It is 1935. Before returning to Britain to become the new Foreign Secretary, writer, soldier, and diplomat Robert Conway has one last task in China, rescuing 90 westerners in the city of Baskul. He flies out with the last few evacuees, just ahead of armed revolutionaries.

Unbeknownst to the passengers, the pilot has been forcibly replaced and their aircraft hijacked. It eventually runs out of fuel and crashes deep in the Himalayas, killing their abductor. The group is rescued by Chang and his men and taken to Shangri-La, an idyllic valley sheltered from the bitter cold. The contented inhabitants are led by the mysterious High Lama.

Initially anxious to return to civilization, most of the newcomers grow to love Shangri-La, including paleontologist Alexander Lovett, notorious swindler Henry Barnard, and bitter, terminally ill Gloria Stone, who, miraculously, seems to be recovering. Conway is particularly enchanted, especially when he meets Sondra, who has grown up in Shangri-La. However, Conway's younger brother George and Maria, another beautiful young woman they find there, are determined to leave.

Conway eventually has an audience with the High Lama and learns that his arrival was no accident. The founder of Shangri-La is said to be two hundred years old, preserved, like the other residents, by the magical properties of the paradise he has created, but is finally dying and needs someone wise and knowledgeable in the ways of the modern world to keep it safe. Having read Conway's writings, Sondra believed he was the one; the Lama had agreed with her and arranged for Conway's abduction. The old man names Conway as his successor and then peacefully passes away.

George refuses to believe the Lama's fantastic story and is supported by Maria. Uncertain and torn between love and loyalty, Conway reluctantly gives in to his brother and they leave, taking Maria with them, despite being warned that she is much older than she appears. After several days of grueling travel, she becomes exhausted and falls face down in the snow. When they turn Maria over, they discover that she had become extremely old and died. Horrified, George loses his sanity and jumps to his death.

Conway continues on and eventually ends up in a Chinese mission where a search party finds him. The ordeal has caused him to lose his memory of Shangri-La. On the voyage back to Britain, he starts remembering everything; he tells his story and then jumps ship. The searchers track him back to the Himalayas, but are unable to follow him any further. Conway succeeds in returning to Shangri-La.

John Cardwell, a trombone player, is only one of a large group of unemployed musicians. He tries unsuccessfully to gain an interview and audition with Leopold Stokowski, but not to disappoint his daughter, Patricia (Patsy), he tells her that he has managed to get the job with Stokowski's orchestra. Patsy soon learns the truth and also learns that her father, desperate for rent money, has used some of the cash in a lady's evening bag he has found to pay his debts.

The irrepressible and wilful Patsy seeks an interview with Mrs. Frost, whose bag it was, and confesses her father's actions. Mrs. Frost, a society matron and wife of rich radio station owner John R. Frost, lightheartedly offers to sponsor an orchestra of unemployed musicians. Taking her at her word, Patsy and her father recruit 100 musicians, rent a garage space and start to rehearse. Realizing that Patsy took her seriously, Mrs. Frost flees to Europe.

Mr. Frost tells John and his friends that he will not sponsor them, as they had supposed, unless they can attract a well-recognized guest conductor to give them a 'name' and launch them on their opening night.

Patsy, undaunted, sets out to recruit none other than Leopold Stokowski to be that conductor. Stokowski at first definitely refuses—though when Patsy sings as the orchestra is rehearsing Mozart's "Alleluia" from ''Exsultate, jubilate'', he strongly suggests that she seek professional voice training and eventual representation.

By mistake, Patsy conveys the story to a newspaper music critic that Stokowski will conduct an orchestra of unemployed musicians, and that John R. Frost would broadcast the concert on the radio. When the story breaks, Frost protests his embarrassment to his friends, but they suggest valuable publicity would result. Frost immediately signs the one-hundred-man orchestra to a contract, though Patsy tries to tell them that Stokowski has not agreed.

Stokowski is astonished and offended at the news, but Patsy enters Stokowski's palatial house surreptitiously, along with the entire orchestra. She apologizes to him and insists that he listen to the players. The conductor is so moved by their performance of Liszt's ''Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2'' that he postpones a European tour and agrees to the engagement.

The concert is a rousing success for everyone, especially when Patsy, called upon to make a speech, instead agrees to sing the "Brindisi" (Drinking Song) from Verdi's opera ''La traviata''.

Terry Randall (Katharine Hepburn) moves into the Footlights Club, a theatrical boarding house in New York. Her polished manners and superior attitude make her no friends among the rest of the aspiring actresses living there, particularly her new roommate, flippant, cynical dancer Jean Maitland (Ginger Rogers). From Terry's expensive clothing and her photograph of her elderly grandfather, Jean assumes she has obtained the former from her sugar daddy, just as fellow resident Linda Shaw (Gail Patrick) has from her relationship with influential theatrical producer Anthony Powell (Adolphe Menjou). In truth, Terry comes from a wealthy Midwest family. Over the strong objections of her father, Henry Sims (Samuel S. Hinds), she is determined to try to fulfill her dreams. In the boarding house, Terry's only supporter is aging actress Anne Luther (Constance Collier), who appoints herself Terry's mentor and acting coach.

When Powell sees Jean dancing, he decides to dump Linda. He arranges for Jean and her partner Annie (Ann Miller) to get hired for the floor show of a nightclub he partly owns. He then starts dating Jean, who starts falling for him.

Meanwhile, well-liked Kay Hamilton (Andrea Leeds) had a great success and rave reviews in a play the year before but has had no work since and is running out of money. She clings desperately to the hope of landing the leading role in Powell's new play, ''Enchanted April''. She finally gets an appointment to see Powell, only to have him cancel. She faints in the reception area, the result of malnutrition and disappointment. Seeing this, Terry barges into Powell's private office and berates him for his callousness. As a result, the other boarding house residents start to warm to the newcomer.

Terry's father secretly finances ''Enchanted April'' on condition that Terry be given the starring role, hoping she will fail and return home. Powell invites Terry to his penthouse to break the news. When Jean shows up unannounced, Terry sees the opportunity to save her friend from the philandering Powell. She pretends that Powell is trying to seduce her. It works. However, it makes things uncomfortable around the boarding house. Terry's landing of the plum part breaks Kay's heart.

The inexperienced Terry is so woodenly bad during rehearsals that Powell tries to get out of his contract with Sims. On opening night, after she learns from Jean that Kay has committed suicide, Terry decides she cannot go on. Anne Luther tells her that she must, not just for herself and the tradition of the theatre, but also for Kay. She does and gives a heartfelt performance. She and the play are a hit, much to the chagrin of her father, who is in the audience. At her curtain call, Terry gives a speech in tribute to her dead friend, and Terry and Jean are reconciled. The play remains a success after months, but Terry continues to board at the Footlights Club. A newcomer shows up looking for a room.

The film centers on Manuela, an Argentine nurse who oversees donor organ transplants in Ramón y Cajal Hospital in Madrid and single mother to Esteban, a teenager who wants to be a writer.

On his 17th birthday, Esteban is hit by a car and killed while chasing after actress Huma Rojo for her autograph following a performance of ''A Streetcar Named Desire'', in which she portrays Blanche DuBois. Manuela has to agree with her colleagues at work that her son's heart be transplanted to a man in A Coruña. After travelling after her son's heart, Manuela quits her job and journeys to Barcelona, where she hopes to find her son's father, Lola, a transgender woman Manuela has kept secret from her son, just as she never told Lola they had a son.

In Barcelona, Manuela reunites with her old friend Agrado, a warm and witty transgender sex worker. She also meets and becomes deeply involved with several new friends: Rosa, a young nun who works in a shelter for sex workers who have experienced violence, but is pregnant by Lola and is HIV positive; Huma Rojo, the actress her son had admired; and the drug-addicted Nina Cruz, Huma's co-star and lover. Her life becomes entwined with theirs as she cares for Rosa during her pregnancy and works for Huma as her personal assistant and even acts in the play as an emergency understudy for Nina during one of her drug abuse crises.

On her way to the hospital, Rosa asks the taxi to stop at a park where she spots her father's dog, Sapic, and then her own father, who suffers from Alzheimer's; he does not recognize Rosa and asks for her age and height, but Sapic recognizes Rosa. Rosa dies giving birth to her son, and Lola and Manuela finally reunite at Rosa's funeral. Lola (whose dead name is Esteban), who is dying from AIDS, talks about how she always wanted a son, and Manuela tells her about her own Esteban and how he died in an accident. Manuela then adopts Esteban, Rosa's child, and stays with him at Rosa's parents' house. The father does not understand who Manuela is, and Rosa's mother says it is the new cook, who is living there with her son. Rosa's father then asks Manuela her age and height.

Manuela introduces Esteban (Rosa's son) to Lola and gives her a picture of their own Esteban. Rosa's mother spots them from the street and then confronts Manuela about letting strangers see the baby. Manuela tells her that Lola is Esteban's father; Rosa's mother is appalled and says: "That is the monster that killed my daughter?!"

Manuela flees back to Madrid with Esteban; she cannot take living at Rosa's house any longer, since the grandmother is afraid that she will contract HIV from the baby. She writes a letter to Huma and Agrado saying that she is leaving and once again is sorry for not saying goodbye, like she did years before. Two years later, Manuela returns with Esteban to an AIDS convention, telling Huma and Agrado, who now run a stage show together, that Esteban had been a miracle by becoming HIV-free. She then says she is returning to stay with Esteban's grandparents. When Manuela asks Huma about Nina, Huma becomes melancholic and leaves. Agrado tells Manuela that Nina returned to her town, got married, and had a fat, ugly baby boy. Huma then rejoins the conversation briefly before exiting the dressing room to go perform.

A vacationing Woman from the City (Margaret Livingston) lingers in a lakeside town for weeks. After dark, she goes to a farmhouse where the Man (George O'Brien) and the Wife (Janet Gaynor) live with their child. She whistles from the fence outside. The Man is torn, but finally departs, leaving his wife with the memories of better times when they were deeply in love.

The man and woman meet in the moonlight and kiss passionately. She wants him to sell his farm—which has not done well recently—to join her in the city. When she suggests that he solve the problem of his wife by drowning her, he throttles her violently, but even that dissolves in a passionate embrace. The Woman gathers bundles of reeds so that when the boat is overturned, the Man can stay afloat.

The Wife suspects nothing when her husband suggests going on an outing, but when they set off across the lake, she soon grows suspicious. He prepares to throw her overboard, but when she pleads for his mercy, he realizes he cannot do it. He rows frantically for shore, and when the boat reaches land, the Wife flees.

She boards a trolley, and he follows, begging her not to be afraid of him. The trolley brings them to the city. Her fear and disappointment are overwhelming. He plies her with flowers and bread and finally she stops crying and accepts his gifts. Emerging back on the street, they are touched to see a bride enter a church for her processional, and follow her inside to watch the wedding. The Man breaks down and asks her to forgive him. After a tearful reconciliation, they continue their adventure in the city, having their photograph taken together and visiting a funfair. As darkness falls, they board the trolley for home.

Soon they are drifting back across the lake under the moonlight. A sudden storm causes their boat to begin sinking. The Man remembers the two bundles of reeds he placed in the boat earlier and ties the bundles around the Wife. The boat capsizes, and the Man awakes on a rocky shore. He gathers the townspeople to search the lake, but all they find is a broken bundle of reeds floating in the water.

Convinced the Wife has drowned, the grief-stricken Man stumbles home. The Woman From the City goes to his house, assuming their plan has succeeded. The Man begins to choke her. Then the Maid calls to him that his wife is alive, so he releases the Woman and runs to the Wife, who survived by clinging to one last bundle of reeds.

The Man kneels by the Wife's bed as she slowly opens her eyes. The Man and the Wife kiss, while the Woman From the City's carriage rolls down the hill toward the lake, and the film dissolves to the sunrise.

On a cold day, the fictional 304th New York Infantry Regiment awaits battle beside a river. Teenage Private Henry Fleming, remembering his romantic reasons for enlisting as well as his mother's resulting protests, wonders whether he will remain brave in the face of fear or turn and run back. He is comforted by one of his friends from home, Jim Conklin, who admits that he would run from battle if his fellow soldiers also fled. During the regiment's first battle, Confederate soldiers charge, but are repelled. The enemy quickly regroups and attacks again, this time forcing some of the unprepared Union soldiers to flee. Fearing the battle is a lost cause, Henry deserts his regiment. It is not until after he reaches the rear of the army that he overhears a general announcing the Union's victory.

Ashamed, Henry escapes into a nearby forest, where he discovers a decaying body in a peaceful clearing. In his distress, he hurriedly leaves the clearing and stumbles upon a group of injured men returning from battle. One member of the group, a "tattered soldier", asks Henry where he is wounded, but the youth dodges the question. Among the group is Jim Conklin, who has been shot in the side and is suffering delirium from blood loss. Jim eventually dies of his injury, defiantly resisting aid from his friend, and an enraged and helpless Henry runs from the wounded soldiers. He next comes upon a retreating column that is in disarray. In the panic, a man hits Henry on the head with his rifle, wounding him. Exhausted, hungry, thirsty, and now wounded, Henry decides to return to his regiment regardless of his shame. When he arrives at camp, the other soldiers believe his injury resulted from a grazing bullet during battle. The other men care for the youth, dressing his wound.

The next morning Henry goes into battle for the third time. His regiment encounters a small group of Confederates, and in the ensuing fight Henry proves to be a capable soldier, comforted by the belief that his previous cowardice had not been noticed, as he "had performed his mistakes in the dark, so he was still a man". Afterward, while looking for a stream from which to obtain water with a friend, he discovers from the commanding officer that his regiment has a lackluster reputation. The officer speaks casually about sacrificing the 304th because they are nothing more than "mule drivers" and "mud diggers". With no other regiments to spare, the general orders his men forward.

In the final battle, Henry acts as the flag-bearer after the color sergeant falls. A line of Confederates hidden behind a fence beyond a clearing shoots with impunity at Henry's regiment, which is ill-covered in the tree-line. Facing withering fire if they stay and disgrace if they retreat, the officers order a charge. Unarmed, Henry leads the men while entirely escaping injury. Most of the Confederates run before the regiment arrives, and four of the remaining men are taken prisoner. The novel closes with the following passage:

Richard, the Norman King of England, is taken captive in 1191 by Duke Leopold while returning from the Third Crusade. Richard's treacherous brother Prince John, aided by fellow Norman Sir Guy of Gisbourne, takes the opportunity to name himself regent of England, and increases the taxes and regulations on the Saxons under the pretense of gathering ransom for Richard.

The Normans exploit and oppress the Saxons. Sir Robin of Locksley, a Saxon noble, opposes the brutality and rescues Much the Miller's Son from being executed for poaching, earning Gisbourne's ire. Robin confronts Prince John at Nottingham Castle during a banquet, telling the guests that he regards John's declaring himself regent in Richard's absence as treason. John orders Robin's execution, but he escapes and flees with Much and Will Scarlet into Sherwood Forest. In response, John seizes Robin's lands and names him an outlaw.

Much is sent to recruit men to join their band. Robin and Will meet up with John the Little on a log bridge, and after a quarterstaff contest, welcome him into their ranks. Dozens more men join Robin's band by swearing an oath to harm the rich only to aid the poor, to fight injustice, and to show courtesy to all oppressed. They start a guerrilla war against Gisbourne and John, sniping those who abuse their power.

Robin's band encounters the rotund Friar Tuck, a renowned swordsman. Tuck joins the band and assists in capturing a company of Normans bringing a shipment of food and taxes. In the company are Gisbourne, the cowardly Sheriff of Nottingham, and King Richard's ward Lady Marian; the men are humiliated at the subsequent woodland banquet, while Marian is given a seat of honor by Robin. Initially scornful, she comes to share his views when he shows her the aftermath of the Norman brutality against the Saxons. Robin sends the convoy back to Nottingham Castle, telling them that they have Marian's presence to thank for their lives being spared.

Having noted Robin's fixation on Marian during the woodland banquet, the Sheriff suggests hosting an archery tournament with the Lady Marian giving out the golden arrow prize in order to entrap Robin. Robin enters the tournament, is recognized by his unsurpassed archery skill, and is sentenced to death. Marian aids the Merry Men in a scheme to save Robin. After his escape, he scales the palace walls to thank Marian, and the two pledge their love for one another. Marian declines Robin's offer of marriage, electing to stay and be a Saxon spy in the castle.

King Richard returns with some of his knights. The Bishop of the Black Canons sees through Richard's disguise at a roadside inn, and alerts John. John sends disgraced former knight Dickon Malbete to kill Richard, promising Dickon Robin's title and lands. Marian overhears and writes to Robin, but is found out by Gisbourne and sentenced to death. Her nursemaid, Bess, tells Much everything. Much intercepts Dickon and kills him in combat.

Richard and his men disguise themselves as Norman monks, travel through Sherwood and (as planned) are stopped by Robin. Assuring Robin they are on the King's business, Richard accepts Robin's offer of hospitality and his condemnation of the Crusades, but does not reveal his identity.

Much relays Bess' news. Robin orders his men to find and protect Richard; now sure of Robin's loyalty, Richard reveals himself. He and Robin coerce the Bishop of the Black Canons to allow them to join his monks in disguise so they can enter the castle. Once inside, Richard announces his presence, and a huge melee erupts. Robin duels Gisbourne and kills him, freeing Marian and prompting the rest of John's men to surrender.

Back on the throne, King Richard banishes John and restores Robin's rank, promoting him to Baron of Locksley, and Earl of Sherwood and Nottingham. The King also pardons the Merry Men, and commands Robin to take Lady Marian as his wife. Robin exits the castle with Marian.

The Lemp sisters, Emma (Gale Page), Thea (Lola Lane), Kay (Rosemary Lane), and Ann (Priscilla Lane) are accomplished musicians in a musical family headed by their widowed father, Adam (Claude Rains), who plays the flute. Harpist Emma, the oldest daughter, is the object of a neighbor's affection, but she rebuffs Ernest's (Dick Foran) attentions. Thea, a pianist and the second eldest, is courted by wealthy Ben Crowley (Frank McHugh), another neighbor, but she is not sure she loves him. Kay, the third daughter, is a talented singer and has a chance at a music school scholarship but doesn't want to leave home. The youngest daughter is Ann, a violinist.

One day, Ann's violin practice is interrupted by the sound of their front gate squeaking. She instructs the young man making free with it in the finer points of the art, and introduces him to an apparently disapproving passerby, Mrs. Ridgefield, a local gossip. This charmer is young composer Felix Deitz (Jeffrey Lynn), come to work at the foundation where Adam is Dean. He has a letter of introduction to Adam, and while they talk, the girls set the dinner table with the very best silver. All four daughters are attracted to Felix, and they soon invite him to room with the family. He also charms Aunt Etta. Felix hopes to win a prize with his latest composition. Enter Felix's friend Mickey (John Garfield), a cynical orchestral arranger whose hard life has given him a grim view of existence. He falls for Ann, and is crushed when she announces at Adam's birthday party that she and Felix are engaged.

An hour before Ann and Felix are to marry, Mickey tells Ann how he feels—and that Emma is “insane” about Felix. Through a window, Ann observes Emma's distress when she ties Felix's tie before the ceremony. Everyone is wondering where Ann is when a telegram arrives, addressed to Emma, telling them she has eloped with Mickey. Ernest calmly steps in to tell the guests.

Four months later, Ann and Mickey are living a hard life in New York City, professing love for each other but poor and unhappy. Mickey is invited to form a band and go to South America with some fellow musicians, but cannot afford passage. Ann forbids him to ask Ben for the money and asks Mickey if he would go if she weren't hung around his neck.

The family meets at the Lemps' house for Christmas, except Kay, who is singing on the radio that night. Emma did not get together with Felix; she is now engaged to Ernest. Felix is alone and unhappy, though the composition Mickey helped to orchestrate won a prize: a contract with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. He is to leave that very night. While Kay sings Mendelssohn's “On Wings of Song,” the camera passes over the listening family, revealing much. Ann, moved to tears, takes out her handkerchief and drops two pawn tickets. Felix sees them—one is for a bracelet he'd given her earlier in the year.

Mickey drives Felix to the train station in Ben's car, dropping Ben at the drugstore. He apologizes to Felix, who says it is all in the past. Felix offers Mickey a loan, but Mickey refuses, musing that he must be a new man; the old Mickey would have taken it. As the train pulls out, Felix presses an envelope into his hands and tells him to use it for Ann, “any way you think that will make her happy.” Mickey watches the train leave and is suddenly grim. He gets into the car and drives away. It begins to snow. He turns off the windshield wiper and presses the accelerator to the floor.

In the kitchen, doing dishes, Emma tells Ann that she had thought she was in love with Felix and would have kept on thinking so and spoiled her life if Ann had married him, but she was awakened to Ernest's qualities when he took charge at the wedding. Ann bursts into tears—and Thea screams. Ben is in the hospital.

Adam emerges from the hospital room to tell them that it isn't Ben, it's Mickey. He dies with Ann at his bedside.

It is spring; the trees in the yard are heavy with blossom. The girls and Adam are playing the piece that opened the film. Ann hears the sound of the gate squeaking. It is Felix. The family watches from the house as she welcomes him home and they swing together—until Mrs. Ridgefield approaches. “This is where we came in,” Felix cries, and they run inside. Mrs. Ridgefield looks around and steps onto the gate. The camera pulls slowly back as she swings back and forth, a blissful smile on her face.

During the First World War, two French aviators, the aristocratic Captain de Boëldieu and the working-class Lieutenant Maréchal, set out to investigate a blurred spot found on reconnaissance photographs. They are shot down by German flying ace and aristocrat, ''Rittmeister'' von Rauffenstein, and both are taken prisoner by the Imperial German Army. Upon returning to the aerodrome, von Rauffenstein sends a subordinate to find out if the aviators are officers and, if so, to invite them to lunch. During the meal, Rauffenstein and Boëldieu discover they have mutual acquaintances—a depiction of the familiarity, if not solidarity, within the upper classes that crosses national boundaries.

