Maggie has just separated from her husband and is finally overhauling the beautiful converted church that she had bought. When she meets Nate, she feels like she's met the man who is going to fix up her kitchen...and maybe even her heart.
Takizawa Bakin, a popular Edo period author, begins to recount a story he is planning in front of his friend, the artist Katsushika Hokusai. The story is about eight warriors who, each carrying a jewel, gather together as if guided by fate and embark on a harsh journey to fight the curse of the Satomi family. Hokusai is drawn into the story that Bakin is telling, and visits Bakin on various occasions to hear the rest of the story, and a strange relationship between the two begins. The serialization becomes Bakin's life's work, with the idea of "rewarding good and punishing evil in a world where evil is rampant," but after 28 years, as the story finally approaches its climax, Bakin begins to lose his sight. With the completion of the story in doubt, he receives an unexpected proposal from his daughter-in-law. Will the story ever be completed?
Broken by grief after his mother's death, Olaf becomes a wanderer. He is treated cruelly until he is given a meal by a woman at the homestead where she lives with her husband and baby. Olaf is able to return her kindness when he overhears a plot to rob the settlers of their home. He alerts the couple and delays the would-be thieves long enough for the husband to file a claim on his land. Olaf is injured by the claim jumpers but he recovers, alone and forgotten by those he has helped. He then moves aimlessly along.
Failed architect, engineer and vicious murderer Jack narrates the details of some of his most elaborately orchestrated crimes, each of them a towering piece of art that defines his life's work as a serial killer for twelve years.
In Amsterdam - in the time before the legalisation of some drugs and the following growth of competition on the market - takes place a war between the Italian and Chinese mafia because of the control of the heroin market.
At a summit for Latin American presidents in Chile where the region's geopolitical strategies and alliances are in discussion, Argentine president Hernán Blanco endures political and family drama that will force him to face his own demons.
Mircea is a troubled Romanian writer struggling with a deadline to complete his novel. An obnoxious, loud, and possibly dangerous man, Boris, moves into the apartment across the hall with his own deadline of excess and self-destruction. Unable to work, Mircea storms across the hall to confront Boris. In confronting this madman, he may very well be confronting his own sanity all under the watchful eye of Death Herself.
Tim Murphy is a Vietnam Vet. When he loses his job he starts to relive all the pain and horror of his time in Vietnam. The stresses and strains nearly destroy his marriage and his family. Only after joining a veterans' therapy group does Tim find relief from his nightmares. With the support of his fellow vets and the love of his wife, Tim recovers. Written by Pfyre Caidmon
Paul is agonising over his interpretation of 'Uncle Vanya' and, paralysed by anxiety, stumbles upon a solution via a New Yorker article about a high-tech company promising to alleviate suffering by extracting souls. He enlists their services—only to discover that his soul is the shape and size of a chickpea.
A psychologist comes to believe that the acutely autistic 17-year-old girl that he has been attempting to treat is gifted with telepathic powers, and begins to exhaustively test her capabilities, enlisting the aid of a psychiatric colleague to impartially observe.
Chronicles a single day in the summer of 1989 when the future president of the United States, Barack Obama, wooed his future First Lady on an epic first date across Chicago's South Side.
Mike, an experienced stripper, takes a younger performer called The Kid under his wing and schools him in the arts of partying, picking up women, and making easy money.
The day they move into a new neighborhood, the Feral family plans to look as normal and friendly as possible. But their son, Philemon, is no ordinary teenager. When he gets closer to his new neighbor, Camila, his thirst for blood grows and his difference becomes impossible to hide…