As a Muslim girl from Southern Thailand, Maryam falls prey to racism in school. She begins spiralling into an identity crisis, and starts resenting her name, religion and birthdate.
It all begins at a party in Santiago, Chile, when a seemingly innocent gesture -- the offer of a ride home -- ends in a passionate night of lovemaking and intense conversation for young singles Bruno and Daniela. Shacked up at a flea-bitten motel for a one-night stand, the pair lingers deep into the night, alternating between powerful physical encounters and an ever-deepening emotional connection.
25-year-old Arghavan lives with her parents in Tehran, and intends to marry her fiancé, Hesam. One day, her short stories win her a grant to attend a writing workshop in Germany. Soon before she is to leave, however, Arghavan is abducted and raped. In a strict, conservative society where young women are expected to be virgins before marriage, this is a social catastrophe. Plagued by gossip and finding little solace, Arghavan's life begins turning into a nightmare.
Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged British novelist who is both appalled by and attracted to the vulgarity of American culture. When he comes to stay at the boarding house run by Charlotte Haze, he soon becomes obsessed with Lolita, the woman's teenaged daughter.
A 16-year-old girl visits her gay half-brother and ends up seducing his boyfriend, thus wreaking havoc on all of their lives.
A hospice nurse working at a spooky New Orleans plantation home finds herself entangled in a mystery involving the house's dark past.
Barley Scott Blair, a Lisbon-based editor of Russian literature who unexpectedly begins working for British intelligence, is commissioned to investigate the purposes of Dante, a dissident scientist trapped in the decaying Soviet Union that is crumbling under the new open-minded policies.
Ruža left Serbia, her country, over 30 years ago and lives in Zurich. Her daily life is a string of repetitive moments until, one day, Ana arrives on the scene and upsets Ruža's painstakingly organized world. A subtle friendship develops between the two strong willed women.
Justin McLeod is a former teacher who lives as a recluse on the edge of town after his face is disfigured from an automobile accident ten years earlier, in which a boy was incinerated--and for which he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Also suspected of being a paedophile, he is befriended by Chuck, causing the town's suspicions and hostility to be ignited.
Wanting his son to get away from his many girlfriends and buckle down to work, the New York industrialist father of a playboy sends him to an obscure village in Spain to find samples of a rare mineral. When the son gets to Spain, he promptly falls for a beautiful señorita, and runs afoul of the local police chief.
In 1971 Salford fish-and-chip shop owner George Khan expects his family to follow his strict Pakistani Muslim ways. But his children, with an English mother and having been born and brought up in Britain, increasingly see themselves as British and start to reject their father's rules on dress, food, religion, and living in general.
A young girl turns into an A-List celebrity over night when her private journal is accidently published and becomes a best-seller.
One day, Fumiko Tashiro runs into Ryota Saeki - an old acquaintance from college - outside the municipal library where she works. Brought together by chance, they find themselves drawn to one another, and before long they are set to get married. They make their preparations for the wedding, envisioning their happy future together. But all the while, Ryota is troubled by his own secret ability to see the dead.
15-year-old Mia faces an overwhelming transformation which puts her entire existence into question. Her body is changing radically, and despite desperate attempts to halt the process, Mia is soon forced to accept that nature is far more powerful than she is.
In 1976, a teenage girl struggles to cope while living with her neurotic lower-middle-class family of nomads on the outskirts of Beverly Hills.
The gruesome death of a prostitute brings suspicion on one of her clients, James Wayland, a brilliant, self-destructive and epileptic heir to a textile fortune. So detectives Braxton and Kennesaw take Wayland in for questioning, thinking they can break the man. But despite his troubles, Wayland is a master of manipulation, and during the interrogation, he begins to turn the tables on the investigators, forcing them to reveal their own sinister sides.
After precipitating the death of a tenant with whom he has been feuding, Squire Fairfield brings the dead man's young daughter to live in Wyvern Manor. Alice grows up thinking the squire is her kind benefactor, and falls in love with one of his two sons.
Before we can join society as productive and acceptable human beings, we are forced to endure a difficult and trying experience - high school. In a world run by youth, primal attributes dictate who is 'King of the Classroom'. When Marty, a troubled but talented teenager, moves into the locker beside his school's 'Classroom King', a charismatic but grossly sadistic cocaine dealer, his position on the high school food chain sinks to an unsurpassed low. Marty is forced to make the decision of his life: put up with the savage humiliation, or respond with the same primal attitude he is attacked with. His choices slowly but surely reveal who is Class Savage.
The teenage daughter of a Brooklyn beauty-parlor owner blossoms under the influence of her recently-returned show-biz aunt.
Latif, a devoutly religious hitman, struggles to balance work, faith and fatherhood. When his wife dies, he embarks on a desperate journey across Houston to protect his children, confronting the forces closing in around him – and the beliefs threatening to unravel within.