Boëldieu and Maréchal are then taken to a prisoner-of-war camp, where they meet a colorful group of French prisoners and stage a vaudeville-type performance just after the Germans have taken Fort Douaumont in the epic Battle of Verdun. During the performance, word arrives that the French have recaptured the fort. Maréchal interrupts the show, and the French prisoners spontaneously burst into "La Marseillaise". As a result of the disruption, Maréchal is placed in solitary confinement, where he suffers badly from lack of human contact and hunger; the fort changes hands once more while he is imprisoned. Boëldieu and Maréchal also help their fellow prisoners to finish digging an escape tunnel. However, just before it is completed, everyone is transferred to other camps. Because of the language barrier, Maréchal is unable to pass word of the tunnel to an incoming British prisoner.

Boëldieu and Maréchal are moved from camp to camp, finally arriving in Wintersborn, a mountain fortress prison commanded by Rauffenstein, who has been so badly injured in battle that he has been given a posting away from the front, much to his regret. Rauffenstein tells them that Wintersborn is escape-proof.

At Wintersborn, the pair are reunited with a fellow prisoner, Rosenthal, from the original camp. Rosenthal is a wealthy French Jew, a naturalized French citizen who generously shares the food parcels he receives. Boëldieu comes up with an idea, after carefully observing how the German guards respond to an emergency. He volunteers to distract the guards for the few minutes needed for Maréchal and Rosenthal to escape. After a commotion staged by the prisoners, the guards are ordered to assemble them in the fortress courtyard. During the roll call, it is discovered that Boëldieu is missing. He makes his presence known high up in the fortress, drawing the German guards away in pursuit. Maréchal and Rosenthal take the opportunity to lower themselves from a window by a homemade rope and flee.

Rauffenstein stops the guards from firing at Boëldieu and pleads with his friend to give himself up. Boëldieu refuses, and Rauffenstein reluctantly shoots him with his pistol, aiming for his legs but fatally hitting him in the stomach. Nursed in his final moments by a grieving Rauffenstein, Boëldieu laments that the whole purpose of the nobility and their usefulness to both French and German culture is being destroyed by the war. He expresses pity for von Rauffenstein, who will have to find a new purpose in the postwar world.

Maréchal and Rosenthal journey across the German countryside, trying to reach neutral Switzerland. Rosenthal injures his foot, slowing Maréchal down. They quarrel and part, but then Maréchal returns to help his comrade. They take refuge in the modest farmhouse of a German woman, Elsa, who lost her husband at Verdun, along with three brothers, at battles which, with quiet irony, she describes as "our greatest victories." She takes them in and does not betray them to a passing army patrol. She and Maréchal fall in love, despite not speaking each other's language, but he and Rosenthal eventually leave from a sense of duty after Rosenthal recovers from his injury. Maréchal declares he will come back to Elsa and her young daughter, Lotte, if he survives the war.

A German patrol sights the two fugitives crossing a snow-covered valley. They fire a few rounds, but then their commanding officer orders them to stop, saying the pair have crossed into Switzerland.

Reckless test pilot Jim Lane is forced to land on a Kansas farm in his aircraft, the "Drake Bullet", where he meets Ann "Thursday" Barton. They spend the day together and fall in love. Once Jim's best friend and mechanic, Gunner Morris, arrives, Jim ignores Ann. To spur him, she gets engaged to her sweetheart. Jim leaves in the morning, but soon comes back for her. They quickly get married.

Jim loses his job at Drake when he clashes with the owner. He gets a job with another outfit, flying a very experimental aircraft. Ann soon finds out how dangerous her husband's occupation is, but she promises Gunner that she will stick to her man. Jim wins the race, but Benson, the man Drake sends in Jim's place, dies, leaving a wife and three children behind.

Jim tries to reform his ways and begins by taking a job testing aircraft, even conducting dangerous flights as he wants to give Ann a real home. Gunner remains true to his friend.

One day, Gunner accompanies Jim on a test flight of a new bomber (a Y1B-17, an early Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress prototype). Upon reaching 30,000 feet, the bomber goes into a spin and sandbags (substituting for the weight of bombs) break loose, pinning Gunner. Unwilling to bail out without his buddy, Jim manages to crash land, and pulls a badly injured Gunner out of the wreckage right before it burst into flames, but it is too late for Gunner. When Jim realizes the toll his job has taken on his wife, he gives it up and joins the United States Army Air Corps.

Judith "Judy" Traherne is a young, carefree, hedonistic Long Island socialite and heiress with a passion for horses, fast cars, and too much smoking and drinking. She initially ignores severe headaches and brief episodes of dizziness and double vision, but when she uncharacteristically takes a spill while riding and then tumbles down a flight of stairs, her secretary and best friend Ann King insists she see the family doctor, who refers her to a specialist.

Dr. Frederick Steele is closing his New York City office in preparation for a move to Brattleboro, Vermont, where he plans to devote his time to brain cell research and scientific study on their growth. He reluctantly agrees to see Judy, who acts coldly and is openly antagonistic towards him. She shows signs of short-term memory loss but dismisses her symptoms. Steele convinces her the ailments she is experiencing are severe and potentially life-threatening and puts his career plans on hold to tend to her.

When diagnostic tests confirm his suspicions, Judy agrees to surgery to remove a malignant glioma brain tumor. Steele discovers the tumor cannot be removed entirely and realizes she has less than a year to live. The end will be painless but swift; shortly after experiencing total blindness, Judy will die.

To allow her a few more months of happiness, Steele opts to lie to Judy and Ann and assures them the surgery was a success. As he is a poor liar, Ann is suspicious and confronts Steele, who admits the truth. Steele tells Ann, "she must never know" she will die soon. She agrees to remain silent and continue the lie.

Judy and Steele become involved romantically and eventually engaged. While helping his assistant pack the office before their departure for Vermont, Judy discovers her case history file containing letters from several doctors, all of them confirming Steele's prognosis. Assuming Steele was marrying her out of pity, Judy breaks off the engagement and reverts to her former lifestyle. One day, her stable master Michael O'Leary, who for years has loved her from afar, confronts her about her unruly behavior, and she confesses she is dying. Their conversation convinces her she should spend her final months happy, dignified, and with the man she loves. She apologizes to Steele, and they marry and move to Vermont.

Three months later, Ann comes to visit. Judy and she are in the garden planting bulbs when Judy comments on how odd it is she still feels the sun's heat under the rapidly darkening skies. They both immediately realize she is losing her vision and approaching the end. Judy makes Ann stay mum, as Steele leaves that day to present his most recent medical findings—which hold out the long-term prospect of a cure for her type of cancer—in New York. Judy makes an excuse to remain home, helps him pack, and sends him off, telling him, "What we have now can't be destroyed. That's our victory, our victory over the dark. It's a victory because we're not afraid."

Then, after bidding Ann, her housekeeper Martha (who has silently deduced the situation), and her dogs farewell, she goes to her bedroom. She kneels briefly, apparently praying, then lies down on the bed. Martha enters and drapes a blanket over her, then withdraws when Judy asks to be left alone.

The novella tells the story of a beloved school teacher, Mr Chipping, and his long tenure at Brookfield School, a fictional minor British boys' public boarding school located in the fictional village of Brookfield in the Fenlands. Mr Chips, as the boys call him, is conventional in his beliefs and exercises firm discipline in the classroom. His views broaden, and his pedagogical manner loosens after he marries Katherine, a young woman whom he meets on holiday in the Lake District. Katherine charms the Brookfield teachers and headmaster and quickly wins the favour of Brookfield's pupils. Their marriage is brief. She dies in childbirth and he never remarries or has another romantic interest.

One of the themes of the book is that Chipping so outlasts all of his peers that his brief marriage fades into myth and few people know him as anything other than a confirmed and lonely bachelor. Despite Chipping's mediocre credentials and his view that classic Greek and Latin (his academic subjects) are dead languages, he is an effective teacher who becomes highly regarded by students and the school's governors—he has become a well-worn institution. In his later years, he develops an arch sense of humour that pleases everyone. However, he also becomes somewhat of an anachronism, with an antiquated pronunciation and is pitied for his isolation. On his deathbed, he talks of the fulfillment he felt as a teacher of boys.

One December, French painter (and famed womanizer) Michel Marnet (Charles Boyer) meets American singer Terry McKay (Irene Dunne) aboard a liner crossing the Atlantic Ocean. They are both already engaged, he to heiress Lois Clarke (Astrid Allwyn), she to Kenneth Bradley (Lee Bowman). They begin to flirt and to dine together on the ship, but his worldwide reputation makes them conscious that others are watching. Eventually, they decide that they should dine separately and not associate with each other. At a stop at Madeira, they visit Michel's grandmother Janou (Maria Ouspenskaya), who bonds with Terry and admits wanting Michel to settle down.

As the ship is ready to disembark at New York City, the two make an appointment to meet in the new year, six months later on top of the Empire State Building, giving Michel enough time to decide whether he can start making enough money to support a relationship with Terry. His paintings fail to sell so he finds work designing advertising billboards around the city, while Terry successfully negotiates a contract with a Philadelphian nightclub to perform through to June. When the rendezvous date arrives, they both head to the Empire State Building. However, Terry is struck by a car on a nearby road, and is told by doctors she may be paralyzed for the rest of her life, though that will not be known for certain for six months. Not wanting to be a burden to Michel, she does not contact him, preferring to let him think the worst. Meanwhile, Michel, who waited until closing time, travels to Madeira to discover his grandmother has recently died, and continues working in New York City; Terry is overheard singing in the garden of her physiotherapy by the owner of a children's orphanage, who hires her as a music teacher.

Six months pass by, and during Terry's first outing since the accident, she and Michel meet by accident at a theater on Christmas Eve, though Terry manages to conceal her disability. The next morning on Christmas Day, after the children visit Terry at her apartment, Michel makes a surprise visit. Here, he finally learns the truth about Terry's condition. Terry, delighted Michel proved he had changed his ways despite circumstances, tells him it is her turn to prove she could change hers, but Michel assures her that they will be together no matter what the diagnosis may be.

The governor of an unnamed western state, Hubert "Happy" Hopper (Guy Kibbee), has to pick a replacement for the recently deceased U.S. Senator Sam Foley. His corrupt political boss, Jim Taylor (Edward Arnold), pressures Hopper to choose his handpicked stooge, Horace Miller, while popular committees want a reformer, Henry Hill. The governor's children want him to select Jefferson Smith (James Stewart), the head of the Boy Rangers. Unable to make up his mind between Taylor's stooge and the reformer, Hopper decides to flip a coin. When it lands on edge – and next to a newspaper story on one of Smith's accomplishments – he chooses Smith, calculating that his wholesome image will please the people. At the same time, his naivety will make him easy to manipulate.

Junior Senator Smith is taken under the wing of the publicly esteemed, but secretly crooked, Senator Joseph Paine (Claude Rains), who was Smith's late father's friend. Smith develops an immediate attraction to the senator's daughter, Susan (Astrid Allwyn). At Senator Paine's home, Smith has a conversation with Susan, fidgeting and bumbling, entranced by the young socialite. Smith's naïve and honest nature allows the unforgiving Washington press to take advantage of him, quickly tarnishing Smith's reputation with ridiculous front-page pictures and headlines branding him a bumpkin.

To keep Smith busy, Paine suggests he propose a bill. With the help of his secretary, Clarissa Saunders (Jean Arthur), who was the aide to Smith's predecessor and had been around Washington and politics for years, Smith comes up with a bill to authorize a federal government loan to buy some land in his home state for a national boys' camp, to be paid back by youngsters across America. Donations pour in immediately. However, the proposed campsite is already part of a dam-building graft scheme included in an appropriations bill framed by the Taylor political machine and supported by Senator Paine.

Unwilling to crucify the worshipful Smith so that their graft plan will go through, Paine tells Taylor he wants out, but Taylor reminds him that Paine is in power primarily through Taylor's influence. Paine then advises Smith to keep silent about the matter. The following day, when Smith speaks out about the bill at Senate, the machine in his state—through Paine—accuses Smith of trying to profit from his bill by producing fraudulent evidence that Smith already owns the land in question. Smith is too shocked by Paine's betrayal to defend himself and runs away.

Saunders, who looked down on Smith at first, but has come to believe in him, talks him into launching a filibuster to postpone the appropriations bill and prove his innocence on the Senate floor just before the vote to expel him. In his last chance to prove his innocence, he talks non-stop for about 25 hours, reaffirming the American ideals of freedom and disclosing the dam scheme's true motives. Yet none of the Senators are convinced.

The constituents try to rally around him, but the entrenched opposition is too powerful, and all attempts are crushed. Owing to the influence of Taylor's machine, newspapers and radio stations in Smith's home state, on Taylor's orders, refuse to report what Smith has to say and even distort the facts against the senator. The Boy Rangers' effort to spread the news in support of Smith results in vicious attacks on the children by Taylor's minions.

Although all hope seems lost, the senators begin to pay attention as Smith approaches utter exhaustion. Paine has one last card up his sleeve: he brings in bins of letters and telegrams from Smith's home state, purportedly from average people demanding his expulsion. Nearly broken by the news, Smith finds a small ray of hope in a friendly smile from the President of the Senate (Harry Carey). Smith vows to press on until people believe him but immediately collapses in a faint. Overcome with the pangs of remorse, Paine leaves the Senate chamber and attempts to commit suicide by gunshot but is stopped by onlooking senators. He then bursts back into the Senate chamber, shouting a confession to the whole scheme; the reformed Paine further insists that he must be expelled from the Senate and affirms Smith's innocence to Clarissa's delight. The President of the Senate observes the ensuing chaos with amusement.

Three Soviet agents, Iranoff (Sig Ruman), Buljanoff (Felix Bressart), and Kopalski (Alexander Granach), arrive in Paris to sell jewellery confiscated from the aristocracy during the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Count Alexis Rakonin (Gregory Gaye), a White Russian nobleman reduced to employment as a waiter in the hotel where the trio are staying, overhears details of their mission and informs the former Russian Grand Duchess Swana (Ina Claire) that her court jewels are to be sold by the three men. Her debonair paramour, Count Leon d'Algout (Melvyn Douglas) offers to help retrieve her jewellery before it is sold.

In their hotel suite, Iranoff, Buljanoff and Kopalski negotiate with Mercier (Edwin Maxwell) a prominent Parisian jeweller, when Leon interrupts the meeting. He explains that the jewels were seized illegally by the Soviet government and a petition has been filed preventing their sale or removal. Mercier withdraws his offer to purchase the jewellery until the lawsuit is settled.

The amiable, charming and cunning Leon treats the three Russians to an extravagant lunch, gets them drunk and easily wins their confidence and friendship. He sends a telegram to Moscow in their name suggesting a compromise.

Moscow, angered by the telegram, then sends Nina Ivanovna "Ninotchka" Yakushova (Greta Garbo), a special envoy whose goal is to win the lawsuit, complete the jewellery sale and return with the three renegade Russians. Ninotchka is methodical, rigid and stern, chastising Iranoff, Buljanoff and Kopalski for failing to complete their mission.

Ninotchka and Leon first meet outside the hotel, their respective identities unknown to one another. He flirts, but she is uninterested. Intrigued, Leon follows her to the Eiffel Tower and shows her his home through a telescope. Intrigued by his behavior, Ninotchka tells him he might warrant study and suggests they go to his apartment. Ninotchka becomes attracted to Leon and eventually, they kiss, but they are interrupted by a phone call from Buljanoff. Ninotchka and Leon both realize they are each other's adversaries over the jewellery and she leaves the apartment, despite Leon's protestations.

While attending to the various legal matters over the lawsuit, Ninotchka gradually becomes seduced by the west and by the persistent Leon, who has fallen in love with her and broken down her resistance. At a dinner date with Leon where she unexpectedly meets Swana face-to-face (her rival for the jewellery and for Leon's affections), Ninotchka consumes champagne for the first time and quickly becomes intoxicated. The following afternoon, a hungover Ninotchka is awakened by Swana and discovers Rakonin has stolen the jewellery during the night. Swana tells Ninotchka that she will return the jewels and drop the litigation if Ninotchka leaves Paris for Russia immediately so that Swana can have Leon to herself. Ninotchka reluctantly agrees and completes the sale of the jewellery to Mercier. Later that evening, Ninotchka, Iranoff, Buljanoff and Kopalski fly back to Moscow. Meanwhile, Leon visits Swana and confesses his love for Ninotchka. Swana then informs Leon that Ninotchka has already left for Moscow. He attempts to follow her but is denied a Russian visa, because of his nobility.

Sometime later, in Moscow, Ninotchka invites her three comrades to her shared apartment for dinner and they nostalgically recall their time in Paris. Ninotchka finally receives a letter from Leon, but it has been completely censored by the authorities, and she is devastated.

More time passes; Iranoff, Buljanoff and Kopalski once again run afoul of their superiors after they fail at their mission to sell furs in Constantinople. Against her wishes, Ninotchka is sent by Commissar Razinin (Bela Lugosi) to investigate and retrieve the trio.

After Ninotchka arrives in Constantinople, the three Russians inform her that they have opened a restaurant and will not be returning to Moscow. When Ninotchka asks them who was responsible for this idea, they point to a balcony where Leon is standing. He explains that he was barred from entering Russia to win Ninotchka back, so he and the three Russians conspired to get her to leave the country. He asks her to stay with him and she happily agrees.

The final shot in the film is of Kopalski carrying a protest sign complaining that Iranoff and Buljanoff are unfair, because his name does not illuminate on the electric sign in front of their new restaurant.

Two migrant field workers in California on their plantation during the Great Depression—George Milton, an intelligent but uneducated man, and Lennie Small, a bulky, strong man but mentally disabled—are in Soledad on their way to another part of California. They hope to one day attain the dream of settling down on their own piece of land. Lennie's part of the dream is merely to tend and pet rabbits on the farm, as he loves touching soft animals, although he always accidentally kills them. This dream is one of Lennie's favorite stories, which George constantly retells. They had fled from Weed after Lennie grabbed a young woman's skirt and would not let go, leading to an accusation of rape. It soon becomes clear that the two are close and George is Lennie's protector, despite his antics.

After being hired at a farm, the pair are confronted by Curley—the Boss's small, aggressive son with a Napoleon complex who dislikes larger men. Curley starts to target Lennie. Curley's flirtatious and provocative underaged wife, to whom Lennie is instantly attracted, poses a problem as well. In contrast, the pair also meets Candy, an elderly ranch handyman with one hand and a loyal dog, and Slim, an intelligent and gentle jerkline-skinner whose dog has recently had a litter of puppies. Slim gives a puppy to Lennie and Candy, whose loyal, accomplished sheep dog was put down by fellow ranch-hand Carlson.

In spite of problems, their dream leaps towards reality when Candy offers to pitch in $350 with George and Lennie so that they can buy a farm at the end of the month, in return for permission to live with them. The trio are ecstatic, but their joy is overshadowed when Curley attacks Lennie, who defends himself by easily crushing Curley's fist while urged on by George.

Nevertheless, George feels more relaxed, to the extent that he even leaves Lennie behind on the ranch while he goes into town with the other ranch hands. Lennie wanders into the stable, and chats with Crooks, the bitter, yet educated stable buck, who is isolated from the other workers due to being black. Candy finds them and they discuss their plans for the farm with Crooks, who cannot resist asking them if he can hoe a garden patch on the farm albeit scorning its possibility. Curley's wife makes another appearance and flirts with the men, especially Lennie. However, her spiteful side is shown when she belittles them and threatens to have Crooks lynched.

The next day, Lennie accidentally kills his puppy while stroking it. Curley's wife enters the barn and tries to speak to Lennie, admitting that she is lonely and how her dreams of becoming a movie star are crushed, revealing her personality. After finding out about Lennie's habit, she offers to let him stroke her hair, but panics and begins to scream when she feels his strength. Lennie becomes frightened, and unintentionally breaks her neck thereafter and runs away. When the other ranch hands find the corpse, they form into a lynch mob intent on killing him, then send for the police before beginning the search. George then quickly realizes that their dream is at an end and hurries to find Lennie, hoping he will be at the meeting place they designated in case he got into trouble (the riverbank where they camped at the start of the book).

George meets Lennie at their camping spot before they came to the ranch. The two sit together and George retells the beloved story of the dream, despite knowing it is something they will never share. Upon hearing the lynch mob near them, George shoots Lennie, knowing it to be a more merciful death than that at the hands of a mob. Curley, Slim, and Carlson arrive seconds after. Only Slim realizes what happened, and consolingly leads him away. Curley and Carlson look on, unable to comprehend the subdued mood of the two men.

Two migrant field workers in California during the Great Depression, George Milton, an intelligent and quick-witted man and Lennie Small, an ironically named man of large stature and immense strength who, due to his mental disability, has a mind of a child, hope to one day attain their shared dream of settling down on their own piece of land. Lennie's part of the dream, which he never tires of hearing George describe, is merely to tend to (and touch) soft rabbits on the farm. They are fleeing from their previous employment in Weed where they were run out of town after Lennie's love of stroking soft things resulted in an accusation of attempted rape when he touched and held onto a young woman's dress.

After being dropped off 10 miles from their destination, George and Lennie decide to camp for the night by the Salinas River where George eases the tensions by telling Lennie his favorite story about their future farm.

The next day, they arrive at the ranch near Soledad. They meet Candy, the aged, one-handed ranch-hand with his old dog he had raised since it was a puppy. After meeting with the ranch boss, Jackson, the pair are confronted by Curley, the small-statured, jealous and violent son of the ranch owner, who threatens to beat Lennie as Curley hates men who are of large stature. To make matters worse, Curley's seductive yet sadistic and conniving wife, Mae, to whom Lennie is instantly attracted, flirts with the other ranch hands. George orders Lennie not to look at or even talk to her, as he senses the troubles that Mae could bring to the men.

