Scout Finch, 6, and her older brother Jem live in sleepy Maycomb, Alabama, spending much of their time with their friend Dill and spying on their reclusive and mysterious neighbor, Boo Radley. When Atticus, their widowed father and a respected lawyer, defends a black man named Tom Robinson against fabricated rape charges, the trial and tangent events expose the children to evils of racism and stereotyping.
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.
Marshall Jed Cooper survives a hanging, vowing revenge on the lynch mob that left him dangling. To carry out his oath for vengeance, he returns to his former job as a lawman. Before long, he's caught up with the nine men on his hit list and starts dispensing his own brand of Wild West justice.
In turn-of-the-century Mississippi, an 11-year-old boy comes of age as two mischievous adult friends talk him into sneaking the family car out for a trip to Memphis and a series of adventures.
After leaving a wealthy Belgian family to become a nun, Sister Luke struggles with her devotion to her vows during crisis, disappointment, and World War II.
A male army deserter and a black male dock worker join forces against a corrupt manager, in a corrupt environment, and as their connection blossoms they must face the oppressive and morally decaying city they live in.
An experiment on a simpleton turns him into a genius. When he discovers what has been done to him he struggles with whether or not what was done to him was right.
Christopher Gill is a psychotic killer who uses various disguises to trick and strangle his victims. Moe Brummel is a single and harassed New York City police detective who starts to get phone calls from the strangler and builds a strange alliance as a result. Kate Palmer is a swinging, hip tour guide who witnesses the strangler leaving her dead neighbor's apartment and sets her sights on the detective. Moe's live-in mother wishes her son would be a successful Jewish doctor like his big brother.
Sylvia, a novice schoolteacher, is hired to teach English in a high school, but she’s met with an apathetic faculty, a delinquent student body and an administration that drowns its staff in paperwork. The following days go from bad to worse as Sylvia struggles to reach her most troubled students.
Henry Thomas tries to overcome the horrors of his childhood and start a new life with his wife and kid. However, his abusive step-mother and his dependence on alcohol threaten to ruin his future.
Grace Caldwell, a young Pennsylvania newspaper heiress living with her widowed mother, has trouble restraining herself when it comes to the amorous attentions of young men. As word starts to spread about her behavior, Grace becomes a major source of heartache for her mother and a big source of concern to her brother.
An American Army officer is recruited by the yet to exist Israel to help them form an army. He is disturbed by this sudden appeal to his Jewish heritage. Each of Israel's Arab neighbors has vowed to invade the poorly prepared country as soon as partition is granted. He is made commander of the Israeli forces just before the war begins.
William Popper is the son of a stockbroker and is thoroughly disenchanted with "the system." So much so that even though he can prove that he ran over a woman in his car entirely by accident, he accepts a sentence for manslaughter.
During a typically disaster-filled day, Ben Harris, an angry and frustrated bachelor mailman living in a cluttered Greenwich Village basement, learns he has been paying rent to a woman who hasn't owned his building in 6 years. No longer able to endure the injustices of society, he decides to activate the ferocious tiger within himself by abducting a helpless female and dragging her back to his lair.
A cop quits the force after too much disappointment in the system. He becomes a bodyguard of a rich recent widow. She is on trial for her husband's murder. He decides to help her clear her name... and get over her husband.
Truck driver Johnny Horton and cigarette girl Eadie elope after a hasty romance, but after the wedding, the couple realizes they don't know each other very well. Soon Johnny's overbearing mother becomes the third wheel in their marriage, threatening its fragile existence.
In an old Louisiana plantation, the furnishings and the once great family are fading fast.The matriarch desperately tries to hold on to the gazebo that's slated for destruction as part of a building project, as well as holding her daughter to an unwanted marriage, even though she loves the builder.
A scrub-woman attempts to rescue a dolphin who will talk to no one but her from a research laboratory.
In post-war Cape Breton, a doctor's efforts to tutor a deaf and mute woman are undermined when she is raped, and the resulting pregnancy causes scandal to swirl.