Portsmouth, 1794. Under thundery skies and in lashing rain, 17-year-old midshipman Horatio Hornblower takes the first tentative steps of his naval career, but a feud with a shipmate causes complications.
Having enthroned the wife of Peter the Great and his mistress Catherine I, Menshikov receives unlimited power, thereby causing envy and indignation of his former allies in the coup. Taking advantage of his absence, they are plotting against His Serene Highness. But once again, luck accompanies the brave darling of fortune: having received a warning of mortal danger, he escapes arrest and enters the boudoir of the Empress.
Set in the Mayan civilization, when a man's idyllic presence is brutally disrupted by a violent invading force, he is taken on a perilous journey to a world ruled by fear and oppression where a harrowing end awaits him. Through a twist of fate and spurred by the power of his love for his woman and his family he will make a desperate break to return home and to ultimately save his way of life.
In 1798, a feral boy is discovered outside the town of Aveyron, France. Diagnosed as mentally impaired, he is relegated to an asylum. A young doctor named Jean Itard becomes convinced that the boy has normal mental capacity, but that his development was hindered by lack of contact with society. He brings the boy home and begins an arduous attempt at education over several years.
Japan, 1701. A group of samurai become rônin after their lord is forced to commit seppuku for assaulting a court official, who will become the target of a merciless revenge.
What happens when a person decides that life is merely a state of mind? If you're Betty, a small-town waitress and soap opera fan from Fair Oaks, Kansas, you refuse to believe that you can't be with the love of your life just because he doesn't really exist. After all, life is no excuse for not living. Traumatized by a savage event, Betty enters into a fugue state that allows -- even encourages -- her to keep functioning... in a kind of alternate reality.
Pocahontas, daughter of a Native American tribe chief, falls in love with an English soldier as colonists invade 17th century Virginia.
Will Plunkett and Captain James Macleane, two men from different ends of the social spectrum in 18th-century England, enter a gentlemen's agreement: They decide to rid the aristocrats of their belongings. With Plunkett's criminal know-how and Macleane's social connections, they team up to be soon known as "The Gentlemen Highwaymen". But when one day these gentlemen hold up Lord Chief Justice Gibson's coach, Macleane instantly falls in love with his beautiful and cunning niece, Lady Rebecca Gibson. Unfortunately, Thief Taker General Chance, who also is quite fond of Rebecca, is getting closer and closer to getting both.
A story of lost love, young love, a legendary sword and one last opportunity at redemption.
British barrister Sydney Carton lives an insubstantial and unhappy life. He falls under the spell of Lucie Manette, but Lucie marries Charles Darnay. When Darnay goes to Paris to rescue an imprisoned family retainer, he becomes entangled in the snares of the brutal French Revolution and is himself jailed and condemned to the guillotine. But Sydney Carton, in love with a woman he cannot have, comes up with a daring plan to save her husband.
La Guerre Dans le Haut Pays is a period piece set in the winter of 1797-98, during the six days leading up to the fall of Bern and the victory of Napoleon's army, when the Bern government is faced with mixed loyalties from its subjects. The population of the lower valley is divided, but the upper region remains loyal, since they have been given special autonomy and a favorable system of taxation. David, a postman, works between the two regions. His father, who is a hard-line conservative, does not approve of his relationship with Julie, who is from the lower part of the valley. Julie's father, on the other hand, is more open to the new ideas of liberation. As a result of his work, David is exposed to new ideas and becomes a believer in equality and justice.
A peculiar neighbor offers hope to a recent widow who is struggling to raise a teenager who is unpredictable and, sometimes, violent.
A down-on-his-luck American Indian recently released from jail is offered the chance to "star" as the victim of a snuff film, the resulting pay of which could greatly help his poverty stricken family.
Louis, Éric and Daniel are inseparable. They are young, reckless and live at 100 miles an hour. Quickly, children's games take the path of small, disorganized crime. Their friendship will be put to the test. A tender and offbeat look at the turbulent and intoxicating period of the transition to adulthood, with the city of Quebec and its 1970s and 1980s as a backdrop.
In a small Southern town, a plantation owner is duped into thinking a thief is a kind stranger. To repay the stranger for stopping a robbery, the plantation owner invites him to his home to meet his daughter.
The neighbors of a frontier family turn on them when it is suspected that their beloved adopted daughter was stolen from the Kiowa tribe.
In early 20th-century Montana, Col. William Ludlow lives on a ranch in the wilderness with his sons, Alfred, Tristan, and Samuel. Eventually, the unconventional but close-knit family are bound by loyalty, tested by war, and torn apart by love, as told over the course of several decades in this epic saga.
In 19th century France, Jean Valjean, a man imprisoned for stealing bread, must flee a relentless policeman named Javert. The pursuit consumes both men's lives, and soon Valjean finds himself in the midst of the student revolutions in France.
A valuable medallion believed to prove that aliens from outer space visited Earth in prehistoric times is sought.
When three women living on the edge of the American frontier are driven mad by harsh pioneer life, the task of saving them falls to the pious, independent-minded Mary Bee Cuddy. Transporting the women by covered wagon to Iowa, she soon realizes just how daunting the journey will be, and employs a low-life drifter, George Briggs, to join her. The unlikely pair and the three women head east, where a waiting minister and his wife have offered to take the women in. But the group first must traverse the harsh Nebraska Territories marked by stark beauty, psychological peril and constant threat.