One night, Mae enters the barn to talk with Slim. Even when Mae explains how her life has been during the Depression, Slim refuses to listen to her and shuns her, saying "You got no troubles, except what you bring on yourself" and tells her to go back to the house. When this statement causes Mae to sob, Slim gives in and lets her talk. Back at the bunkhouse, Candy offers to join with George and Lennie after Carlson puts down his dog, so they can buy the farm, and the dream appears to move closer to reality. Curley appears and makes a scene in the bunkhouse as the workers mock him after he accused Slim of keeping company with his wife. George and Lennie's dream is overshadowed when Curley catches Lennie laughing, grabs him from his bunk and starts punching him in the face. Lennie asks for help from George, who tells him to fight back. Upon hearing George say this, Lennie catches Curley's hand and crushes it. Slim gives Curley an ultimatum: if Curley tells his father to get Lennie and George fired, Slim will tell everyone what happened. Curley is told to say that he got his hand caught in a piece of machinery.

On Saturday night, everyone except Lennie, Candy and Crooks (because of his race) are in town, enjoying themselves. Crooks asks Lennie to stay in his room and Lennie explains to him about the farm that he, George and Candy are going to own, forgetting his promise to George not to tell this to anyone. Candy gets into the conversation too and, when George comes back first, he sees Lennie smoking a cigar and takes it away, guessing what Lennie had done. At that moment, Mae enters the bunkhouse, trying to ask Crooks who crushed Curley's hand. When Crooks refuses to respond, Mae callously calls the four "bindlestiffs" in an attempt to belittle them. When Candy responds with proof of what they are going to do in the future, Mae refuses to accept their American dream, calling him an "old goat." When Mae tries to get Crooks to explain what happened to Curley's hand (despite the fact that he was not present), George mentions that nobody did it, briefly leading Mae to believe that George was the one who crushed his hand. George tries to explain what they are going to do in the future, and that, if Mae keeps constantly flirting with them, she is going to cause the dream to crash. The callous Mae refuses to listen, and, while looking for the person who crushed her husband's hand, sees Lennie's bloodied and bruised face, and she finds out that he is the one responsible. When Mae tries to be kind to Lennie and to "thank" him for what he did, George grabs her by the shoulder, berates her and tells her to return to the house. Mae refuses to do so, saying that she has the right to talk to and flirt with whomever she comes across. Jackson, who happened to be standing by Crooks' door, catches George with his hand raised, with the intention to slap Mae across the face because of her arrogance and negligence. Holding a horsewhip in his hand, Jackson silently dissuades him from doing so and to let Mae go back to the house unharmed.

The next morning, Mae confronts Curley, who repeats the same statement Slim gave him earlier but. because Mae knows the truth, she taunts him, calling him "a punk with a crippled hand!" Curley then tells her that their marriage is over, and that she is going to be kicked out of the ranch due to her carnal behavior with the ranch hands. She continues to laugh hysterically until she starts to weep, realizing she is now done for. Before she can leave, Mae enters the barn to pet a few of Slim's puppies, when she spots Lennie sobbing, as he killed his puppy by stroking it too hard. When Lennie tries to leave, knowing he should not be talking to Mae as ordered by George, she stops him from leaving and forces him to talk to her. Mae explains to Lennie what she wanted to be before Curley shattered her dream. When Lennie tells Mae that he loves to stroke soft things, Mae allows him to stroke her hair, telling him not to "muss it up." Mae starts to resist and scream when Lennie strokes her hair too hard. However, when Lennie tries to silence Mae, he accidentally kills her by breaking her neck. This puts an end to their own American dream.

When Candy and George find Mae's body, they tell the others, including Curley, who grows infuriated. As a result, a lynch mob gathers to kill Lennie. However, George and Slim go off alone to find Lennie. After he and Candy see Mae's dead body, George shows Slim that he has Carlson's Luger. George and Slim separate and go to find Lennie. George finds him first and, realizing he is doomed to a life of loneliness and despair like the rest of the migrant workers, wants to spare Lennie a painful death at the hands of the furious and cold-hearted Curley. After giving Lennie one last retelling of their dream of buying their own land, George shoots Lennie in the back of the head with Carlson's Luger before the mob can find him. When the mob arrives too late, only Slim realizes what George has done, and he hands the Luger to a local police officer as they leave the river.

In June 1880, a group of strangers boards the stagecoach from Tonto, Arizona Territory, to Lordsburg, New Mexico. Among them are Dallas, a prostitute driven out of town by the "Law and Order League"; the alcoholic Doc Boone; pregnant Lucy Mallory, who is travelling to join her cavalry officer husband; and whiskey salesman Samuel Peacock.

Buck, the stage driver, looks for his shotgun guard, and Marshal Curley Wilcox tells him that the guard is off searching for the Ringo Kid. Ringo has broken out of prison after hearing that his father and brother were murdered by Luke Plummer. Buck tells Curley that Ringo is heading for Lordsburg. Knowing that Ringo has vowed vengeance, Curley decides to ride the stage as guard.

As the stagecoach sets out, U.S. Cavalry Lieutenant Blanchard announces that Geronimo and his Apaches are on the warpath, and that the small cavalry troop will provide an escort to Dry Fork. Upon seeing her distress, gambler and Southern gentleman Hatfield offers his protection to Mrs. Mallory and climbs aboard. At the edge of town Henry Gatewood, a banker absconding with embezzled money, flags down the stage and joins the passengers.

Further along the road, the stage comes across the Ringo Kid, stranded when his horse went lame. Though Curley and Ringo are friends, Curley takes Ringo into custody and crowds him into the coach. When they reach Dry Fork, they learn the expected cavalry detachment has gone on to Apache Wells. Buck wants to turn back, but most of the party votes to proceed. The group is taken aback when Ringo invites Dallas to sit at the main table for lunch. As they are eating Hatfield reveals that he served in the Confederate Army under the command of Mrs. Mallory's father in Virginia.

At Apache Wells, Mrs. Mallory learns that her husband had been wounded in battle with the Apaches. When she faints and goes into labor, Doc Boone sobers up and delivers the baby with Dallas assisting. Later that night, Ringo asks Dallas to marry him and live on a ranch he owns in Mexico. Afraid to reveal her past, she does not answer immediately. The next morning, she accepts, but does not want to leave Mrs. Mallory and the new baby, so she tells Ringo to go on alone to his ranch, where she will meet him later. As Ringo is escaping, he sees smoke signals heralding an Apache attack and returns to custody.

The stage reaches Lee's Ferry, which the Apaches have destroyed. Curley uncuffs Ringo to help lash logs to the stagecoach and float it across the river. Just when they think the danger has passed, Apaches attack. A long chase follows, where some of the party are injured fighting off their pursuers. Just as they run out of ammunition and Hatfield is getting ready to save Mrs. Mallory from capture by killing her with his last bullet, he himself is mortally wounded. The 6th U.S. Cavalry rides to the rescue.

At Lordsburg Gatewood the banker is arrested by the local sheriff and Mrs. Mallory learns that her husband's wound is not serious. She thanks Dallas, who gives Mrs. Mallory her shawl. Dallas then begs Ringo not to confront the Plummers, but he is determined to settle matters. As they walk through town, he sees the brothel to which she is returning. Luke Plummer, who is playing poker in one of the saloons, hears of Ringo's arrival and gets his brothers to join him in a gunfight to kill Ringo.

Ringo survives the three-against-one shootout that follows, then surrenders to Curley, expecting to go back to prison. As Ringo boards a wagon, Curley invites Dallas to ride with them to the edge of town; but when she does so Curley and Doc stampede the horses, letting Ringo ride off with Dallas to his ranch across the border.

Alice (Charlotte Henry) and Dinah live peacefully in their home, until chasing a White Rabbit into a hole. Falling in, Alice is transported to various doors. She drinks a bottle that reads "Drink Me, Not Poison", which makes her grow big. Her tears flood the room while weeping. She eats a cookie and turns tiny. Swimming in her tears, she meets a couple of odd men named Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. She encounters a tea party, where the Mad Hatter and March Hare live. She meets the Cheshire Cat, then she meets Humpty Dumpty, who tells her what a unbirthday is. She leaves and meets a caterpillar and changes size again. Alice returns to her normal size and runs away from the caterpillar and meets the Queen of Hearts. They play croquet by grabbing a flamingo by the neck. Alice is welcomed to a castle, realizing that she is Queen or Princess of the land. The people of Wonderland start to go crazy. Alice gets choked by the Queen, wakes up in her room, and lives happily ever after.

In 1936, during the Great Depression, Johnny Hooker, a grifter in Joliet, Illinois, cons $11,000 in cash in a pigeon drop from an unsuspecting victim with the aid of his partners Luther Coleman and Joe Erie. Buoyed by the windfall, Luther announces his retirement and advises Hooker to seek out an old friend, Henry Gondorff, in Chicago to learn "the big con". Unfortunately, the reason their victim had so much cash was that he was a numbers racket courier for vicious crime boss Doyle Lonnegan. Corrupt Joliet police Lieutenant William Snyder confronts Hooker, revealing Lonnegan's involvement and demanding part of Hooker's cut. Having already blown his share on a single roulette spin, Hooker pays Snyder in counterfeit bills. Lonnegan's men murder both the courier and Luther, and Hooker flees for his life to Chicago.

Hooker finds Henry Gondorff, a once-great con-man now hiding from the FBI, and asks for his help in taking on the dangerous Lonnegan. Gondorff is initially reluctant, but he relents and recruits a core team of experienced con men to dupe Lonnegan. They decide to resurrect an elaborate obsolete scam known as "the wire", using a larger crew of con artists to create a phony off-track betting parlor. Aboard the opulent ''20th Century Limited'', Gondorff, posing as boorish Chicago bookie Shaw, buys into Lonnegan's private, high-stakes poker game. He infuriates Lonnegan with obnoxious behavior, then out-cheats him to win $15,000. Hooker, posing as Shaw's disgruntled employee Kelly, is sent to collect the winnings and instead convinces Lonnegan that he wants to take over Shaw's operation. Kelly reveals that he has a partner named Les Harmon (actually con man Kid Twist) in the Chicago Western Union office, who will allow them to win bets on horse races by past-posting.

Meanwhile, Snyder has tracked Hooker to Chicago, but his pursuit is thwarted when he is summoned by undercover FBI agents led by Agent Polk, who orders him to assist in their plan to arrest Gondorff using Hooker. At the same time, Lonnegan has grown frustrated with the inability of his men to find and kill Hooker for the Joliet con. Unaware that Kelly is Hooker, he demands that Salino, his best assassin, be given the job. A mysterious figure with black leather gloves is then seen following and observing Hooker.

Kelly's connection appears effective, as Harmon provides Lonnegan with the winner of one horse race and the trifecta of another. Lonnegan agrees to finance a $500,000 bet at Shaw's parlor to break Shaw and gain revenge. Shortly thereafter, Snyder captures Hooker and brings him before FBI Agent Polk. Polk forces Hooker to betray Gondorff by threatening to incarcerate Luther Coleman's widow.

The night before the sting, Hooker sleeps with a waitress named Loretta. The next morning, he sees Loretta walking toward him. The black-gloved man appears behind Hooker and shoots her dead. The man reveals that he was hired by Gondorff to protect Hooker; Loretta was Lonnegan's hired killer, Loretta Salino, and had not yet killed Hooker because they were seen together.

Armed with Harmon's tip to "place it on Lucky Dan", Lonnegan makes the $500,000 bet at Shaw's parlor on Lucky Dan to win. As the race begins, Harmon arrives and expresses shock at Lonnegan's bet: when he said "place it" he meant, literally, that Lucky Dan would "place" (i.e., finish ''second''). In a panic, Lonnegan rushes to the teller window and demands his money back. A moment later Polk, Lt. Snyder, and a half dozen FBI agents storm the parlor. Polk confronts Gondorff, then tells Hooker he is free to go. Gondorff, reacting to the betrayal, shoots Hooker in the back. Polk then shoots Gondorff and orders Snyder to get the ostensibly respectable Lonnegan away from the crime scene. With Lonnegan and Snyder safely away, Hooker and Gondorff rise amid cheers and laughter. The gunshots were faked; Agent Polk is actually Hickey, a con man, running a con atop Gondorff's con to divert Snyder and ensure Lonnegan abandons the money. As the con men strip the room of its contents, Hooker refuses his share of the money, saying "I'd only blow it", and walks away with Gondorff.

Tracy Lord is the elder daughter of a wealthy Philadelphia Main Line socialite family. She was married to C.K. Dexter Haven, a yacht designer and member of her social set, but divorced him two years prior, because, according to her father, he does not measure up to the standards she sets for all her friends and family: He drank too much for her taste, and, according to him, as she became critical of him, he drank more. Their only interaction while married, the film's opening scene, is her breaking his golf clubs and him pushing her to the ground. Now, she is about to marry ''nouveau riche'' "man of the people" George Kittredge.

In New York, ''Spy'' magazine publisher Sidney Kidd is eager to cover the wedding, and assigns reporter Macaulay "Mike" Connor and photographer Liz Imbrie. Kidd intends to use the assistance of Dexter, who has been working for ''Spy'' in South America. Dexter tells Kidd that he will introduce them as friends of Tracy's brother Junius (a U.S. diplomat in Argentina). Tracy is not fooled, but Dexter tells her that Kidd has threatened the reputation of her family with an innuendo-laden article about her father's affair with a dancer. Tracy deeply resents her father's infidelity, which has prompted her parents to live separately. Nonetheless, to protect her family's reputation, she agrees to let Mike and Liz stay and cover her wedding.

Dexter is welcomed back with open arms by Tracy's mother Margaret and teenage sister Dinah, much to Tracy's frustration. She soon discovers that Mike has admirable qualities, and even seeks out his book of short stories in the public library. As the wedding nears, she finds herself torn between her fiancé George, Dexter, and Mike.

The night before the wedding, Tracy gets drunk for only the second time in her life, kisses Mike, and ultimately takes an innocent midnight swim with him. When George observes Mike carrying an intoxicated Tracy into the house afterward, he assumes the worst. The next day, he tells her that he was shocked and feels entitled to an explanation before going ahead with the wedding. Yet, she admits she really has none, and realizes that he does not really know her at all. He has loved her as a perfect, ideal angel, an embodiment of goodness—a virginal statue—and not as a person, so she breaks off the engagement. By now she better understands her own imperfections and her criticism of others. Tracy realizes that all the guests have arrived and are waiting for the ceremony to begin. Mike quickly volunteers to marry her, but she graciously declines because she perceives that Liz is in love with him. Then, Dexter, who clearly planned to win her back all along, offers to remarry her, and she gladly accepts.

At a suburban home in Seattle, Washington, two friends—Katie Embry and Becca Kotler—discuss their town's resident legend of a cursed video tape, which kills the viewer after seven days. Katie claims she watched the tape a week prior with her boyfriend, Josh Turandot, and two other friends, Stacey Miller and Scott Conroy. Minutes later, an unseen force kills her.

At Katie's funeral, her aunt, Rachel Keller, asks Katie's mother, Ruth Embry, about her sudden death. Rachel begins investigating her death, learning that Josh, Stacey and Scott all died at 10 PM on the same night as Katie, all with disfigured appearances. Rachel travels to Shelter Mountain Inn where the four stayed, discovering the cursed video tape, which contains monotone, disturbing imagery, and watching it in Cabin 12. Once the tape ends, an unknown caller contacts Rachel, whispering "seven days".

Rachel recruits her ex-boyfriend Noah Clay, the father of her young son Aidan, to study the tape, copying it after he watches the original. Rachel begins experiencing supernatural phenomena throughout the week, haunted by a young girl with soaking wet, long black hair. Investigating the tape's imagery leads Rachel to Moesko Island horse breeder Anna Morgan, who died by suicide after her prize-winning horses drowned themselves. After a nightmare, Rachel awakens to a hand-shaped burn mark on her left arm. She finds Aidan watching the tape, and discovers that Noah is also experiencing supernatural occurrences.

Rachel travels to Moesko Island to speak to Anna's widower, Richard. On the ferry journey, a horse leaps to its death after Rachel's presence spooks it. Noah goes to Eola County Psychiatric Hospital to view Anna's medical files. Both separately discover Anna had an adopted daughter, Samara, who could psychically etch mental images onto surfaces and into people's and animals' minds. Rachel tries to discuss Samara with Richard, but he denies her existence.

Rachel speaks with Dr. Grasnik, the island's general practitioner, who explains Anna told everyone Samara was adopted after she failed to bear a child, and that Anna had only been seeing "horrible things" when she was around Samara, thus recommending them to admit her to the Eola County Psychiatric Hospital. Later, Rachel sneaks into the Morgan farmhouse, finds and plays a VHS tape of Samara in a psychotherapy session claiming that, though she does not wish to hurt anyone, she cannot control her abilities. Some time after the taped psychotherapy sessions, Samara drove all the horses to suicide.

After the tape ends, Richard strikes Rachel with a horse bridle, taking the TV upstairs. Rachel follows him upstairs and into the bathroom, where, having been mentally scarred by Samara and aware she still lives, he electrocutes himself in a bathtub. Noah arrives, calming Rachel, and the two break into the barn, where Samara was kept isolated. They find a burnt image of a tree under the wallpaper of her barn bedroom, which Rachel recognizes from Shelter Mountain.

They return to the Inn at Cabin 12. Frustrated, Noah detaches the phone from the wall, knocking a vase of marbles to the floor. The marbles roll to a dip, which then uncovers burnt wood. Noah breaks through the floor with a fire axe, finding a stone well under the floorboards; the final image on the tape. Rachel falls into the well after the floor collapses, visualizing Anna suffocating Samara and throwing her down the well where she died seven days later, her last sight being the ring of daylight around the well's cap. Samara's corpse surfaces after Noah tells Rachel that the seven-day deadline has passed. The authorities assure the pair that it will be properly buried. Rachel laments Samara's fate, speculating that the images she created were her "wanting to be heard."

The next day, Rachel tells Aidan that liberating Samara has lifted the curse. A distressed Aidan chastises her, explaining "she never sleeps". Samara's vengeful ghost kills Noah in his apartment, and Rachel, upon finding his disfigured corpse, returns home and destroys the original tape. She ponders Noah's death before realizing that unlike him, she copied the tape. As they copy the copy together, Aidan asks a silent Rachel what will happen to whoever watches the new tape.

from the film's original trailer Mademoiselle Henriette Deluzy-Desportes, a French woman, starts teaching at an American girls school. She is confronted by the tales and gossip about her that circulate among her pupils and, thus provoked, she decides to tell them her life story.

Deluzy-Desportes is governess to the four children of the Duc and Duchesse de Praslin in Paris during the last years of the Orleans monarchy. As a result of the Duchesse's constantly erratic and temperamental behavior, all that remains is an unhappy marriage, but the Duc remains with his wife for sake of their children.

Deluzy-Desportes, with her warmth and kindness, wins the love and affection of the children and their father, but also the jealousy and hatred of their mother. She is forced to leave and the Duchess refuses to give her a letter of recommendation to future employers. The Duc confronts his wife and she invents alternative letters taking opposite attitudes, which in fact she has not written and does not intend to write. Her account enrages him and, at the breaking point, he kills her.

The Duc de Praslin is in a privileged position; as a peer his case can only be heard by other nobles. He refuses to confess his guilt or openly to admit his love for his employee, knowing that his fellow nobles wish to use such an admission to blame her for the murder by declaring that he was acting at her bidding. Ultimately the Duc takes poison to prevent himself from ever publicly proclaiming his love for Henriette, since he knows that would convict her; however, he lives long enough to reveal it to another of his servants, Pierre, a kindly old man who had warned the governess to leave the de Praslin household. With the Duc's death, the authorities accept that they have no evidence upon which to base a judgment that Henriette solicited the murder and she is released.

Deluzy-Desportes had been recommended for the teaching position "in the land of the free" by an American minister, Rev. Henry Field, to whom she had expressed a loss of faith while in prison. He proposes marriage, and it is implied that Henriette will accept.

In mid-August 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II, the editor of the ''New York Morning Globe'', Mr. Powers (Harry Davenport), sends crime reporter John Jones, using the pen name "Huntley Haverstock" (Joel McCrea), to Europe to report on conditions there. Jones's first assignment is to interview a Dutch diplomat named Van Meer (Albert Basserman), at an event held by Stephen Fisher (Herbert Marshall), the leader of the Universal Peace Party, who's holding the event to honor diplomat Van Meer. Unbeknownst to Powers and Jones, Fisher is actually a German agent.

Jones shares a cab with Van Meer on the way to the luncheon, but the diplomat evades any questions about the impending war. Once at the luncheon, Van Meer mysteriously disappears – his sudden absence announced by Fisher – but Jones doesn't mind as he becomes smitten with Fisher's daughter, Carol (Laraine Day). Powers sends Jones to Amsterdam to cover Van Meer's next appearance, at a conference of the UPP. When Jones stops to greet Van Meer outside the conference hall, Van Meer does not seem to recognize him. Suddenly, an assassin disguised as an eager photographer hoping to take a photo of the Dutch diplomat – actually concealing a gun near the camera – shoots and kills Van Meer. Jones, Carol and her reporter friend Scott ffolliott (George Sanders), give chase. They seem to lose the assassin's car in the countryside, until Jones recognizes that they are hiding in a windmill.

While Carol and ffolliott go for help, Jones searches the windmill and finds a live Van Meer; the man shot in front of witnesses was an imposter. The old man has been drugged and is unable to tell Jones anything. Jones narrowly escapes to tell the police himself, but when he, Carol and ffolliott return with authorities, Van Meer and his kidnappers are gone. Later, back at Jones's hotel room in Amsterdam, two spies dressed as police officers arrive to kidnap him. When he suspects who they really are, he escapes with Carol's help.

Jones and Carol board a British ship to England, and while a furious storm thunders overhead, he proposes marriage to her, which she accepts. In England, they go to Carol's father's house, where Jones sees Krug (Eduardo Ciannelli), whom he recognizes from the windmill as the operative running the assassination and kidnapping. He informs Fisher, who promises to provide a bodyguard who will protect him. The bodyguard, Rowley (Edmund Gwenn), whose true task is to kill Jones, is working with Fisher and Krug in the plot against Van Meer. Rowley tries to push Jones off the top of Westminster Cathedral tower but falls to his death himself.

