A fatally ill mother with only two months to live creates a list of things she wants to do before she dies without telling her family of her illness.
Religious and cultural tensions escalate when an African Islamic woman has an affair with a white American agnostic man.
A Connecticut nurse finds herself at the center of a political firestorm and a Supreme Court case centering on eminent domain.
Joe, who owns a gas station along with his brothers and is about to marry Katherine, travels to the small town where she lives to visit her, but is wrongly mistaken for a wanted kidnapper and arrested.
The feisty aging Hagar Shipley has lived an unconventional life. Her rebellious heart has always ruled and her choices have put her at odds with family and friends. Faced with her own mortality, and desperate to find solace, she goes on the run. In both the past and the present, she is forced to come to terms with the pain and pleasure, the disappointments and the exhilarations of her life.
In the fall of 1963, Eddie Birdlace is an 18-year-old Marine Corps volunteer who is about to ship out with three of his buddies for a tour of duty in Vietnam. Planning a massive blowout for their last night in San Francisco, Eddie, his buddies, and a number of other Marines set up a contest they call a "dogfight”.
Brenda, vivacious leader of the "Satins", a fun-loving group of pretty high school girls, searches for deadly vengeance against the gang members who assaulted her deaf-mute sister.
Monica Wright and Quincy McCall grew up in the same neighborhood and have known each other since childhood. As they grow into adulthood, they fall in love, but they also share another all-consuming passion: basketball. As Quincy and Monica struggle to make their relationship work, they follow separate career paths though high school and college basketball and, they hope, into stardom in big-league professional ball.
Freed after a lengthy term in a juvenile detention center, convicted child killer Jack Burridge finds work as a deliveryman and begins dating co-worker Michelle. While out on the road one day, Jack notices a distressed child, and, after reuniting the girl with her family, becomes a local celebrity. But when a local newspaper unearths his past, Jack must cope with the anger of citizens who fear for the safety of their children.
A fidgety, wisecracking video store clerk develops a fixation on a particularly reclusive customer, a frequent visitor to the pornography section of Cinefile, the video store where he works in Los Angeles. After multiple failures to impress her during their brief daily transactions, he finds her street address in the store's database, drives to her apartment building and initiates an unconventional campaign to win her affections.
A single mother in rural India has to pay a heavy price to repay her debts.
Adrian, an irrepressibly chirpy tech nerd, has OCD. Grace, a beautiful street artist, has multiple personality disorder. It's a love story that seems impossible. But what if it works?
When her boyfriend is arrested for marijuana possession, Joleen Reedy and her 11-year-old daughter, Tara, take refuge with Joleen's aimless brother, James. Joleen soon runs off with a truck driver, and James is unable to meet his responsibilities. After Child Protective Services takes possession of Tara, James abducts her from a foster home, and the two travel from California to Utah, where his abusive father lives.
The Los Angeles club scene is a place of booze-fueled decadence and debauchery. In a night full of possibilities, eight 20-somethings take to the clubs seeking good times, companionship and maybe a little sex. But in the harsh light of the morning after, their worlds are thrown into a spin of confusion when hungover Sara accuses hard-partying Mike of date rape. Loyalties are tested as each among them is forced to take sides.
The fates of horses, and the people who own and command them, are revealed as Black Beauty narrates the circle of his life.
West Texas, in the 1960's. A tale of two 12-year-olds who embark on an adventure to find new parents in order to escape their unhappy and emotionally unsatisfying family life.
France, 1950s. From the Quartier Latin to Saint-Tropez via New York, a young Parisienne becomes the icon of a whole generation. In 1954, 19-year-old Francoise Sagan shot to fame with her first novel, Bonjour Tristesse. Flamboyant, scandalous and underrated, Sagan lived her life at the furthest edge of excess. She won and lost fortunes at the roulette table, bought and crashed superb sports cars, drank, danced and partied, leaving a trail of lovers in her wake.
A group of South Asian women try but cannot escape their problems on a day trip to a British beach resort.
The story of sex, violence, race and rock and roll in 1950s Chicago, and the exciting but turbulent lives of some of America's musical legends, including Muddy Waters, Leonard Chess, Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf, Etta James and Chuck Berry.
Fia is a wise and somewhat tough 8-year-old girl. Perhaps a cousin of Pippi Longstocking, only a little more vulnerable. Like Pippi, and all other children, she wants to be big and strong, with the power and opportunity to make the world the way she wants it to be. Fia has a difficult role as a kind of "mother" to her mother, a mother who is unable to cope with everyday life. But in the yard opposite lives the magician Bustric, and he becomes Fia's anchor in life. Bustric is a little grown up, but very much a child, and he saves Fia from being seen as a liar and a dreamer in the new class she has to start in.