hate to Buggin' Out and to other people in the neighborhood, and tensions rise.
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.
American-born Anna Vorontosov teaches school in a remote, primitive section of northern New Zealand. Her experimental teaching methods have won her the love and affection of her pupils and their parents and the admiration of the unhappily married school inspector, Abercrombie. Her personal life, however, is less secure; frightened of love and sexually inhibited, she has always been aloof with men. Eager to break down this barrier is Englishman Paul Lathrope, a somewhat irrational and immature fellow teacher who aspires to be a singer. Though Anna is attracted to him, she refuses to submit to his advances.
A Japanese Yakuza gangster's deadly existence in his homeland gets him exiled to Los Angeles, where he is taken in by his little brother and his brother's gang.
Jess Bhamra, the daughter of a strict Indian couple in London, is not permitted to play organized soccer, even though she is 18. When Jess is playing for fun one day, her impressive skills are seen by Jules Paxton, who then convinces Jess to play for her semi-pro team. Jess uses elaborate excuses to hide her matches from her family while also dealing with her romantic feelings for her coach, Joe.
The story of an old Jewish widow named Daisy Werthan and her relationship with her black chauffeur, Hoke. From an initial mere work relationship grew in 25 years a strong friendship between the two very different characters, in a time when those types of relationships were shunned.
Wounded Civil War soldier John Dunbar tries to commit suicide—and becomes a hero instead. As a reward, he's assigned to his dream post, a remote junction on the Western frontier, and soon makes unlikely friends with the local Sioux tribe.
17-year-old Jane begins to embrace her background and rekindle her relationship with her mother when she becomes immersed in Chinese culture at her younger sister's new language school.
Two lost souls visiting Tokyo -- the young, neglected wife of a photographer and a washed-up movie star shooting a TV commercial -- find an odd solace and pensive freedom to be real in each other's company, away from their lives in America.
Krotoa, a feisty, bright, 11-year-old girl is removed from her close-knit Khoi tribe to serve Jan van Riebeeck, her uncle’s trading partner and the first Governor of the Cape Colony. She is brought into the first Fort established by the Dutch East India Company in 1652. There she grows into a visionary young woman who assimilates the Dutch language and culture so well that she rises to become an influential translator but ends up being rejected by her own people as she tries to bridge the gap between the two cultures about to collide.
An American woman is stranded in Tokyo after breaking up with her boyfriend. Searching for direction in life, she trains to be a râmen chef under a tyrannical Japanese master.
Caroline is forced to leave her unfaithful boyfriend, and the only place she can crash is with her sister Sarah, with whom she does not get along. Sarah graciously offers Caroline a tiny room in her apartment and decides to help her find Mr. Right. Caroline isn't sure she's cut out for the dating game, but Sarah assures her there's nothing to it. Caroline is sent on a series of grueling and comic dates with everything from nimble pickup artists, to adventure sports freaks and a karaokesinging stockbroker. But in the end what the two sisters really find is themselves.
Mr. Chu is an elderly widower who teaches tai chi chuan in Beijing. He moves to America to live with his son's family, but finds the cultural adjustment difficult. Since his daughter-in-law is a white woman who does not speak Chinese, Mr. Chu's son, Alex, must mediate.