Jones and ffolliott are convinced that Fisher is a traitor, so they come up with a plan: Jones will take Carol to Cambridge, and ffolliott will pretend she has been kidnapped, in order to force Fisher to divulge Van Meer's location. But when Carol, who mistakenly thinks that Jones tricked her to go to Cambridge – not for a romantic getaway, but to sideline her while he pursues her father — returns home from Cambridge to her father earlier than expected; this forces ffolliott to leave in haste. Ffolliott trails Fisher to a closed hotel where Van Meer is being held prisoner, but ffoliott is captured at gunpoint. He prevents Fisher from carrying out a ruse intended to persuade Van Meer to reveal a secret clause in a treaty that would benefit the Germans in the event of war. Fisher orders Van Meer to be tortured for the information; ffolliot escapes from Fisher's thugs, while Fisher flees. Van Meer is taken to a nearby hospital, where he slowly regains consciousness.

Britain and France declare war on Germany. Jones and ffolliott follow the Fishers on a Short S.30 Empire flying boat to America. When he intercepts a telegram intended for ffolliott, telling him that Van Meer has recovered and identified Fisher as his kidnaper, Fisher realizes he will soon be captured and returned to England as a spy. He confesses his treasonous behavior to Carol, who already suspects the truth but promises to stand by him. Jones pleads with Carol to rekindle their affair. Seconds later, the aircraft is shelled by a German destroyer and crashes into the ocean. The survivors perch on the floating wing of the downed aircraft. Realizing that it cannot support everyone, Fisher slips into the ocean to drown, sacrificing himself so the rest may live.

An American ship rescues the survivors. The captain refuses to allow the reporters to file their stories using the ship's communications, citing American neutrality in the war. Still, Jones, ffolliott, and Carol surreptitiously communicate the story by radio-telephone to Mr. Powers. Jones returns to England and, with Carol at his side, becomes a successful war correspondent. During a live radio broadcast, he describes London being bombed, urging Americans to "keep the lights burning" as they go dark in the studio.

On the Western Front in 1918, a Jewish Private (Charlie Chaplin) fighting for the Central Powers nation of Tomainia valiantly saves the life of a wounded pilot, Commander Schultz (Reginald Gardiner), who carries valuable documents that could secure a Tomainian victory. However, after running out of fuel, their plane crashes into a tree and the Private subsequently suffers memory loss. Upon being rescued, Schultz is informed that Tomainia has officially surrendered to the Allied Forces, while the Private is carried off to a hospital.

Twenty years later, still suffering from amnesia, the Private returns to his previous profession as a barber in a ghetto. The ghetto is now governed by Schultz who has been promoted in the Tomainian regime, which transformed into a fascist dictatorship under the ruthless Adenoid Hynkel (also Chaplin).

The Barber falls in love with a neighbor, Hannah (Paulette Goddard), and together they try to resist persecution by military forces. The storm troopers capture the Barber and are about to hang him, but Schultz recognizes him and restrains them. By recognizing him, and reminding him of World War I, Schultz helps the Barber regain his memory.

Meanwhile, Hynkel tries to finance his ever-growing military forces by borrowing money from a Jewish banker called Hermann Epstein, leading to a temporary ease on the restrictions on the ghetto. However, ultimately the banker refuses to lend him the money. Furious, Hynkel orders a purge of the Jews. Schultz protests against this inhumane policy and is sent to a concentration camp. He escapes and hides in the ghetto with the Barber. Schultz tries to persuade the Jewish family to assassinate Hynkel in a suicide attack, but they are dissuaded by Hannah. Troops search the ghetto, arrest Schultz and the Barber, and send both to a concentration camp. Hannah and her family flee to freedom at a vineyard in the neighboring country of Osterlich.

Hynkel has a dispute with the dictator of the nation of Bacteria, Benzino Napaloni (Jack Oakie), over which country should invade Osterlich. The two dictators argue over a treaty to govern the invasion, while dining together at an elaborate buffet, which happens to provide a jar of "English mustard". The quarrel becomes heated and descends into a food fight, which is only resolved when both men eat the hot mustard and are shocked into cooperating. After signing the treaty with Napaloni, Hynkel orders the invasion of Osterlich. Hannah and her family are trapped by the invading force and beaten by a squad of arriving soldiers.

Escaping from the camp in stolen uniforms, Schultz and the Barber, dressed as Hynkel, arrive at the Osterlich frontier, where a victory parade crowd is waiting to be addressed by Hynkel. The real Hynkel is mistaken for the Barber while out duck hunting in civilian clothes and is knocked out and taken to the camp. Schultz tells the Barber to go to the platform and impersonate Hynkel, as the only way to save their lives once they reach Osterlich's capital. The Barber has never given a public speech in his life, but he has no other choice. He announces that he (as Hynkel) has had a change of heart, he makes an impassioned speech for brotherhood and goodwill, encouraging soldiers to fight for liberty, and unite the people in the name of democracy.

He then addresses a message of hope to Hannah: "Look up, Hannah. The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow, into the light of hope, into the future, the glorious future that belongs to you, to me, and to all of us." Hannah hears the Barber's voice on the radio. She turns toward the rising sunlight, and says to her fellows: "Listen."

A British tramp steamer named the SS ''Glencairn'' is on the long voyage home from the West Indies to Baltimore, and then to England during World War II. The crew is a motley, fun-loving, hard-drinking lot. Among them is their consensus leader, a middle-aged Irishman named Driscoll; a young Swedish ex-farmer, Ole Olsen; a spiteful steward nicknamed Cocky; a brooding Lord Jim-like Englishman, Smitty; and a burly, thoroughly dependable bruiser, Davis. On a sultry night in a port in the West Indies, the crew has been confined to the ship by order of the captain, but Drisk has arranged to import a boatload of local ladies. The crew carouse until a drunken brawl breaks out and the ladies are ordered off the ship and denied any of their promised compensation. The next day the ship sails to pick up its cargo for its return trip to England. When the crew discovers that the cargo is high explosives, they rebel, but are easily cowed into submission by the captain and the ship sails.

They are also concerned that Smitty might be a German spy because he is so aloof and secretive. After they assault Smitty and restrain and gag him, they force him to give up the key to a small metal box they have found in his bunk. Opening the box against Smitty's vigorous protests, they discover a packet of letters from Smitty's wife revealing the fact that Smitty has been an alcoholic, dishonorably discharged from the British navy. In the war zone as they near port, a German plane attacks the ship, killing Smitty in a burst of machine gun fire. Reaching England without further incident, the rest of the crew members decide not to sign on for another voyage on the ''Glencairn'' and go ashore, determined to help Ole return to his family in Sweden, whom he has not seen in ten years.

In spite of their determination to help Ole, the crew is incapable of passing up the opportunity for a good time drinking and dancing in a seedy bar to which they have been lured by an agent for ships looking for crew members. He has his eye on Ole because he is the biggest and strongest of the lot. He drugs Ole's drink, and his confederates shanghai him aboard another ship, the ''Amindra''. Driscoll and the rest of the drunk crew rescue Ole, but Driscoll is clubbed and left on board as the crew makes its escape. The next morning, the crew straggles back to the ''Glencairn'' to sign on for another voyage. A newspaper headline reveals that the ''Amindra'' has been sunk in the Channel by German torpedoes, killing all on board.

Implicitly set in the early 1990s, ''Ishmael'' begins with a newspaper advertisement: "Teacher seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person".Hilgartner, C. A. (1998). "[http://www.generalsemantics.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/articles/etc/55-2-hilgartner.pdf Ishmael and general Semantics Theory]". ''ETC: A Review of General Semantics'' Vol. 55, No. 2 (Summer 1998), pp. 167-168. The nameless narrator and protagonist thus begins his story, telling how he first reacted to this ad with scorn because of the absurdity of "wanting to save the world", a notion he feels that he once naïvely embraced himself as an adolescent during the counterculture movement of the 1960s. Feeling he must discover the ad's publisher, he follows its address, surprisingly finding himself in a room with a live gorilla. On the wall is a sign with a double meaning: "With man gone, will there be hope for gorilla?" Suddenly, the gorilla, calling himself Ishmael, begins communicating to the man telepathically. At first baffled by this, the man learns the story of how the gorilla came to be here and soon accepts Ishmael as his teacher, regularly returning to Ishmael's office. The novel continues from this point mainly as a dialogue between Ishmael and his new student.

Ishmael's life began in the African wilderness, though he was captured at a young age and has lived mostly in a zoo and a menagerie (before living permanently in a private residence), which caused Ishmael to start thinking about ideas that he never would have thought about in the wild, including self-awareness, human language and culture, and what he refers to as the subject he specifically teaches: "captivity". The narrator admits to Ishmael that he has a vague notion of living in some sort of cultural captivity and being lied to in some way by society, but he cannot articulate these feelings fully.

The man frequently visits Ishmael over the next several weeks, and Ishmael proceeds to use the Socratic method to deduce with the man what "origin story" and other "myths" modern civilization subscribes to. Before proceeding, Ishmael lays down some basic definitions for his student:

• A ''story'' is an interrelation between the gods, humans, and the earth—with a beginning, middle, and end.
• To ''enact'' is to behave in such a way to make a story (however true or not) come true.
• A ''culture'' is a people who are enacting a story.
• ''Takers'' are "civilized" people, particularly, members of the culture that first emerged in an Agricultural Revolution starting 10,000 years ago in the Near East that has developed into today's globalized society (the culture of Ishmael's pupil and, presumably, the reader).
• ''Leavers'' are people of all other non-civilized cultures existing in the past and the present; often derogatorily referred to by Takers as "primitive".

At first, the narrator is certain that civilized people no longer believe in any "myths", but Ishmael proceeds to gradually tease from him several hidden but widely accepted premises of "mythical" thinking being enacted by the Takers: Humans (especially Takers) are the pinnacle of evolution. The world was made for humans, and humans are thus destined to conquer and rule the world. This conquest is meant to bring about a paradise, as humans increase their mastery over controlling nature. However, humans are always failing in this conquest because they are flawed beings, who are unable to ever obtain the knowledge of how to live best. Therefore, however hard humans labor to save the world, they are just going to go on defiling and destroying it. Even so, civilization—the great human project of trying to control the whole world—must continue, or else humans will go extinct.

Ishmael points out to his student that when the Takers decided all of this, especially the idea that there is something fundamentally wrong with humans, they took as evidence only their own particular culture's history: "They were looking at a half of one percent of the evidence taken from a single culture. Not a reasonable sample on which to base such a sweeping conclusion".Quinn, 1992, p. 84.
On the contrary, Ishmael asserts that there is nothing inherently wrong with humans and that a story that places humans in harmony with the world will cause humans to enact this harmony, while a destructive story such as this will cause humans to destroy the world, as humans are doing now. Ishmael goes on to help his student discover that, contrary to this Taker world-view, there is indeed knowledge of how humans should live: biological "laws" that life is subject to, discernible by studying the ecological patterns of other living things. Together, Ishmael and his student identify one set of survival strategies that appear to be true for all species (later dubbed the "law of limited competition"): in short, as a species, "you may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food. In other words, you may compete but you may not wage war". All species inevitably follow this law, or as a consequence go extinct; the Takers, however, believe themselves to be exempt from this law and flout it at every point, which is therefore rapidly leading humanity towards extinction.

To illustrate his philosophy, Ishmael proposes a revision to the Christian myth of the Fall of Man. Ishmael's version of why the fruit was forbidden to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is: eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil provides gods with the knowledge of who shall live and who shall die—knowledge which they need to rule the world. The fruit nourishes only the gods, though. If Adam ("humanity") were to eat from this tree, he might ''think'' that he gained the gods' wisdom (without this actually happening) and consequently destroy the world and himself through his arrogance. Ishmael makes the point that the myth of the Fall, which the Takers have adopted as their own, was in fact developed by Leavers to explain the origin of the Takers. If it were of Taker origin, the story would be of liberating progress instead of a sinful fall.

Ishmael and his student go on to discuss how, for the ancient herders among whom the tale originated, the Biblical story of Cain killing Abel symbolizes the Leaver being killed off and their lands taken so that it could be put under cultivation. These ancient herders realized that the Takers were acting as if they were gods themselves, with all the wisdom of what is good and evil and how to rule the world: agriculture is, in fact, an attempt to more greatly create and control life, a power that only gods can hold, not humans. To begin discerning the Leavers' story, Ishmael proposes to his student a hypothesis: the Takers' Agricultural Revolution was a revolution in trying to strenuously and destructively live ''above'' the laws of nature, against the Leavers' more ecologically peaceful story of living ''by'' the laws of nature.

The Takers, by practicing their uniquely envisioned form of agriculture (dubbed by Quinn "totalitarian agriculture" in a later book) produce enormous food surpluses, which consequently yields an ever-increasing population, which itself is leading to ecological imbalances and catastrophes around the world. Ishmael finishes his education with the student by saying that, in order for humanity to survive, Takers must relinquish their arrogant vision in favor of the Leaver humility in knowing that they do not possess any god-like knowledge of some "one right way to live". They can adopt an alternative story that has humans as the first, not the final, fully-conscious creature. We can support evolution and diversity. Ishmael tells his student to teach a hundred people what he has learned, who can each pass this learning on to another hundred.

The student becomes busy at work, later discovering that Ishmael has fallen ill and died of pneumonia. Returning to Ishmael's room one day, he collects Ishmael's belongings. Among them he discovers that the sign he saw before ("With man gone, will there be hope for gorilla?") has a backside with another message: "With gorilla gone, will there be hope for man?"

The story follows the life of David Copperfield from childhood to maturity. David was born in Blunderstone, Suffolk, England, six months after the death of his father. David spends his early years in relative happiness with his loving, childish mother and their kindly housekeeper, Clara Peggotty. They call him Davy. When he is seven years old his mother marries Edward Murdstone. To get him out of the way, David is sent to lodge with Peggotty's family in Yarmouth. Her brother, fisherman Mr Peggotty, lives in a beached barge, with his adopted niece and nephew Emily and Ham, and an elderly widow, Mrs Gummidge. "Little Em'ly" is somewhat spoiled by her fond foster father, and David is in love with her. They call him Master Copperfield.

On his return, David is given good reason to dislike his stepfather, Murdstone, who believes exclusively in firmness. David has similar feelings for Murdstone's sister Jane, who moves into the house soon afterwards. Between them they tyrannise his poor mother, making her and David's lives miserable, and when, in consequence, David falls behind in his studies, Murdstone attempts to thrash him – partly to further pain his mother. David bites him and soon afterwards is sent away to Salem House, a boarding school, under a ruthless headmaster named Mr Creakle. There he befriends an older boy, James Steerforth, and Tommy Traddles. He develops an impassioned admiration for Steerforth, perceiving him as someone noble, who could do great things if he would, and one who pays attention to him.

David goes home for the holidays to learn that his mother has given birth to a baby boy. Shortly after David returns to Salem House, his mother and her baby die, and David returns home immediately. Peggotty marries the local carrier, Mr Barkis. Murdstone sends David to work for a wine merchant in London – a business of which Murdstone is a joint owner. David's landlord, Wilkins Micawber, is arrested for debt and sent to the King's Bench Prison, where he remains for several months, before being released and moving to Plymouth. No one remains to care for David in London, so he decides to run away, with Micawber advising him to head to Dover, to find his only known remaining relative, his eccentric and kind-hearted great-aunt Betsey Trotwood. She had come to Blunderstone at his birth, only to depart in ire upon learning that he was not a girl. However, she takes it upon herself to raise David, despite Murdstone's attempt to regain custody of him. She encourages him to 'be as like his sister, Betsey Trotwood' as he can be – meeting the expectations she had for the girl who was never born. David's great-aunt renames him "Trotwood Copperfield" and addresses him as "Trot", one of several names others call David in the novel.

David's aunt sends him to a better school than the last he attended. It is run by Dr Strong, whose methods inculcate honour and self-reliance in his pupils. During term, David lodges with the lawyer Mr Wickfield and his daughter Agnes, who becomes David's friend and confidante. Wickfield's clerk, Uriah Heep, also lives at the house.

By devious means, Uriah Heep gradually gains a complete ascendancy over the aging and alcoholic Wickfield, to Agnes's great sorrow. Heep hopes, and maliciously confides to David, that he aspires to marry Agnes. Ultimately with the aid of Micawber, who has been employed by Heep as a secretary, his fraudulent behaviour is revealed. (At the end of the book, David encounters him in prison, convicted of attempting to defraud the Bank of England.)

After completing school, David apprentices to be a proctor. During this time, due to Heep's fraudulent activities, his aunt's fortune has diminished. David toils to make a living. He works mornings and evenings for his former teacher Dr Strong as a secretary, and also starts to learn shorthand, with the help of his old school-friend Traddles, upon completion reporting parliamentary debate for a newspaper. With considerable moral support from Agnes and his own great diligence and hard work, David ultimately finds fame and fortune as an author, writing fiction.

David's romantic but self-serving school friend, Steerforth, also re-acquaints himself with David, but then goes on to seduce and dishonour Emily, offering to marry her off to his manservant Littimer before deserting her in Europe. Her uncle Mr Peggotty manages to find her with the help of Martha, who had grown up in their part of England and then settled in London. Ham, who had been engaged to marry Emily before the tragedy, dies in a fierce storm off the coast in attempting to succour a ship. Steerforth was aboard the ship and also dies. Mr Peggotty takes Emily to a new life in Australia, accompanied by Mrs Gummidge and the Micawbers, where all eventually find security and happiness.

David, meanwhile, has fallen completely in love with Dora Spenlow, and then marries her. Their marriage proves troublesome for David in the sense of everyday practical affairs, but he never stops loving her. Dora dies early in their marriage after a miscarriage. After Dora's death, Agnes encourages David to return to normal life and his profession of writing. While living in Switzerland to dispel his grief over so many losses, David realises that he loves Agnes. Upon returning to England, after a failed attempt to conceal his feelings, David finds that Agnes loves him too. They quickly marry, and in this marriage he finds true happiness. David and Agnes then have at least five children, including a daughter named after his great-aunt, Betsey Trotwood.

A zombie apocalypse has ravaged the entire world, with undead zombies, infected with a mysterious contagious disease, outnumbering humans 400,000 to 1. A handful of surviving humans live within a secure underground bunker in an underground facility in the Everglades housing scientists and soldiers. The scientists are trying to find a solution to the zombie pandemic; the soldiers have been assigned to protect them. Dr. Sarah Bowman, her lover and soldier Private Miguel Salazar, radio operator Bill McDermott, and helicopter pilot John fly from their underground base to Fort Myers, Florida, in an attempt to locate additional survivors. They find only a large horde of the undead, and they return to the base, where they are told that the military detachment's officer-in-charge Major Cooper has died. Sarah becomes concerned over Miguel's worsening mental state.

Dr. Logan, the lead scientist (whom the soldiers nickname "Frankenstein" because of his grisly surgical dissections of the zombies), believes that the undead plague victims can be made docile and domesticated by training and conditioning. He keeps a collection of captive undead guinea pigs for use as test subjects, in a large underground corral in the compound. Sarah discovers that Dr. Logan is a serial killer who has been murdering some of the troops, including Major Cooper, in order to use them in experiments. Scared that the soldiers will turn on them, Sarah reluctantly keeps this a secret and warns Logan of his actions.

The angry and reactionary Captain Rhodes and the soldiers that he leads vehemently object to the dangers involved in capturing zombies and keeping them inside the compound. The tension between soldiers and scientists worsens in the face of dwindling supplies, loss of communication with other survivors, and slow, uncertain progress in research.

During a meeting between the scientists and the soldiers, Rhodes declares that, following the death of Major Cooper, he is taking command of the base. He only grants the scientists "some" time to prove results, and declares that he will execute anyone who interferes with his leadership. He also threatens to abandon the scientists and leave the compound, cutting off their protection from the undead hordes.

Shaken by Rhodes' threats, Sarah goes to the quarters shared by John and Bill to discuss the situation. John professes his conviction that the zombie-plague is a form of divine punishment against mankind, that the scientific mission is doomed to failure, and that the effort to preserve records of civilization is pointless. He suggests that the three of them should take the helicopter, abandon the soldiers, and fly to a desert island somewhere where they could live off the land and start a family.

Dr. Logan hopes to secure Rhodes' goodwill by showing him the results of his research. Logan is especially proud of "Bub", a friendly and non-aggressive zombie who remembers some parts of his past life and engages in rudimentary human behavior: listening to music, aiming a pistol, saluting Captain Rhodes, and repeating a string of garbled words. "Civility must be rewarded," Logan tells Rhodes. "If it's not rewarded, there's no use for it." Rhodes, however, is not impressed.

During a zombie roundup mission, a zombie escapes its harness when Miguel loses his focus, which results in the deaths of two soldiers, Miller and Johnson. Miguel attempts to kill the creature, but another zombie bites him on the arm. With John and Bill's help, Sarah amputates Miguel's arm and cauterizes it to stop the infection from turning him into a zombie. Rhodes then calls off the experiments and demands that all captive zombies be destroyed, as well as denying any further help from him and his remaining men.

Sarah and Bill later discover that Logan had been experimenting on the remains of the dead soldiers and an audio recording of him rambling to himself through some wires plugged into Johnson's severed head. Fearing that Logan has gone insane, and with the conditions worsening, Bill decides that they should leave in the helicopter immediately. Rhodes finds out that Logan has been feeding the flesh of his dead soldiers to Bub as a reward for his positive behavior. Enraged, Rhodes kills Logan and seizes the remaining scientists and non-military personnel, stripping them of their weapons. Rhodes attempts to force John to fly him and his remaining soldiers away from the base, which John refuses to do. In response, Rhodes kills Logan's assistant, Fisher, locks Sarah and Bill inside the zombie corral, and orders Steel to beat John into submission.

Back in the laboratory, Bub manages to escape from his chains and finds Logan's corpse. In a display of human emotion, he mourns the loss of his instructor, then picks up a pistol and goes in search of revenge.

Meanwhile, a suicidal Miguel heads off unnoticed to the perimeter fence, where he first opens the gate to let hundreds of zombies inside, and then allows the zombies to tear into him before he presses the release button that lowers the steel loading gate, giving the zombies access to the base. John overcomes his captors, steals their weapons and goes into the zombie corral to rescue Sarah and Bill. As the zombies enter the complex, Rhodes leaves his men behind. Torrez and Rickles are killed by the horde, while Steel is bitten and commits suicide. Bub finds Rhodes and fires at him. Rhodes attempts to escape, but he runs into a huge mass of zombies, and is shot in the stomach by Bub. Bub mockingly salutes Rhodes as the zombies tear him apart. John, Sarah and Bill manage to get to the surface and fly in the helicopter to a deserted island.

The novel is divided into three parts, following a third-person omniscient narrative with no main character. In some editions, the short first chapter is a separate prologue rather than the beginning of the first part.

Earth and the Overlords

In the late 20th century, the United States and the Soviet Union are competing to launch the first spacecraft into orbit, for military purposes. When vast alien spaceships suddenly position themselves above Earth's principal cities, the space race ceases. After one week, the aliens announce they are assuming supervision of international affairs, to prevent humanity's extinction. They become known as the Overlords. In general, they let humans go on conducting their affairs in their own way. They overtly interfere only twice: in South Africa, where, some time before their arrival, apartheid has collapsed and been replaced with aggressive persecution of the white minority; and in Spain, where they put an end to bull fighting. Some humans are suspicious of the Overlords' benign intent, as they never visibly appear. The Overlord Karellen, the "Supervisor for Earth," who speaks directly (behind a one-way glass viewscreen) only to Rikki Stormgren, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, tells Stormgren that the Overlords will reveal themselves in 50 years, when humanity will have become used to their presence. Stormgren smuggles a device onto Karellen's ship in an attempt to see Karellen's true form. He partially succeeds, is shocked by what he sees, and chooses to keep silent. Five decades after their arrival, the Overlords finally reveal their appearance: large bipeds that resemble the traditional Christian folk images of demons, with cloven hooves, leathery wings, horns, and barbed tails.

The Golden Age

Humankind enters a golden age of prosperity at the expense of creativity. The Overlords are interested in psychic research, which humans suppose is part of their anthropological study. Rupert Boyce, a prolific book collector on the subject, allows one Overlord, Rashaverak, to study these books at his home. To impress his friends with Rashaverak's presence, Boyce holds a party, during which he makes use of a Ouija board. Jan Rodricks, an astrophysicist and Rupert's brother-in-law, asks the identity of the Overlords' home star. George Greggson's future wife Jean faints as the Ouija board reveals a number which has no meaning to most of the guests. Then Jan recognizes it as a star-catalog number and learns that it is consistent with the direction in which Overlord supply ships appear and disappear. With the help of an oceanographer friend, Jan stows away on an Overlord supply ship and travels 40 light years to their home planet. Due to the time dilation of special relativity at near-light-speeds, the elapsed time on the ship is only a few weeks, and he has arranged to endure it in hibernation brought on by a drug known as narcosamine.

The Last Generation

Although humanity and the Overlords have peaceful relations, some believe human innovation is being suppressed and that culture is becoming stagnant. One of these groups establishes New Athens, an island colony in the middle of the Pacific Ocean devoted to the creative arts, which George and Jean Greggson join. The Overlords conceal a special interest in the Greggsons' children, Jeffrey and Jennifer Anne, and intervene to save Jeffrey's life when a tsunami strikes the island. The Overlords have been watching them since the incident with the Ouija board, which revealed the seed of the coming transformation hidden within Jean.

Well over a century after the Overlords' arrival, human children, beginning with the Greggsons', begin to display clairvoyance and telekinetic powers. Karellen reveals the Overlords' purpose: they serve the Overmind, a vast cosmic intelligence, born of amalgamated ancient civilizations and freed from the limitations of material existence. The Overlords themselves are in an "evolutionary cul-de-sac (dead end)"; unable to join the Overmind, they serve instead as a kind of "bridge species", fostering other races' eventual union with it.

As Rashaverak explains, the time of humanity as a race composed of single individuals with a concrete identity is coming to an end. The children's minds reach into each other and merge into a single vast group consciousness. If the Pacific were to be dried up, the islands dotting it would lose their identity as islands and become part of a new continent; in the same way, the children cease to be the individuals which their parents knew and become something else, completely alien to the "old type of human".

For the transformed children's safety — and also because it is painful for their parents to see what they have become — they are segregated on a continent of their own. No more human children are born and many parents die or commit suicide. The members of New Athens destroy themselves with an atomic bomb.

Jan Rodricks emerges from hibernation on the Overlord supply ship and arrives on their planet. The Overlords permit him a glimpse of how the Overmind communicates with them. When Jan returns to Earth (approximately 80 years after his departure by Earth time) he finds an unexpectedly altered planet. Humanity has effectively become extinct and he is now the last man alive. Hundreds of millions of children – no longer fitting what Rodricks defines as "human" – remain on the quarantined continent, having become a single intelligence readying themselves to join the Overmind.

Some Overlords remain on Earth to study the children from a safe distance. When the evolved children mentally alter the Moon's rotation and make other planetary manipulations, it becomes too dangerous to remain. The departing Overlords offer to take Rodricks with them, but he chooses to stay to witness Earth's end and transmit a report of what he sees.

Before they depart, Rodricks asks Rashaverak what encounter the Overlords had with humanity in the past, according to an assumption that the fear that humans had of their "demonic" form was due to a traumatic encounter with them in the distant past; but Rashaverak explains that the primal fear experienced by humans was not due to a racial , but a racial of the Overlords' role in their metamorphosis.

The Overlords are eager to escape from their own evolutionary dead end by studying the Overmind, so Rodricks's information is potentially of great value to them. By radio, Rodricks describes a vast burning column ascending from the planet. As the column disappears, Rodricks experiences a profound sense of emptiness when the children have gone. Then material objects and the Earth itself begin to dissolve into transparency. Rodricks reports no fear, but a powerful sense of fulfillment. The Earth evaporates in a flash of light. Karellen looks back at the receding Solar System and gives a final salute to the human species.

The narrator begins with a discussion on the nature of grown-ups and their inability to perceive "important things". As a test to determine if a grown-up is as enlightened as a child, he shows them a picture depicting a snake which has eaten an elephant. The grown-ups always reply that the picture depicts a hat, and so he knows to only talk of "reasonable" things to them, rather than the fanciful.

The narrator becomes an aircraft pilot, and one day, his plane crashes in the Sahara, far from civilization. The narrator has an eight-day supply of water and must fix his aeroplane. Here, he is unexpectedly greeted by a young boy nicknamed "the little prince." The prince has golden hair, a loveable laugh, and will repeat questions until they are answered.

The prince asks the narrator to draw a sheep. The narrator first shows him the picture of the elephant inside the snake, which, to the narrator's surprise, the prince interprets correctly. After three failed attempts at drawing a sheep, the frustrated narrator draws a simple crate, claiming the sheep is inside. The prince exclaims that this was exactly the drawing he wanted.

Over the course of eight days in the desert, while the narrator attempts to repair his plane, the prince recounts his life story. He begins describing his tiny home planet: in effect, a house-sized asteroid known as "B 612" on Earth. The asteroid's most prominent features are three minuscule volcanoes (two active, and one dormant or extinct) and a variety of plants.

The prince describes his earlier days cleaning the volcanoes and weeding unwanted seeds and sprigs that infest his planet's soil; in particular, pulling out baobab trees that are constantly on the verge of overrunning the surface. If the baobabs are not rooted out the moment they are recognised, its roots can have a catastrophic effect on the tiny planet. Therefore, the prince wants a sheep to eat the undesirable plants, but worries it will also eat plants with thorns.

The prince tells of his love for a vain and silly rose that began growing on the asteroid's surface some time ago. The rose is given to pretension, exaggerating ailments to gain attention and have the prince care for her. The prince says he nourished the rose and tended to her, making a screen and glass globe to protect her from the cold and wind, watering her, and keeping the caterpillars off.

Although the prince fell in love with the rose, he also began to feel that she was taking advantage of him, and he resolved to leave the planet to explore the rest of the universe. Upon their goodbyes, the rose is serious and apologises that she failed to show she loved him, saying that they had both been silly. She wishes him well and turns down his desire to leave her in the glass globe, saying she will protect herself. The prince laments that he did not understand how to love his rose while he was with her and should have listened to her kind actions, rather than her vain words.

The prince has since visited six other planets, each of which was inhabited by a single, irrational, narrow-minded adult, each meant to critique an element of society. They include:

• A king with no subjects, who only issues orders that can be followed, such as commanding the sun to set at sunset.
• A narcissistic man who only wants the praise which comes from admiration and being the most-admirable person on his otherwise uninhabited planet.
• A drunkard who drinks to forget the shame of drinking.
• A businessman who is blind to the beauty of the stars and instead endlessly counts and catalogues them in order to "own" them all (critiquing materialism).
• A lamplighter on a planet so small, a full day lasts a minute. He wastes his life blindly following orders to extinguish and relight the lamp-post every 30 seconds to correspond with his planet's day and night.
• An elderly geographer who has never been anywhere, or seen any of the things he records, providing a caricature of specialisation in the contemporary world.

It is the geographer who tells the prince that his rose is an ''ephemeral'' being, which is not recorded, and recommends that the prince next visit the planet Earth. The visit to Earth begins with a deeply pessimistic appraisal of humanity. The six absurd people the prince encountered earlier comprise, according to the narrator, just about the entire adult world. On earth there were:

111 kings ... 7,000 geographers, 900,000 businessmen, 7,500,000 tipplers, 311,000,000 conceited men; that is to say, about 2,000,000,000 grown-ups.

Since the prince landed in a desert, he believed that Earth was uninhabited. He then met a yellow snake that claimed to have the power to return him to his home, if he ever wished to return. The prince next met a desert flower, who told him that she had only seen a handful of men in this part of the world and that they had no roots, letting the wind blow them around and living hard lives. After climbing the highest mountain he had ever seen, the prince hoped to see the whole of Earth, thus finding the people; however, he saw only the enormous, desolate landscape. When the prince called out, his echo answered him, which he interpreted as the voice of a boring person who only repeats what another says.

The prince encountered a whole row of rosebushes, becoming downcast at having once thought that his own rose was unique and thinking his rose had lied about being unique. He began to feel that he was not a great prince at all, as his planet contained only three tiny volcanoes and a flower that he now thought of as common. He laid down on the grass and wept, until a fox came along.

The fox desired to be tamed and taught the prince how to tame him. By being tamed, something goes from being ordinary and just like all the others to being special and unique. There are drawbacks since the connection can lead to sadness and longing when apart.

From the fox, the prince learns that his rose was indeed unique and special because she was the object of the prince's love and time; he had "tamed" her, and now she was more precious than all of the roses he had seen in the garden. Upon their sad departing, the fox imparts a secret: important things can only be seen with the heart, not the eyes.

The prince finally met two people from Earth:

• A railway switchman who told him how passengers constantly rushed from one place to another aboard trains, never satisfied with where they were and not knowing what they were after; only the children among them ever bothered to look out the windows.
• A merchant who talked to the prince about his product, a pill that eliminated the need to drink for a week, saving people 53 minutes.

Back in the present moment, it is the eighth day after the narrator's plane crash and the narrator and the prince are dying of thirst. The prince has become visibly morose and saddened over his recollections and longs to return home and see his flower.

The prince finds a well, saving them. The narrator later finds the prince talking to the snake, discussing his return home and his desire to see his rose again, who, he worries, has been left to fend for herself. The prince bids an emotional farewell to the narrator and states that if it looks as though he has died, it is only because his body was too heavy to take with him to his planet. The prince warns the narrator not to watch him leave, as it will upset him. The narrator, realising what will happen, refuses to leave the prince's side. The prince consoles the narrator by saying that he only need look at the stars to think of the prince's loveable laughter, and that it will seem as if all the stars are laughing. The prince then walks away from the narrator and allows the snake to bite him, soundlessly falling down.

The next morning, the narrator is unable to find the prince's body. He finally manages to repair his aeroplane and leave the desert. It is left up to the reader to determine if the prince returned home or died. The story ends with a drawing of the landscape where the prince and the narrator met and where the snake took the prince's corporeal life. The narrator requests to be immediately contacted by anyone in that area encountering a small person with golden curls who refuses to answer any questions.

Along the U.S.–Mexico border, a time bomb placed inside a vehicle explodes, killing Rudy Linnekar and his stripper girlfriend Zita. On his honeymoon with his American wife Susie, Mexican special prosecutor Miguel Vargas takes an interest in the investigation. Local authorities arrive on the scene, followed by 30-year police captain Hank Quinlan and his longtime assistant, Pete Menzies. Quinlan and Menzies implicate Sanchez, a young Mexican secretly married to the victim's daughter, Marcia, as the prime suspect. During the interrogation at Sanchez's apartment, Menzies locates two sticks of dynamite in the same shoebox that Vargas had found empty only a few minutes earlier. Vargas accuses Quinlan of planting evidence, and begins to suspect that he may have been doing so for years to help win convictions. Quinlan dismisses Vargas's claim, saying he is just biased in favor of fellow Mexicans.

The stress of these accusations, along with pressure from "Uncle" Joe Grandi, the brother of a man Vargas has been investigating, to strike a deal to discredit Vargas, causes Quinlan—who has been sober for 12 years—to relapse. With assistance from the District Attorney's Assistant Al Schwartz, Vargas studies the public records on Quinlan's cases, revealing his findings to Gould and Adair. Quinlan arrives in time to overhear the discussion and angrily threatens to resign.

Meanwhile, Vargas sends his wife to a remote motel to remove her from the Grandis' unwanted attention. Unknown to him, the hotel is owned by Grandi. Grandi's family members terrorize Susie. Vargas becomes concerned when his attempts to telephone his wife at the motel are blocked. Per their agreement, Grandi arranges for Susie to appear unconscious from a drug overdose in a downtown motel, set up for Quinlan to "discover" her. Instead, Quinlan strangles Grandi there and leaves his corpse with Susie. When she wakes up, she screams for help but instead is arrested on suspicion of murder.

Vargas confronts Menzies about Quinlan's history of "discovering" incriminating evidence in his cases. He goes to Susie's motel but cannot find her, discovering both that the motel is owned by Grandi and that his handgun has been stolen. He rushes back to town and enters a bar, where he confronts the gang members who attacked his wife. When they refuse to answer his questions, Vargas attacks them but is overwhelmed.

Schwartz informs Vargas that Susie has been arrested for murder. At the lockup, Menzies reveals to Vargas that he discovered Quinlan's cane at the murder scene, implicating him. Menzies agrees to wear a wire for Vargas. Quinlan is at ex-lover Tana's brothel across the border. A loud player piano prevents recording, so Menzies lures Quinlan out. While they walk Vargas trails them, recording their conversation.

Quinlan confesses to Menzies that he planted evidence on suspects, but just the "guilty" ones. Quinlan hears an echo from Vargas' tracking device and suspects Menzies of betrayal. Quinlan demands that Vargas show himself and then shoots Menzies. Just as Quinlan is prepared to shoot the unarmed Vargas, claiming he'll plead self-defense, Menzies shoots Quinlan, then expires. Schwartz arrives at the scene and tells Vargas that Sanchez had confessed to the crime, vindicating Quinlan. Vargas is reunited with Susie. Tana arrives and rues Quinlan's death.

Act I

New Yorkers Tommy Albright and Jeff Douglas have travelled to the Scottish Highlands on a game-hunting vacation, but they get lost on their first night out. They begin to hear music ("Brigadoon") coming from a nearby village that does not appear on their map of the area. They head over there to get directions back to their inn and find a fair in progress ("McConnachy Square"), with villagers dressed in traditional Scottish tartan. Andrew MacLaren and his daughters arrive at the fair to purchase supplies for younger daughter Jean's wedding to Charlie Dalrymple. Archie Beaton's son Harry madly loves Jean and is depressed at the thought of her marrying another, unable to find comfort in Maggie Anderson's devotion to him. One of the girls asks Jean's older sister Fiona when she'll marry, and Fiona answers she's waiting for the right person ("Waitin' For My Dearie").

Tommy and Jeff wander into the village and ask where they are; Archie informs them that they are in "Brigadoon". Fiona invites the wanderers to have a meal and rest at the MacLaren home. Flirtatious dairymaid Meg Brockie immediately falls for Jeff and leads him off. Charlie Dalrymple appears, rejoicing in his impending nuptials. He shares a drink with Tommy, toasting to a Mr. Forsythe whom he thanks for "postponing the miracle". When Tommy asks what that means, Fiona shushes him and leads him away as Charlie celebrates the end of his bachelorhood ("Go Home with Bonnie Jean"). Tommy tells Fiona that he has a fiancée, Jane, in New York, but he's in no hurry to marry her, and Fiona reveals that she likes Tommy very much. Tommy insists on accompanying Fiona to gather heather for the wedding ("The Heather on the Hill"). Meanwhile, Meg takes Jeff to a place in the forest with a shack and a cot. She tells him she's "highly attracted" to him, but he spurns her advances, wanting only to sleep. She reflects on her 'eventful' love life ("The Love of My Life").

At the MacLarens', Jean's friends help her pack her things to move into Charlie's home ("Jeannie's Packin' Up"). Charlie arrives to sign the MacLarens' family Bible. He wants to see Jean; told that it's bad luck to see her on the wedding day, he begs for her to come out anyway ("Come to Me, Bend to Me"). Tommy and Fiona return with a basket full of heather, and Fiona goes upstairs to help Jean dress for the wedding. Jeff arrives wearing a pair of Highland trews (trousers); apparently his own pants have been damaged on a "thistle". Jeff finds that Tommy is so happy that he can barely contain it ("Almost Like Being in Love"). Tommy notices that all the events listed in the family Bible, including Jean's wedding, are listed as if they had happened 200 years earlier. When he asks Fiona about this, she sends him to the schoolmaster, Mr. Lundie.

Fiona, Tommy, and Jeff arrive at Mr. Lundie's home, where he relates a story that the two New Yorkers can hardly believe: to protect Brigadoon from being changed by the outside world, 200 years ago the local minister prayed to God to have Brigadoon disappear, only to reappear for one day every 100 years. All citizens of Brigadoon are forbidden to leave the town, or it will disappear forever. Tommy asks hypothetically if an outsider could be permitted to stay. Mr. Lundie replies, "A stranger can stay if he loves someone here – not jus' Brigadoon, mind ye, but someone in Brigadoon – enough to want to give up everythin' an' stay with that one person. Which is how it should be. 'Cause after all, lad, if ye love someone deeply, anythin' is possible."

The group leaves to go to the wedding, which opens with the clans coming in from the hills. Mr. Lundie marries Charlie and Jean, and they perform a traditional celebratory wedding dance. Sword dancers appear, led by Harry, and they perform an elaborate dance over their weapons. All the town joins in the dance, but it abruptly halts when Jean screams as Harry tries to kiss her. In anguish over Jean's wedding, he announces that he's leaving the town (which would end the miracle, causing Brigadoon to disappear forever into the Highland mists) and sprints away.

Act II

The men of the town, including Tommy and a reluctant Jeff, frantically try to find Harry before he can depart the town ("The Chase"). Suddenly an agonized scream is heard. Harry, who appears to have fallen on a rock and crushed his skull, is found dead by the other men. Deciding not to tell the rest of the town until the next morning, the men carry Harry's body away. Fiona and her father arrive to see if everything is all right. As Mr. MacLaren leaves, Tommy sees Fiona, and they embrace. She reveals her love for him, and he tells her he believes he feels the same way ("There But For You Go I"). Fiona reminds him that the end of the day is near, and Tommy tells her he wants to stay in Brigadoon with her. They go to find Mr. Lundie.

Meanwhile, in the village, Meg tells about the day her parents were drunkenly married ("My Mother's Wedding Day"), and the townsfolk dance until the sound of Highland pipes pierces the air. The gaiety is interrupted as Archie Beaton enters carrying Harry's body, led by the pipers playing a ''pìobaireachd''. Maggie, who loved Harry, performs a funeral dance for her unrequited love. The men of Brigadoon help Archie carry his son to the burial place.

Tommy finds Jeff and announces his intention to stay. Jeff thinks the idea is absurd and argues with Tommy until he has convinced him that Brigadoon is only a dream. Jeff also reveals that he tripped Harry and accidentally killed him. Fiona and Mr. Lundie arrive, and Tommy, shaken by Jeff's confession, tells Fiona that he loves her, but he can't stay; he still has doubts ("From This Day On"). Fiona tells Tommy, as she fades away into darkness, that she will love him forever.

Four months later, Jeff is drinking heavily at a hotel bar in New York. Tommy, who has been living on a farm in New Hampshire, enters and greets Jeff, but is still in love with Fiona and cannot stop thinking about her. His fiancée Jane Ashton, a beautiful socialite, talks to him about their impending wedding, but everything she says causes him to hear Fiona's voice and dream of Brigadoon ("Come to Me, Bend to Me" (reprise) and "Heather on the Hill" (reprise)). Tommy tells Jane that he cannot marry her, and she argues with him, but he continues to daydream about his true love ("Go Home With Bonnie Jean" (reprise) and "From This Day On" (reprise)). Jane leaves, and Tommy tells Jeff that he wants to return to Scotland, although he knows the village will not be there.

The pair return to the spot where they found Brigadoon and, as they expected, see nothing there. Just as they turn to leave, they hear the music again ("Brigadoon"), and Mr. Lundie appears and says, "My my! You must really love her. You woke me up!" Tommy waves goodbye to Jeff and disappears with Mr. Lundie into the Highland mist to be reunited with Fiona.

The book begins less than seven hours after the end of ''The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger'' after The Man in Black has described The Gunslinger's fate using tarot cards. Roland wakes up on a beach, and he is suddenly attacked by a strange, lobster-like creature, which he dubs a "lobstrosity." He kills the creature, but not before losing the index and middle fingers of his right hand and most of his right big toe. His untreated wounds soon become infected. Feverish and losing strength, Roland continues north along the beach, where he eventually encounters three doors. Each door opens onto New York City at different periods in time (1987, 1964 and 1977, respectively). As Roland passes through these doors, he brings back the companions who will join him on his quest to the Dark Tower.

The first door (labeled "The Prisoner") brings Eddie Dean, a young heroin addict in the process of smuggling cocaine into New York for the Mob boss Enrico Balazar. Roland brings Eddie back through the door so Eddie can hide the cocaine and get through a customs inspection, but the agents become suspicious and subject him to a lengthy interrogation and surveillance. Balazar learns of these events and kidnaps Eddie's heavily addicted older brother Henry to force Eddie to deliver the drugs. At Balazar's bar, Eddie claims he can produce the drugs from the bathroom. Eddie is strip-searched and the bathroom torn apart, and no drugs are found. Eddie is eventually allowed to enter the bathroom completely naked and accompanied by Jack Andolini, one of Balazar's henchmen. In the bathroom, Eddie forcibly drags Andolini into the Gunslinger's world. During the brief scuffle, Andolini is injured by Roland and then eaten alive by the lobstrosities. Eddie and Roland re-enter the bathroom and, overhearing that Henry has died from an accidental heroin overdose given by Balazar's men, engage in a lengthy but victorious shootout. While still mourning the death of his brother, Eddie decides to throw his lot in with Roland. Before the pair return through the door, they acquire some antibiotics Balazar kept in his bathroom for addicts who have acquired infections from IV needle use. With Eddie tending to him, Roland slowly recovers from his infection.

The second door (labeled "The Lady of Shadows") reveals Odetta Holmes, a black woman with dissociative identity disorder (that Eddie incorrectly labels as schizophrenia) who is active in the civil rights movement. She is wealthy and missing her legs below the knees after being pushed in front of a subway train. Odetta is completely unaware that she has an alternate personality—a violent, predatory woman named Detta Walker—that was brought on by head trauma at a young age. Roland and Eddie are forced to contend with both these personalities when Roland forcibly brings Odetta's body into his world, with Detta suppressing Odetta during most of their travels. Odetta eventually returns, and she and Eddie venture alone toward the final door after Roland's infection recurs. The pair eventually find the third door (labeled "The Pusher") where Eddie leaves Odetta, armed with one of Roland's revolvers, and hurries back with her wheelchair to retrieve Roland. When they return, Odetta is gone, and Detta hides waiting to strike. After Roland enters the third door, Detta captures Eddie and uses him as bait for the lobstrosities, hoping to force Roland to come back and return her to her own world.

Instead of revealing a new companion, the third door leads Roland to Jack Mort, a sociopath who takes sadistic pleasure in injuring and killing random strangers — and the man responsible for the traumas that created Odetta's second personality and cost her both legs, as well as the death of Jake Chambers. Roland arrives in Jack's body just as he is about to push Jake into traffic (the event that leads to Jake's appearance in ''The Gunslinger'') and stops him from doing so. Under Roland's control, Jack acquires the medicine and ammunition Roland needs to survive, then jumps in front of the same subway that hit Odetta/Detta years earlier. Roland returns to his world just before impact, having made sure Odetta/Detta sees Jack's death in order to force the two personalities to confront each other. As they attempt to cancel each other out, they merge into a third, stronger personality, Susannah Dean. Susannah stops the lobstrosities from trying to eat Eddie.

As the group travels away from the beach, Eddie—having broken his drug addiction after a painful withdrawal—begins to fall in love with Susannah. Both owe their lives to Roland, but he is acutely aware that he may eventually need to sacrifice them to reach the Tower.

As Roland travels across the desert in search of the man in black, whom he knows as Walter, he encounters a farmer named Brown and Zoltan, Brown's crow. Roland spends the night there and recalls his time spent in Tull, a small town Roland passed through not long before the start of the novel. The man in black had also stayed in the town; he brought a dead man stricken by addiction to the opiate-like "devil grass" back to life and left a trap for Roland. Roland meets the leader of the local church, who reveals to him that the man in black has impregnated her with a demon. She turns the entire town against Roland, and Roland is forced to kill every resident of the town. When he awakens the next day, his mule is dead, forcing him to proceed on foot.

Roland arrives at an abandoned way station and first encounters Jake Chambers, a young boy. Roland collapses from dehydration, and Jake brings him water. Jake knows neither how long he has been at the way station nor exactly how he got there, and he hid when the man in black passed through. Roland hypnotizes Jake to determine the details of his death and discovers he died in a different universe that appears much closer in nature to our own. He was pushed in front of a car while walking to school in Manhattan. Before they leave, Roland and Jake search for food in a cellar and encounter a demon. Roland masters the demon and takes a jawbone from the hole from which it spoke to him.

Roland and Jake eventually make their way out of the desert. Roland rescues Jake from an encounter with a succubus and tells him to hold on to the jawbone as a protective charm. Roland couples with the succubus, who is also an oracle, to learn more about his fate and the path to the Dark Tower. In a flashback, it is revealed that Roland is the son of Steven Deschain, a Gunslinger and lord of Gilead. The flashback also recalls the brutal training Roland received at the hand of his teacher, Cort. Roland reveals how he was tricked into a premature test of manhood by dueling with Cort at age 14, earlier than any other apprentice. He was provoked by Marten, who served as Steven's wizard and seduced Roland's mother, Gabrielle Deschain. It is established that this was a time of instability and revolution. Roland defeated Cort in battle through weapon selection, sacrificing his hawk, David, to distract Cort.

Jake and Roland see the man in black at the mountain, and he tells them he will meet just one of them on the other side, which aggravates Jake's fears that Roland will either kill or abandon him. Roland and Jake make their way into the twisting tunnels within the mountain, traveling on an old railway handcar. They are attacked by monstrous subterranean creatures called "Slow Mutants." At the tunnel's exit, as the track on which they are traveling begins to break, Roland lets Jake fall into an abyss and continues his quest.

After sacrificing Jake in the mountain, Roland makes his way down to speak with the man in black, otherwise known as Walter. Walter reads Roland's fate from a pack of cards, which includes such omens as "the sailor," "the prisoner," "the lady of shadows," "death," and the Tower itself. Walter states that he is a pawn of Roland's true enemy, who now controls the Dark Tower itself. The man in black also reveals that he was Marten. He then sends Roland a vision of the universe, zooming out past a red planet covered in canals, a ring of rocks, a large stormy planet, a ringed planet, and then to galaxies and beyond, attempting to frighten Roland by showing him how truly insignificant he is. Walter then asks Roland to renounce his quest. Roland refuses, and the man in black tells him to go west before putting him to sleep. When Roland awakens, ten years have passed, and there is a skeleton next to him that he assumes to be Walter's. Roland takes the jawbone from the skeleton before traveling to the shore of the Western Sea.

In 1947, in Maine, Andy Dufresne, a banker, is tried and convicted for the double murder of his wife and her lover, despite his claims of innocence. He is sent to Shawshank State Penitentiary to serve a double life sentence. There, he meets Red, a prisoner who is known in the prison for his ability to smuggle in contraband items. Andy asks Red to get him a rock hammer, which he uses to shape rocks he collects from the exercise yard into small sculptures. He later requests a large poster of Rita Hayworth, which he hangs on the wall above his bed. Over the ensuing years, Andy regularly requests updated posters from Red of the latest pin-ups, including Marilyn Monroe and Raquel Welch. Andy tells Red that he likes to imagine he can step through the pictures and be with the actresses.

For his first three years in Shawshank, Andy is repeatedly the target of a gang of prison rapists called "The Sisters,” led by the inmate Bogs Diamond. One day, Andy and other prisoners are tarring a roof when Andy overhears a senior guard named Byron Hadley complaining about the amount of tax he will need to pay on a sum of money bequeathed to him. With his banking knowledge, Andy tells Hadley how he can legally shelter the money from taxation and offers to complete the necessary paperwork, in exchange for three beers apiece for the other men on the tarring job. From then on, Andy is given increased protection from the guards, and attacks from the Sisters cease.

Andy's work assignment is shifted from the laundry to the prison's library. The new assignment also allows Andy to spend time doing financial paperwork for the staff. Andy applies to the Maine State Senate for funding to expand the library. His diligent work results in a major expansion of the library's collection, and Andy helps several prisoners earn equivalency diplomas.

The newest corrupt warden of Shawshank, Norton, starts a program called "Inside-Out", where convicts complete work outside the prison for minimal wages. Normal companies cannot compete with the low cost of Inside-Out workers, so they offer Norton bribes not to bid for contracts. Andy helps Norton launder the money, among several other illegal enterprises orchestrated by Norton.

In February 1963, Andy hears from another prisoner, Tommy Williams, that Williams’ former cellmate Elmo Blatch had bragged about killing a rich golfer and his lover – the wife of a "hotshot lawyer". On hearing Tommy's story, Andy realizes that this evidence could result in a new trial and a chance at freedom. However, Norton quickly dismisses Tommy’s claims. When Andy accuses Norton of being deliberately obtuse, the warden has him placed in solitary confinement for 20 days.

By the time Andy is released from solitary and the warden agrees to meet with him again, Norton has had Tommy moved to a minimum-security prison. Norton implies to Andy that he used his connections to get Blatch released onto a parole program, making it nearly impossible for Andy to hire a lawyer and pursue a new trial. When Andy threatens to cease all his money laundering and other bookkeeping activities, Norton threatens to put him back into solitary for another 30 days, take away all his protections and privileges, and shut down the library. Andy concedes and things resume as they were before Tommy's revelation, though Red notes that Andy's demeanor becomes dark for the next four years.

In October 1967, Andy tells Red about “Peter Stevens,” a pseudonym under which Andy had sold off his assets and invested the proceeds. Andy tells Red that the key needed to access “Stevens'” documents and assets is hidden beside a wall lining a hayfield in the small town of Buxton, not far from Shawshank. Andy tells Red that one day "Peter Stevens" will own a small seaside resort hotel in Zihuatanejo, Mexico.

On the morning of March 12, 1975, after 28 years in prison, Andy disappears from his locked cell. After a search, Norton discovers that the poster pasted to Andy’s cell wall (Linda Ronstadt) covers a man-sized hole – Andy had used his rock hammer to slowly chip a tunnel through the wall. Once through the wall, he broke into a sewage pipe, crawled through it, emerged into a stream 500 yards beyond the prison's outer perimeter, and escaped. Norton resigns amidst public disgrace shortly afterward. In September 1975, Red receives a blank postcard from McNary, Texas, a "tiny town" near the Mexican border, and surmises that Andy crossed the border there.

In March 1977, Red is paroled. He hitchhikes to Buxton, searching for the hayfield Andy had described. Upon discovering the spot, he finds a letter wrapped in plastic addressed to him from "Peter Stevens" inviting him to join Andy in Mexico and $1,000 in cash. The story ends with Red preparing to break his parole and follow Andy to Mexico.

Gordon "Gordie" LaChance reminisces about his childhood in Castle Rock, Maine. At that time, Gordie's elder brother Dennis, whom his parents favored, had recently died, leaving Gordie's parents too depressed to pay much attention to him. In 1960, Gordie and his three friends − Chris Chambers, Teddy Duchamp and Vern Tessio − learn that a gang of hooligans led by John "Ace" Merrill have accidentally discovered the dead body of a missing boy named Ray Brower, who was hit by a train. Because the gang found the body while driving a stolen car, they elected not to report the body to the police. The boys get the idea to find the body "officially" so that they may become famous. In preparation for the expedition, Chris steals a gun from his father, and the boys camp out in a nearby field.

Over the course of the narrative, the adult Gordie recalls his first published story, ''Stud City'', about the life of a simple man named Edward "Chico" May whose older brother also died. He has a girlfriend, Jane, who he does not have particularly strong feelings for. Chico knows that his stepmother Virginia slept with his brother before he died, but he hesitates to tell his father about it. One day, Chico has a fight with his father over Virginia and leaves the house.

Along the way, the boys trespass at the town dump and are chased by Chopper, the dump custodian Milo Pressman's dog. Teddy gets into a verbal skirmish with Milo when the latter insults Teddy's father by calling him a "loonie". Gordie and Vern are nearly run over by a train while crossing a trestle. While at a resting point, Gordie tells his friends another story, "The Revenge of Lard-Ass Hogan", in which the titular Davie "Lard-Ass" Hogan exacts vengeance on the town locals for ridiculing his wide girth by downing a whole bottle of castor oil before engaging in the town's annual pie-eating contest and vomiting on the previous year's champion, which causes a chain reaction that nauseates the entire audience. The next morning, the boys stumble upon a small pond and partake in a swim, but jump out in horror when they find that the pond is teeming with leeches.

After a thunderstorm, the boys finally find the dead body. The body of Ray Brower was discovered to be mangled by the train, in which it was Ray's attempt to escape the locomotive's path. Ace's gang arrives shortly after. During an argument, Chris pulls the gun on the gang and forces them to leave, but Ace promises reprisals. Tired, depressed and fearing retaliation, the boys decide there is nothing more to be done with the body and return home. Subsequently, one of the gang members reports the body as an anonymous tip, and the gang members severely beat all four boys. The four friends eventually drift apart, but Gordie and Chris remain close. Chris decides to prepare for higher education, and with Gordie's support, they both graduate from the University of Maine. In the present day, Gordie tells how he learned of Chris's death after he was fatally stabbed while trying to stop an argument in a restaurant, about the deaths of Vern and Teddy (in a house fire and car accident respectively), about his successful writing career, and about his recent visit to Castle Rock, where he found that Ace has become an alcoholic and ordinary worker.

In Southern California in 1984, 16-year-old high school student Todd Bowden discovers that his elderly neighbor, Arthur Denker, is in reality Kurt Dussander — a former Sturmbannführer in the SS who is now a fugitive war criminal hiding from justice. Todd blackmails Dussander by threatening to turn him in to the police. However, the teenager is fascinated with Nazi atrocities perpetrated during World War II. He forces Dussander to share disturbing stories of what it was like working at Nazi extermination camps, and how it felt to participate in genocide.

Todd purchases an SS uniform from a costume shop and forces Dussander to wear it. When he spends more time with the old man, his grades suffer, he loses interest in his girlfriend, and he conceals his bad grades from his parents. In turn, the Nazi blackmails the young boy into studying to restore his grades, threatening to expose the boy's subterfuge and his dalliance with Nazism to his parents. Dussander even poses as Todd's grandfather and goes to an appointment with Todd's school counselor Edward French. Talking about the war crimes affects both the old man and the young boy, and an intoxicated Dussander attempts to kill a cat in his gas oven but fails when it attacks him and escapes. Dussander also takes great pride in Todd's unbelievable turnaround, going from near dropout to straight As in a matter of weeks.

One night, Dussander tries to kill a homeless person who earlier had seen him in the uniform. When Dussander has a heart attack, he calls Todd, who finishes the job, cleans up, and calls an ambulance for Dussander. At the hospital, Dussander is recognized by a death camp survivor sharing his room and he is arrested prior to being extradited to Israel. Todd graduates as his school's valedictorian and gives a speech about Icarus, saying, "All great achievements arose from dissatisfaction. It is the desire to do better, to dig deeper, that propels civilization to greatness." The scene is juxtaposed in a montage with Dussander's home being searched and the hobo's corpse being found in the basement.

Todd is briefly questioned about his relationship with Dussander, but he manages to convince the police that he knew nothing of the old man's true identity. At the hospital, Dussander hears a group of Neo-Nazis demonstrating outside the hospital; realizing his identity has been hopelessly compromised, he commits suicide by giving himself an air embolism. When French learns that the man who met Todd at school was not Todd's grandfather but a war criminal, he confronts Todd, who then blackmails French into silence by threatening to accuse him of making inappropriate sexual advances towards him (Todd) and to thereby expose French publicly as a homosexual and pederast.

The story begins five weeks after the end of ''The Drawing of the Three''. Roland, Susannah, and Eddie have moved east from the shore of the Western Sea, and into the woods of Out-World. After an encounter with a gigantic cyborg bear named Shardik, they discover one of the six mystical Beams that hold the world together. The three gunslingers follow the Path of the Beam inland to Mid-World.

Roland now reveals to his ka-tet (group of people bound together by fate/destiny) that his mind has become divided and he is slowly losing his sanity. Roland remembers meeting Jake Chambers in the way station and letting him fall to his death in the mountains (as depicted in ''The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger''). However, he also remembers passing through the desert alone and never meeting Jake. It is soon discovered that when Roland saved Jake from being killed by Jack Mort in 1977 (in ''The Drawing of the Three''), he inadvertently created a paradox; Jake did not die and thus did not appear in Mid-World and travel with Roland.

In 1977 New York, Jake Chambers is experiencing exactly the same crippling mental divide, which is causing alarm at his private school, and angering Jake's cocaine-abusing father. Roland burns Walter's jawbone and the solution to his dilemma is revealed, but to Eddie instead of Roland. Eddie must carve a key that will open the door to New York in 1977.

Jake abruptly leaves school and finds a key in a littered vacant lot where a single red rose has bloomed. Jake is able to pass into Roland's world using the key to open a door in an abandoned haunted house on Dutch Hill in his place and time. This portal ends in a 'speaking ring' in Roland's world. During this crossing over, Susannah has sex with a incubus, distracting it while Eddie continues to carve the key which will allow Jake safe passage to Mid-World. Once the group is reunited, Jake's and Roland's mental anguish ends. Roland has now completed the task of bringing companions into his world, which he started in ''The Drawing of the Three''.

Following the path of the Beam again, the ka-tet befriends an unusually intelligent billy-bumbler (which looks like a combination of badger, raccoon and dog with parrot-like speaking ability, long neck, curly tail, retractable claws and a high degree of animal intelligence) whom Jake names Oy, who joins them on their quest.

In a small, almost deserted town called River Crossing, Roland is given a silver cross and a courtly tribute by the town's last, ancient citizens.

The ka-tet continues on the Path of the Beam to the city of Lud. Before arriving at Lud, the ka-tet hear the drum beat from the song "Velcro Fly" by ZZ Top playing from the city, although Eddie at first cannot remember where he has heard the rhythm before. Later the drums are revealed as the "god-drums" to which the inhabitants of Lud constantly fight. The ancient, once high-tech city has been ravaged by centuries of war, with the residents being divided into two factions: the "Pubes" and the "Grays". One of the surviving Gray fighters, Gasher, kidnaps Jake by taking advantage of the near-accident the team faced while crossing a decaying bridge (which looks like the George Washington Bridge of NYC). Roland and Oy must then track them through a man-made labyrinth in the city and then into the sewers in order to rescue the boy from Gasher and his leader, the Tick-Tock Man. Jake manages to shoot the Tick-Tock Man, leaving him for dead. The ka-tet is eventually reunited at the Cradle of Lud, a train station which houses a monorail that the travelers use to escape Lud before its final destruction brought about by the monorail's artificial intelligence known as Blaine the Mono. The "Ageless Stranger" (an enemy whom the Man in Black warned Roland that he must slay) arrives to recruit the badly-injured Tick-Tock Man as his servant.

Centuries of system degradation have caused Blaine to go insane. Once the travelers are aboard, it announces its intention to derail itself with them aboard unless they can defeat it in a riddle contest. The novel ends with Blaine and Roland's ka-tet speeding through the Waste Lands, a radioactive land of mutated animals and ancient ruins created by something that is claimed to have been far worse than a nuclear war, on the way to Topeka, the end of the line.

Title page from the original 1984 Philtrum Press edition (book issued without cover)

''The Eyes of the Dragon'' takes place entirely within the realm of Delain (which itself is located within In-World from ''The Dark Tower'' series, as established in "The Little Sisters of Eluria"). It is told from the perspective of an unnamed storyteller/narrator, who speaks casually and frankly to the reader, frequently adding his own commentary on characters' motivations and the like.

King Roland's magician, Flagg, seeking to destroy the Kingdom of Delain, sees his plans being ruined by the good heart of Queen Sasha. After Sasha gives birth to Peter, a noble and worthy future king, Flagg realizes that his position, his plans, and his life may be in danger because of Peter. When Sasha is pregnant with a second son, Flagg seizes the opportunity. He forces the Queen's midwife to cut Sasha as the second son, Thomas, is born. Sasha bleeds to death and Flagg begins plotting to remove Peter. As Peter becomes a teenager, he begins the custom of bringing a glass of wine to his father before bed each night. Flagg decides to use this as a means of framing Peter. He dissolves a poison called "Dragon Sand" in a glass of wine and delivers it to the king after Peter leaves. Previously, in an attempt to win Thomas' friendship, Flagg had shown him a secret passage where Thomas could spy on his father. Unbeknownst to Flagg, when he delivers the poison, Thomas is watching through the glass eyes of the mounted head of Roland's greatest trophy, Niner the dragon. Flagg plants evidence incriminating Peter.

After a brief trial, during which the judge decides Peter is guilty, he is locked up in the enormous tower called the Needle in the center of the city. Thomas is then crowned King, although he is only twelve years old; due to his youth and his fearful inexperience, he allows Flagg enormous amounts of power. At the start of his long stay in the Needle, Peter manages to send a note to the judge who convicted him, Anders Peyna, with the seemingly innocuous requests to have his mother's old dollhouse and napkins with his meals. Peyna is puzzled by the requests, but, seeing no harm in them, grants them. Five years later, Peter escapes from the Needle, having used the toy loom in the dollhouse and threads from the napkins to make a rope. After the escape he and his allies rush to get Roland's bow and arrow. However, it is not to be found because Thomas had it once they got into the king's "sitting room". Flagg, now revealed as a demonic being, is about to kill them when Thomas reveals himself and tells Flagg that he (Thomas) watched Flagg poison Roland. Thomas shoots Flagg in the eye, but Flagg uses magic to disappear and escape. At the end of the novel, Peter is declared to be the rightful king. Thomas, who has become deeply hated in Delain, sets off alongside his butler, Dennis, to find Flagg. They find him and confront him, but the narrator does not reveal the outcome.

The story begins as a Raymond Chandler pastiche, and follows a private investigator named Clyde Umney as he goes about what he thinks is just another morning in 1930s Los Angeles. He soon discovers that his life as he knows it is falling apart. All of his lifelong friends and associates are abruptly departing in one fashion or other, for reasons ranging from winning the lottery to terminal cancer, and many of them express disdain towards Umney in place of farewells. He is brooding alone in his office when he receives his final client: Landry, the crime-fiction author who created him. Having suffered the loss of his wife and child as well as a severe case of shingles, Landry took an overdose of medication and found himself in the world of his creation. He demonstrates that his will is law in this world, and explains to a helpless Umney that he intends to take Umney's place to live a life of eternal adventure and excitement. Umney is cast into oblivion—or so it seems.

Instead, Umney finds himself in the year 1994, occupying the vacated body of his creator. Although he realizes/acknowledges that his previous existence was a sham (and falling apart), he also finds himself equally despising the ugly, bland, and generally inadequate nature of the "real" world. He announces that he has begun to practice the craft of writing so that he might return to his fictional home in order to take back his world and his life, and end Landry's.

Alan Parker is a student at the University of Maine who is trying to find himself. He gets a call from a neighbor in his hometown of Lewiston, telling him that his mother has been taken to the hospital after having a stroke. Lacking a functioning car, Parker decides to hitchhike the 120 miles (200 km) south to visit his mother.

He ends up riding with an old man who continually tugs at his crotch in a car that stinks of urine. Eventually frightened and glad to escape the vehicle, Alan starts walking, thumbing his next ride. Coming upon a graveyard, he begins to explore it and notices a headstone for a stranger named George Staub (in German, ''Staub'' means dust), which reads: "Well Begun, Too Soon Done". Sure enough, the next car to pick him up is driven by George Staub, complete with black stitches around his neck where his head had been sewn on after being severed and wearing a button saying, "I Rode The Bullet At Thrill Village, Laconia."

During the ride, George talks to Alan about the amusement park ride he was too scared to ride as a kid: The Bullet in Thrill Village, Laconia, New Hampshire. George tells Alan that before they reach the lights of town, Alan must choose who goes on the death ride with George: Alan or his mother. In a moment of fright, Alan saves himself and tells him: "Take her. Take my mother."

George shoves Alan out of the car. Alan reappears alone at the graveyard, wearing the "I Rode the Bullet at Thrill Village" button. He eventually reaches the hospital, where he learns that despite his guilt and the impending feeling that his mother is dead or will die any moment, she is fine.

Alan takes the button and treasures it as a good (or bad) luck charm. His mother returns to work. Alan graduates and takes care of his mother for several years, and she suffers another stroke.

One day, Alan loses the button and receives a phone call; he knows what the call is about. He finds the button underneath his mother's bed and, after a final moment of sadness, guilt, and meditation, decides to carry on. His mother's "ride" is over.

Dolores Claiborne, an opinionated 65-year-old widow living on the tiny Maine community of Little Tall Island, is suspected of murdering her wealthy, elderly employer, Vera Donovan. The novel is presented as a transcript of her statement, told to the local constable and a stenographer. Dolores wants to make clear to the police that she did not kill Vera, whom she has looked after for years, but does confess to orchestrating the death of her husband, Joe St. George, almost 30 years before. Dolores's confession develops into the story of her life, her troubled marriage, and her relationship with her employer.

She first describes her relationship with her employer, which began when Vera and her millionaire husband purchased a summer home on Little Tall Island in 1949 and hired Dolores as a maid. Able to cope with Vera's brutally exacting standards, Dolores rises from maid to housekeeper at the Donovan home. After Vera's husband dies in a car crash in the late '50s, Vera spends increasing time at her island house, eventually moving there permanently. Vera suffers a series of strokes in the 1980s, whereupon Dolores becomes the woman's live-in caretaker and reluctant companion. As the wealthy woman slips into dementia, Dolores comforts her from terrifying hallucinations of a force she calls "the dust bunnies." When Vera is lucid, Dolores combats her increasing mind games and power plays.

Dolores further reveals that when she began working at the Donovan house, her marriage to Joe St. George was already in distress due to his alcoholism, as well as verbal and physical abuse. Their children, Selena, Joe Jr., and Pete, are unaware of the abuse. The marriage problems escalate one night in 1960 when Joe viciously hits Dolores in the small of her back with a piece of stove wood over a perceived slight. In retaliation, Dolores smashes a ceramic cream pot over his head and threatens him with a hatchet, swearing she will kill him if he ever strikes her again. This confrontation is witnessed by their teenaged daughter, Selena. Joe stops beating Dolores, and she allows him to leave the island community in an effort to save face. Selena does not realize Dolores was abused and acted in self-defense, and Joe uses the hatchet incident to gain sympathy from her. A rift grows between mother and daughter.

In 1962, Dolores notices Selena has become increasingly withdrawn, frightened, unsociable and neglectful of her appearance. After speculating she has met a boy or become involved in drugs, Dolores finally confronts her daughter as they return home on the island ferry. She explains the truth of the hatchet incident and, against her wishes, Selena then admits her father molested her. Overwhelmed, Selena nearly jumps off the side of the ferry, but Dolores stops her and comforts her, vowing to protect her. That night, she considers murdering Joe, describing the urge to kill him as the opening of an "inside eye." Instead, she confronts him, promising to have him arrested if he ever touches Selena again. Dolores then resolves to protect her children by leaving Joe. When she attempts to withdraw her children's savings accounts to fund their escape, she discovers Joe has stolen everything she had saved. In despair, she breaks down crying at work, confiding in Vera. An unusually sympathetic Vera reveals she has had some sort of experience with Dolores' "inside eye", and casually remarks that men like Joe often die in accidents, leaving their wives everything. As she departs, she implies she arranged the car crash that killed her own husband and advises Dolores "sometimes, an accident can be an unhappy woman's best friend."

Dolores begins plotting Joe's death, but she does not find an opportunity to execute her plan until the summer of 1963. Vera becomes obsessed with a total solar eclipse that will be visible from the island, convinced the event will convince her estranged children to visit her. She plans a massive viewing party on the island ferry. Knowing the island will be mostly empty at that time, Dolores ensures Selena is sent to camp, and Joe Jr. and Pete are sent on a trip to visit family. Dolores marks the location of a dried-up stone well in a patch of brambles on the edge of their property. When it becomes clear her children will not be joining her during this time, Vera becomes despondent and lashes out at her hired help, calming only after Dolores confronts her over the unjust firing of one of the maids.

On the day of the eclipse, Dolores buys Joe a bottle of scotch and makes him a sandwich, getting him drunk and comfortable, and they share a moment of physical affection for the first time in many years. As the eclipse begins, Dolores has a vision of a young girl in the path of the eclipse who is being sexually abused by her father at that same moment. Reminded of what she has set out to do, she deliberately enrages Joe by claiming she has recovered the money he had stolen, provoking him into attacking her. She flees into the brambles, leading Joe to the well and tricking him into stepping on the rotted boards that cover it. The planks break, and he falls into the well, but is not instantly killed. He calls out for help for some time before eventually losing consciousness. Dolores returns to the house and falls asleep. She has a nightmare, then checks the well. She arrives to discover Joe has regained consciousness and has nearly managed to climb out. He grabs at Dolores and attempts to pull her in with him. She hits him in the face with a rock, and he falls back into the well, dead.

Dolores reports Joe missing, and his body is found after several days of searching. Joe's death is ruled an accident despite the suspicions of the local coroner and rumors. Dolores is free of Joe, but her actions damage her relationship with Selena, who also suspects her mother killed her father.

The narration finally comes to the circumstances of Vera's death, an incident which has led Dolores to tell her story. She confesses that Vera, in one of her hallucinations, managed to exit her wheelchair and fled in terror from "the dust bunnies", falling down a flight of stairs. As Vera falls, Dolores has a terrifying vision of Joe's ghost, covered in dust. Somehow alive and lucid despite her injuries, Vera begs Dolores to help end her suffering. Dolores fetches a rolling pin, but Vera dies before she can use it. The incriminating scene is discovered by the local mailman, who suspects Dolores of killing the old woman and forces her to call the police. That night, Dolores is harassed and threatened by members of the island community who believe she has already escaped punishment for murder in the past. The next day, Dolores receives a phone call from Vera's lawyer, who informs a shocked Dolores that she has inherited Vera's entire fortune—nearly $30 million. Dolores initially refuses the money in favor of Vera's estranged children, but then learns they were killed in a car crash in 1961, and Vera had spent the last 30 years of her life only pretending they were still alive. Knowing the inheritance will be seen as a motive for murder and worsen the case against her, Dolores convinces herself the only way to clear her name is to confess everything. Feeling at peace with herself at long last, she ends her statement.

Several newspaper articles provide an epilogue to the story, revealing Dolores was cleared of any blame in Vera's death and anonymously donated Vera's fortune to the New England Home For Little Wanderers. The final article implies Dolores and Selena have reconciled and that Selena will be coming home for the first time in 20 years.

The story is set in motion by a family hiking trip, during which Trisha's brother, Pete, and mother constantly squabble about the mother's divorce from their father, as well as other topics. Trisha falls back to avoid listening and is therefore unable to find her family again after she wanders off the trail to take a bathroom break. Trying to catch up by attempting a shortcut, she slips and falls down a steep embankment and ends up hopelessly lost, heading deeper into the heart of the forest. She is left with a bottle of water, two Twinkies, a boiled egg, celery sticks, a tuna sandwich, a bottle of Surge, a poncho, a Game Boy, and a Walkman. She listens to her Walkman to keep her mood up, either to learn of news of the search for her, or to listen to the baseball game featuring her favorite player, and "heartthrob", Tom Gordon.

As she starts to take steps to survive by conserving what little food she has with her while consuming edible flora, Trisha's family return to their car without her and call the police to start a search. The rescuers search in the area around the path, but not as far as Trisha has gone. The girl decides to follow a creek because of what she read in ''Little House on the Prairie'' (though it soon turns into a swamp-like river), rationalizing that all bodies of water lead eventually to inhabited areas.

As the cops stop searching for the night, she huddles up underneath a tree to rest. Eventually, a combination of fear, hunger, and thirst causes Trisha to hallucinate. She imagines several people from her life, as well as her hero, Tom Gordon, appearing to her. It's left unclear whether increasingly obvious signs of supernatural events in the woods are also hallucinations.

Hours and soon days begin to pass, with Trisha wandering further into the woods. Eventually, Trisha begins to believe that she is headed for a confrontation with the God of the Lost, a wasp-faced evil entity who is hunting her down. Her trial becomes a test of a 9-year-old girl's ability to maintain sanity in the face of seemingly certain death. Racked with pneumonia and near death, she comes upon a road, but just as she discovers signs of civilization, she's confronted by a bear, which she interprets as the God of the Lost in disguise. Facing down her fear, she realizes it's the bottom of the ninth, and she must close the game. In imitation of Tom Gordon, she takes a pitcher's stance and throws her Walkman like a baseball, hitting the bear in the face, and startling it enough to make it back away. A hunter, who has come upon the confrontation between girl and beast, frightens the animal away and takes Trisha to safety, but Trisha knows that she earned her rescue.

Trisha wakes up in a hospital room. She finds her divorced parents and older brother waiting near her bedside. A nurse tells the girl's family that they must leave so that Trisha can rest because "her numbers are up and we don't want that". Her father is the last to leave. Before he does Trisha asks him to hand her a Red Sox hat (autographed by Tom Gordon) and she points towards the sky, just as Tom Gordon does when he closes a game.

David, the narrator of the frame tale, is a middle-aged Manhattan lawyer. At the invitation of a senior partner, he joins a strange men's club where the members, in addition to reading, chatting and playing pool and chess, like to tell stories, some of which range into the bizarre and macabre. The club and its butler are also featured in King's short story "The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands".

One Thursday before Christmas, the elderly physician Dr. Emlyn McCarron tells a story about an episode that took place early in his long and varied career: that of a patient, Sandra Stansfield, who was determined to give birth to her illegitimate child, no matter what, despite financial problems and social disapproval. McCarron comes to admire her bravery and humor, and the implication is that he has even fallen a bit in love with her.

Sandra masters Dr. McCarron's unusual (for the 1930s) breathing method intended to help her through childbirth. However, when she goes into labor and is on the way to the hospital on an icy winter night, her taxi crashes and she is decapitated. McCarron arrives at the crash site and realizes that Sandra is somehow still alive. Her lungs in her decapitated body are still pumping air, as her head, some feet away, is working to sustain the breathing method so that the baby can be born. McCarron manages to deliver the infant alive and well.

On a sweet but haunting end note, Sandra whispers "Thank you"—her severed head mouthing the words, which are distortedly heard from the throat jutting from her headless body. McCarron is able to tell her that her baby is a boy and to see that she has registered this before she dies. McCarron and his office nurse pay for the woman's burial, for she has no one else.

The child is adopted, but despite the confidential nature of adoption records, McCarron is able to keep track of him over the years. When the man is "not yet 45", and an accomplished college professor, McCarron arranges to meet him socially. "He had his mother's determination, gentlemen," he tells the club members, "and his mother's hazel eyes."

Featuring a first-person narrative told by Paul Edgecombe, the novel switches between Paul as an old man in the Georgia Pines nursing home writing down his story in 1996, and his time in 1932 as the block supervisor of the Cold Mountain Penitentiary death row, nicknamed "The Green Mile" for the color of the floor's linoleum. This year marks the arrival of John Coffey, a 6 ft 8 in (2.03 m) tall powerfully built black man who has been convicted of raping and murdering two young white girls. During his time on the Mile, John interacts with fellow prisoners Eduard "Del" Delacroix, a Cajun arsonist, rapist, and murderer; and William Wharton ("Billy the Kid" to himself, "Wild Bill" to the guards), an unhinged and dangerous multiple murderer who is determined to make as much trouble as he can before he is executed. Other inhabitants include Arlen Bitterbuck, a Native American convicted of killing a man in a fight over a pair of boots; Arthur Flanders, a real estate executive who killed his father to perpetrate insurance fraud; and Mr. Jingles, a mouse, to whom Del teaches various tricks.

Paul and the other guards are irritated throughout the book by Percy Wetmore, a sadistic guard who enjoys antagonizing the prisoners. The other guards have to be civil to him despite their dislike of him because he is the nephew of the Governor's wife. When Percy is offered an administrative position at the nearby Briar Ridge psychiatric hospital, Paul thinks they are finally rid of him. However, Percy refuses to leave until he is allowed to supervise an execution, so Paul hesitantly allows him to run Del's. Percy deliberately avoids soaking a sponge in brine that is supposed to be tucked inside the electrode cap to ensure a quick death in the electric chair. When the switch is thrown, the current causes Del to catch fire in the chair and suffer a prolonged, agonizing demise.

Over time, Paul realizes that John possesses inexplicable healing abilities, which he uses to cure Paul's urinary tract infection and revive Mr. Jingles after Percy stomps on him. Simple-minded and shy, John is very empathic and sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of others around him. One night, the guards drug Wharton, then put a straitjacket on Percy and lock him in the padded restraint room so that they can smuggle John out of prison and take him to the home of Warden Hal Moores. Hal's wife Melinda has an inoperable brain tumor, which John cures. When they return to the Mile, John passes the "disease" from Melinda into Percy, causing him to go mad and shoot Wharton to death before falling into a catatonic state from which he never recovers. Percy is then committed to Briar Ridge as a patient.

Paul's long-simmering suspicions that John is innocent are proven right when he discovers that it was actually Wharton who raped and killed the two girls and that John was trying to revive them. Later, John tells Paul what he saw when Wharton grabbed his arm one time, how Wharton had coerced the sisters to be silent by threatening to kill one if the other made a noise, using their love for each other. Paul is unsure how to help John, but John tells him not to worry, as he is ready to die anyway, wanting to escape the cruelty of the world. John's execution is the last one in which Paul participates. As Paul approaches the conclusion of his written story, he offers it to his friend Elaine Connelly to read. After she finishes doing so, he introduces Mr. Jingles to her just before the mouse dies, having lived 64 years past these events. Paul explains that those healed by John gained an unnaturally long lifespan. Elaine dies shortly after, never learning how Paul's wife died in his arms immediately after they were involved in a bus accident in 1956, and that he then saw John's ghost watching him from an overpass. Paul seems to be all alone, now 104 years old, and wondering how much longer he will live.

Pilot Brian Engle, immediately after a difficult flight from Tokyo to Los Angeles, learns that his ex-wife Anne has died in an accident in Boston, and he boards a red-eye flight to Boston as a passenger. A flight attendant speaks of an unusual phenomenon over the Mojave Desert that resembles an aurora. Brian falls asleep during takeoff, having been awake throughout his previous flight. Dinah Bellman, a young blind girl with psychic abilities, also falls asleep, and awakes to find that her aunt and several other passengers have disappeared. Dinah, mistaking a wig for a scalp, screams and awakes Brian and nine other passengers: teacher Laurel Stevenson, English diplomat Nick Hopewell, writer Bob Jenkins, violinist Albert Kaussner and his girlfriend Bethany Simms, businessman Rudy Warwick, mechanic Don Gaffney, bank manager Craig Toomy and an unknown heavily intoxicated passenger. The passengers find that the crew and the passengers who were awake have disappeared, leaving the airliner under the control of the autopilot. Brian takes control of the plane, but is unable to make any outside contact, and the passengers can only see a dark void below the plane. Brian manages to land in Bangor, Maine despite furious protests from Craig, who insists on reaching Boston for an important conference that will decide his fate.

Upon arrival, they find the airport deserted. The clocks have stopped, there is no electricity, and the environment seems generally lifeless. As all products and substances have lost their quality, fuel does not burn, thus preventing any further flight. Dinah hears an approaching and threatening sound, and the group agrees to leave before it arrives. The unhinged Craig considers the situation to be a conspiracy against him and takes Bethany hostage at gunpoint, but the environment has robbed the gun of its potency, and the passengers apprehend Craig. Bob concludes that the aforementioned phenomenon was a "time rip" that has sent their plane to the past. As Dinah reports that the sound is growing closer, Craig relates to Dinah and Laurel that the sound is emitted by the "Langoliers", which are said by his oppressive father to hunt and devour negligent and unmotivated boys. Albert theorizes that time is still flowing inside the plane, which is proven when food brought onto the plane is restored to its normal properties. With the realization that fuel pumped into the plane will also return to normal, Brian has the plane refueled and he manages to start the engines. Meanwhile, Craig frees himself from his bonds and stabs Dinah, perceiving her to be the main Langolier. Despite this, Dinah insists that Craig must not be killed as the group needs him alive. As Albert and Don search for a stretcher for Dinah, Craig kills Don before Albert subdues him. Dinah, while being transported onto the plane, telepathically leads Craig to the runway, where he hallucinates his board meeting. The Langoliers appear in the form of toothed spherical creatures, and they are distracted from the departing plane as they devour Craig and the surrounding reality.

Bob proposes that the Langoliers' purpose is to clean up what is left of the past by devouring it. Dinah succumbs to her injuries, and the plane approaches the time rip. Bob realizes that the passengers must be asleep when passing through the rip, otherwise they will disappear. Albert suggests lowering the cabin pressure to induce unconsciousness, which would require one passenger to sacrifice themself by remaining conscious to restore the pressure just before the plane passes through the rip. Nick volunteers, wishing to atone for mistakenly shooting and killing three Irish children, and he asks Laurel to go to his father to request forgiveness. Nick, wearing an emergency oxygen mask, flies the plane through the rip and disappears. Brian awakes and lands the plane at Los Angeles, but the passengers are again met with a deserted airport. Realizing that they are in the near future, the passengers take shelter against a wall to avoid the airport's human traffic and wait for the present to catch up to them. A wave of rising noise and motion hits them and they find themselves in the present again.

Mort Rainey is a successful novelist in Maine. One day, he is confronted by a man from Mississippi named John Shooter who claims Mort plagiarized a story he wrote. Mort vehemently denies ever plagiarizing anything. Shooter leaves, but not before leaving his manuscript, "Secret Window, Secret Garden." Mort throws the manuscript into the trash can. When Mort's housemaid recovers the manuscript—thinking it belongs to Mort—he finally reads Shooter's story, discovering that it is almost identical to his short story "Sowing Season." The only differences are the title, the character's name, the diction, and the ending. Mort is disturbed by these findings.

Shooter returns a few days later. Having learned that "Sowing Season" was published two years before Shooter claimed to have written "Secret Window, Secret Garden," Mort confronts Shooter with this information. An enraged Shooter accuses Mort of lying and demands proof, giving Mort three days to show him his published story. Overnight, he kills Mort's cat and burns down the house of Mort's ex-wife, which contained the magazine issue in which "Sowing Season" was published. Mort orders a new copy of the magazine. He also asks his caretaker Greg Carstairs to tail Shooter and to talk to a man named Tom Greenleaf, who drove past Mort and Shooter. Shooter, angry that Mort has involved other people in their business, kills both men and plants evidence framing Mort for the murders. Upon receiving the magazine and returning home, Mort finds that "Sowing Season" has been removed.

Mort realizes that John Shooter is really his own split personality. Mort had created "Shooter" out of guilt for stealing a story early in his career titled "Crowfoot Mile" and had recently been suspected of another act of plagiarism, although he was innocent the second time. Tom had not seen Shooter while driving by—he saw Mort, by himself. Mort realizes he burned down his own home, killed his own cat, and murdered two people. He blacks out. Fifteen minutes later he awakens, only to hear who he believes to be Shooter pulling into his driveway. Desperate for any sign of his own sanity, he rushes outside only to find his ex-wife, Amy. Devastated, he loses control of his body and mind to Shooter. Amy discovers that Mort has gone insane, having written the word "Shooter" all over the house. She goes to Mort's study, where "Shooter" attempts to kill her in an ambush. She manages to escape. "Shooter," chasing Amy outside, is shot by her insurance agent. Mort becomes himself again, addresses Amy, and dies.

Later, Amy and Ted Milner—a man she had an affair with before divorcing Mort—discuss her ex-husband's motives. She insists that Mort had become two people, one of them a character so vivid it became real. She then recalls something Tom witnessed—when he drove past Mort alone, he saw Shooter and Mort in his rear view mirror, but Shooter was transparent. Amy then reveals that while digging through Mort's house, she found Shooter's trademark hat. She left it right-side up on a trash bag. When she returned, she found a note from Shooter inside the overturned hat, revealing that he has traveled back to Mississippi with the story he came for, "Crowfoot Mile." Amy remarks that Mort had created a character so vivid, he actually came to life.

In a dystopian America, a major source of entertainment is the Long Walk, in which one hundred teenage boys walk without rest along U.S. Route 1. If they fall below a pace of , they receive three warnings and are subsequently shot by a group of soldiers on an accompanying half-track. The last boy left walking receives a large sum of money and a "Prize" of his choice.

Ray Garraty from Androscoggin County, Maine arrives at the start of the Walk on the Canada-Maine border, where he meets several other Walkers such as the sardonic McVries, the friendly Baker, the cocky Olson and the enigmatic Stebbins. The Major, the leader of the secret police force known as the Squads, starts the Walk. Throughout the first day, Garraty befriends Baker, Olson, and several other Walkers such as Abraham and Pearson, growing particularly close to McVries and becoming particularly intrigued by Stebbins. A Walker named Barkovitch reveals to a reporter that he's in the Long Walk to 'dance on the graves' of other participants, and later provokes another Walker into attacking him, resulting in the Walker's death and Barkovitch being ostracized.

Garraty succeeds in surviving the night. Scramm, the odds-on favorite in Vegas, tells Garraty that he has a pregnant wife and so will have sufficient motivation to keep going. Garraty decides that his motivation will be surviving until Freeport as this will allow him to see his girlfriend Jan in the crowd. The Walkers begin to resent the Major, and McVries stops walking in an attempt to fight the soldiers, but is saved by Garraty. In return, McVries saves Garraty's life after Garraty experiences hysterics when the spectators increase in number. This camaraderie infuriates Olson, who is now severely fatigued and wants Garraty to die. Garraty reveals to the others that his father was Squaded, and a fight almost breaks out between McVries and another Walker, Collie Parker, when Parker claims that only 'damn fools' are Squaded.

Stebbins tells Garraty both that he believes he's going to win, and that the Walkers are all participating because they want to die. McVries and Baker both seem to be examples of this, due to McVries seeking pain and Baker's fascination with death; McVries also tells Garraty that he will sit down when he can't walk any further. Stebbins also advises Garraty to watch Olson, who keeps walking despite being unresponsive. After Garraty brings Olson out of this state, Olson attacks the soldiers and is killed slowly and brutally.

Scramm catches pneumonia and becomes unable to finish the Walk, and the other Walkers agree that the winner should provide financial security for Scramm's wife. Garraty asks Barkovitch to join the agreement, and Barkovitch agrees as he has become lonely and manic in his isolation from the others. Garraty also asks Stebbins, who tells Garraty that there was nothing special about Olson and that he was lying; Garraty, however, believes that Stebbins came to a realization that scared him. Scramm thanks the others and is killed in an act of defiance against the soldiers.

After developing a charley horse, Garraty is given three warnings and has to walk for an hour to lose one. To distract himself, he tells McVries about how he felt a compulsion to join the Walk and that his mother was blinded by the thought of financial security. McVries reveals that he joined the Walk against the wishes of his family, and Abraham tells Garraty that he didn't withdraw after being accepted due to the amusement it provided his town.

Garraty begins to suffer from doubts about his sexuality and masculinity due to suppressed memories re-emerging, especially after McVries hints that he is sexually attracted to Garraty. This causes Garraty to lash out at a deteriorating Barkovitch, and Barkovitch commits suicide when the rest of the Walkers begin taunting him. Garraty wakes the next morning to find that many Walkers (including Pearson) have died overnight, as Barkovitch predicted.

When the Walkers arrive in Freeport, Garraty attempts to die in Jan's arms but is saved by McVries. As a response, Abraham convinces the Walkers to make a promise to stop helping each other, which Garraty does reluctantly. This has disastrous consequences: Parker starts a revolution against the soldiers but is killed when nobody joins in; Abraham removes his shirt and catches pneumonia overnight because nobody can offer him a replacement, resulting in his death; Baker falls over and gains a severe nosebleed, and is given three warnings as nobody can help him up.

On the morning of the fifth day, Stebbins reveals to Garraty and McVries that he is the Major's son, and that his Prize would be acceptance into the Major's household. However, Stebbins has become aware that the Major is using him as a 'rabbit' to cause the Walk to last longer, which has worked, as seven Walkers make it into Massachusetts. Baker, now somewhat delirious and described as a 'raw-blood machine', tells Garraty that he can't walk any further and thanks Garraty for being his friend. Garraty unsuccessfully tries to talk him out of suicide.

With Baker dead, the only remaining Walkers are Garraty, Stebbins and McVries. As Garraty tells him a fairy tale, McVries falls asleep and begins walking at the crowd, and Garraty breaks his promise and saves him; however, McVries chooses to sit down and die peacefully. A distraught Garraty is beckoned by a dark figure further ahead, and decides that he will give up because Stebbins cannot be beaten. When he tries to tell Stebbins, Stebbins clutches at him in horror and falls over dead. His corpse is shot when the Major arrives.

This leaves Garraty the uncomprehending winner. He ignores the Major and approaches the dark figure (whom he believes to be another Walker), declaring that there is 'still so far to walk'.

''Solaris'' chronicles the ultimate futility of attempted communications with the extraterrestrial life inhabiting a distant alien planet named Solaris. The planet is almost completely covered with an ocean of gel that is revealed to be a single, planet-encompassing entity. Terran scientists conjecture it is a living and a sentient being, and attempt to communicate with it.

Kris Kelvin, a psychologist, arrives aboard Solaris Station, a scientific research station hovering near the oceanic surface of Solaris. The scientists there have studied the planet and its ocean for many decades, mostly in vain. A scientific discipline known as Solaristics has degenerated over the years to simply observing, recording and categorizing the complex phenomena that occur upon the surface of the ocean. Thus far, the scientists have only compiled an elaborate nomenclature of the phenomena, and do not yet understand what such activities really mean. Shortly before Kelvin's arrival, the crew exposed the ocean to a more aggressive and unauthorized experimentation with a high-energy X-ray bombardment. Their experimentation gives unexpected results and becomes psychologically traumatic for them as individually flawed humans.

The ocean's response to this intrusion exposes the deeper, hidden aspects of the personalities of the human scientists, while revealing nothing of the ocean's nature itself. It does this by materializing physical simulacra, including human ones; Kelvin confronts memories of his dead lover and guilt about her suicide. The "guests" of the other researchers are only alluded to. All human efforts to make sense of Solaris's activities prove futile. As Lem wrote, "The peculiarity of those phenomena seems to suggest that we observe a kind of rational activity, but the meaning of this seemingly rational activity of the Solarian Ocean is beyond the reach of human beings." He also wrote that he deliberately chose to make the sentient alien an ocean to avoid any personification and the pitfalls of anthropomorphism in depicting first contact.

The film jumps between various sections of Bruce's life, including scenes of when he was in his prime and the burned-out, strung-out performer who, in the twilight of his life, used his nightclub act to pour out his personal frustrations. We watch as up-and-coming Bruce courts his "Shiksa goddess," a stripper named Honey. With family responsibilities, Lenny is encouraged to do a "safe" act, but he cannot do it. Constantly in trouble for flouting obscenity laws, Lenny develops a near-messianic complex which fuels both his comedy genius and his talent for self-destruction. Worn out by a lifetime of tilting at establishment windmills, Lenny Bruce dies of a morphine overdose in 1966.

In 1955, youngster Henry Hill becomes enamored by the criminal life and Mafia presence in his working class Italian-American neighborhood in Brooklyn. He begins working for local ''caporegime'' Paulie Cicero and his associates: Jimmy "the Gent" Conway, an Irish-American truck hijacker and gangster, and Tommy DeVito, a fellow juvenile delinquent. Henry begins as a fence for Jimmy, gradually working his way up to more serious crimes. The three associates spend most of their nights in the 1960s at the Copacabana nightclub carousing with women. Henry starts dating Karen Friedman, a Jewish woman who is initially troubled by Henry's criminal activities. Seduced by Henry's glamorous lifestyle, she marries him despite her parents' disapproval.

In 1970, Billy Batts, a made man in the Gambino crime family recently released from prison, patronizes Tommy at a nightclub owned by Henry; Tommy and Jimmy beat, stab and fatally shoot Billy. The unsanctioned murder of a made man invites retribution; realizing this, Jimmy, Henry, and Tommy bury the body in upstate New York. Six months later, however, Jimmy learns that the burial site is slated for development, prompting them to exhume and relocate the decomposing corpse.

In 1974, Karen harasses Henry's mistress, Janice, and threatens Henry at gunpoint. Henry moves in with Janice, but Paulie insists that he should return to Karen after collecting a debt from a gambler in Tampa with Jimmy. Upon returning, Jimmy and Henry are arrested after being turned in by the gambler's sister, an FBI typist, and they receive ten-year prison sentences. To support his family on the outside, Henry has Karen smuggle in drugs and sells them to a fellow inmate from Pittsburgh.

In 1978, Henry is paroled and expands his cocaine business with Jimmy and Tommy against Paulie's orders. Jimmy organizes a crew to raid the Lufthansa vault at John F. Kennedy International Airport, stealing six million dollars in cash and jewelry. After some members purchase expensive items against Jimmy's orders and the getaway truck is found by police, he has most of the crew (except Tommy and Henry) murdered. In 1979, Tommy is deceived into believing he is to become a made man and is murdered after walking into the room of the "ceremony"—partly as retribution for murdering Batts.

By 1980, Henry develops a drug habit and becomes a paranoid wreck. He sets up another drug deal with his Pittsburgh associates but is arrested by narcotics agents and incarcerated. After bailing him out, Karen explains that she flushed $60,000 worth of cocaine down the toilet to prevent FBI agents from finding it during their raid, leaving them penniless. Feeling betrayed by Henry's drug dealing, Paulie gives him $3,200 and ends their association. Henry meets Jimmy at a diner and is asked to travel on a hit assignment, but the novelty of such a request makes him suspicious. Henry realizes that Jimmy plans to have him and Karen killed, prompting his decision to become an informant and enroll, with his family, into the witness protection program. After giving sufficient testimony and evidence to have Paulie and Jimmy convicted, Henry moves to a nondescript neighborhood, unhappy to leave his exciting gangster life to live as a boring, average "schnook".

The end title cards state that (as of 1990, when the film was released) Henry is still a protected witness but that he was arrested in 1987 in Seattle for narcotics conspiracy. Henry received five years of probation but has since been clean. He and Karen separated in 1989, and Paulie died the previous year in Fort Worth Federal Prison from respiratory illness. Jimmy is serving a 20 years-to-life sentence in a New York prison for murder and would be eligible for parole in 2004.

Act One

The story takes place entirely in the large house of a slightly odd New York City family. Various characters in the lives of the Vanderhof-Sycamore-Carmichael clan are introduced in the first act.

The patriarch of the family, Grandpa Vanderhof, is a whimsical old man who keeps snakes and has never paid his income tax. Penelope "Penny" Vanderhof Sycamore is his daughter (a writer of adventure- and sex-filled melodrama plays), and is married to Paul Sycamore, a tinkerer who manufactures fireworks in the basement with the help of his assistant, Mr. De Pinna, who used to be the family's iceman. One of Paul and Penny's two daughters is Essie Sycamore Carmichael, a childish candy maker who dreams of being a ballerina (but in reality is terrible at dancing). Essie is married to Ed Carmichael, a xylophone player who lives with them and helps distribute Essie's candies. Ed is an amateur printer who prints any phrase that sounds catchy. Paul and Penny's other daughter Alice Sycamore is quite obviously the only "normal" family member. She has an office job and is sometimes embarrassed by the eccentricities of her family, yet deep down, she still loves them. In addition, the Vanderhof-Sycamore-Carmichael clan employs a maid, Rheba, who is dating Donald, a handyman who performs odd jobs for the Sycamores.

Essie tells Grandpa Vanderhof that some letters have arrived for him from the "United States Government", but that she misplaced them. Shortly afterwards, Alice comes home and announces that she has fallen in love with a young man with whom she works, Tony Kirby, the son of the company's executive. Before going upstairs to change, Alice tells her family that he will be coming over shortly to take her on a date. The entire family is still joyfully discussing her boyfriend when the doorbell rings. Penny answers the door and greets the man standing there, thinking he must be Tony, but only after forcing the stranger to shake hands with the entire family do they realize that he is not Alice's boyfriend: He is a tax investigator.

His name is Wilbur C. Henderson, and he is investigating Grandpa for his evasion of income tax. When Henderson asks Grandpa why he owed twenty-four years of back income tax, Grandpa states he never believed in it, and that the government wouldn't know what to do with the money if he did pay it. Henderson becomes infuriated by Grandpa's answers to his questions. Henderson spots Grandpa's snakes, and runs out of the house in fear, but not before promising Grandpa that he will hear – one way or another – from the United States government.

The real Tony Kirby arrives, and Alice is nervous that her eccentric family will scare him away, so she attempts to leave with him on their date. As they attempt to leave, Mr. Boris Kolenkhov, Essie's extremely eccentric Russian ballet instructor, arrives and makes chitchat with the family, complaining about the Revolution. During this discussion, Alice and Tony make their escape. Then the rest of the family sit down for dinner.

Act Two

The second act takes place a few days later. Alice has invited Tony and his father and mother over for dinner the next evening, and it is the only thing on the entire family's mind. Alice runs around the house telling her family to try to act as normal as possible. Penny has brought actress Gay Wellington over to read over Penny's latest play, but Gay becomes very drunk, and passes out onto the living room couch after looking at the snakes.

Ed returns from distributing Essie's candies, worried that he is being followed by someone. When Mr. De Pinna looks out the window, he sees no one other than a man walking away. Ed is still sent out by Essie to deliver more candies. Paul and Mr. De Pinna are downstairs the whole time making fireworks. Mr. De Pinna comes up from the basement carrying a painting that Penny had started of him as a discus thrower. Mr. De Pinna asks if Penny would finish it and she agrees. She leaves to put on her painting gear and Mr. De Pinna leaves to put on his costume.

At the same time, Mr. Kolenkhov arrives and begins Essie's ballet lesson. Ed provides accompanying music on the xylophone. Rheba runs in and out of the kitchen cleaning. Grandpa takes this time to practice darts and feed the snakes. In the midst of all this hullabaloo, Tony appears in the doorway with Mr. Kirby and Mrs. Kirby. Before them is the entire eccentric spectacle. Apparently, Tony has forgotten for which night dinner was planned, and Alice is incredibly embarrassed.

Penny tells Alice not to worry, and that they can manage a nice dinner easily. She gives a list of things to Donald and tells him to run down to the store. Grandpa tries desperately to keep the party normal and under control for the sake of his granddaughter. Mr. Kirby reveals himself to be a very straitlaced fat-cat, who raises orchids as a hobby. Mr. Kirby investigates a child's model and finds it is Paul's "hobby". Mrs. Kirby tells them that her true passion is spiritualism, which Penny derides as a "fake". During a discussion of hobbies, Mr. Kolenkhov brings up that the Romans' hobby was wrestling, and demonstrates on Mr. Kirby by throwing him on the floor.

To pass the time after this awkward incident, Penny suggests they play a free association game. Alice imagines what is coming and immediately tries to quash the suggestions, but Penny shrugs her off and instructs everyone to write down "the first thing that pops into their heads" after she says certain words.

Penny offers the words "potato", "bathroom", "lust", "honeymoon", and "sex". Penny reads Mr. Kirby's list first, with reactions of, respectively: "steak", "toothpaste", "unlawful", "trip", and "male". Mrs. Kirby's list, however, causes much controversy. "Starch" is her response to potatoes, which is not that bad, but her response for "bathroom" is "Mr. Kirby", and she covers it up with the fact that Mr. Kirby spends a lot of time in there "bathing and shaving". Her response to "lust" is "human", claiming it is a perfectly human emotion. Mr. Kirby disagrees, saying "it is depraved". "Honeymoon"'s reply is "dull", as Mrs. Kirby explains that there was "nothing to do at night". The shocker comes when Mrs. Kirby says her reply to "sex" was "Wall Street". She at first claims she doesn't know what she meant by it, but once provoked she yells at Mr. Kirby "You're always talking about Wall Street, even when ..." and then stops.

Wholly embarrassed and humiliated, Mr. Kirby and Mrs. Kirby order Tony home with them immediately but Tony refuses to go. Alice finally decides that their marriage will never work and ends their engagement, and also decides to resign her job at Kirby's company. Before the Kirbys can leave, Department of Justice agents come through the door. The head agent tells them that Ed's pamphlets from the candy boxes, on which he has printed anything that "sounds nice", read "DYNAMITE THE CAPITOL", "DYNAMITE THE WHITE HOUSE", "DYNAMITE THE SUPREME COURT", and "GOD IS THE STATE, THE STATE IS GOD". Grandpa tries to explain to the head agent, but he informs them they are all under arrest.

The agents discover enormous amounts of gunpowder in the basement and think it is for dynamiting Washington, and one agent returns from the basement dragging Mr. De Pinna with him, who was in the basement the whole time. De Pinna desperately tries to explain to the agent that he had left his lit pipe downstairs and must go and get it, but the agent disregards him. Meanwhile, another agent brings down Gay Wellington from upstairs, singing drunkenly. At that point, the fireworks in the basement go off, lit by De Pinna's untended pipe, and everyone (aside from Grandpa and Wellington) panics, leaving the whole house in an uproar as Act II ends.

Act Three

The next day, Donald and Rheba sit in the kitchen reading the paper, which focuses on the story of both families being arrested, with Mr. Kirby's presence causing the story to make headlines. Also, Paul and Mr. De Pinna's fireworks have been completely destroyed. Meanwhile, Alice has decided to leave for a prolonged trip to the Adirondack Mountains to think things over. When the family forgets to call for a cab, she finally shows her exasperation, angered that her family can't be "normal" at all. Tony then arrives and tries to reason with Alice, but she refuses, heading upstairs with Tony following.

Soon, Mr. Kolenkhov appears with the Grand Duchess Olga Katrina, in all of her former glory. After discussing the sad fate of former Russian royalty now working menial jobs in New York, the Grand Duchess soon insists upon going into the kitchen to cook the dinner for the family.

Mr. Kirby arrives to pick up Tony and to settle his score with Grandpa. Soon, Mr. Kirby and Tony get into a heated argument, the pinnacle of which finds Tony admitting that he had purposely brought his family on the wrong night, the night before. He explains that he wanted each family to see each other as they really were, and that he sees the Sycamores as "normal", that they are a family that loves and understands one another, saying that Mr. Kirby never had time to understand Tony. Grandpa tells Mr. Kirby that he's happy with no longer working and getting to enjoy life every day, and that has made him happy ever since, though Mr. Kirby is not convinced, especially as Grandpa suspects that Mr. Kirby doesn't like his job. Tony affirms this by pointing out that he found letters that Mr. Kirby had written to his father, expressing desires to be a trapeze artist and later a saxophone player, and that Mr. Kirby still has a saxophone in his closet. Grandpa tells Mr. Kirby that he should get to enjoy his life and riches now while he can, pointing out, "you can't take it with you". Tony agrees with this, deciding to leave the family business to do something he wants to do, and Mr. Kirby finally gives in, giving his blessings to Alice and Tony getting back together, which they do.

Essie then brings a letter to Grandpa that's from the government. Grandpa had lied to the government that he was actually Martin Vanderhof Jr., and that the Martin Vanderhof the government was looking for was his father. This is corroborated because the family had buried the deceased milkman (who had lived with them prior to De Pinna) using Grandpa's name, since they never knew the milkman's real name. Grandpa's trick works, as the government tells him that they now owe him a refund, instead of him owing them taxes.

The play comes to a conclusion as the family, along with Tony and Mr. Kirby, sit down to dinner with the Grand Duchess. Grandpa says a touching prayer, and then they dive into the food.

Two children, Jacques Mayol and Enzo Molinari, have grown up on the Greek island of Amorgos in the 1960s. Enzo challenges Jacques to collect a coin on the sea floor but Jacques refuses. Later, Jacques' father — who harvests shellfish from the seabed using a pump-supplied air hose and helmet — goes diving. His breathing apparatus and rope gets caught and punctured by rocks on the reef and weighed down by water, he drowns. Jacques and Enzo can do nothing but watch in horror as he is killed.

By the 1980s, both are well known freedivers, swimmers who can remain underwater for great times and at great depths. Enzo is in Sicily now, where he rescues a trapped diver from a shipwreck. He is a world champion freediver with a brash and strong personality, and now wishes to find Jacques and persuade him to return to no limits freediving in order to prove he is still the better of the two, in a friendly sports rivalry. Jacques himself works extensively with scientific research as a human research subject, and with dolphins, and is temporarily participating in research into human physiology in the iced-over lakes of the Peruvian Andes, where his remarkable and dolphin-like bodily responses to cold water immersion are being recorded. Insurance broker Johana Baker visits the station for work purposes and is introduced to Jacques. She secretly falls in love with him. When she hears that Jacques will be at the World Diving Championships in Taormina, Sicily, she fabricates an insurance problem that requires her presence there, in order to meet him again. She and Jacques fall in love. However none of them realize the extent of Jacques' allurement with the depths. Jacques beats Enzo by 1 meter, and Enzo offers him a crystal dolphin as a gift, and a tape measure to show the small difference between Jacques' and Enzo's records. Johana goes back home to New York but is fired after her deception is discovered; she leaves New York and begins to live with Jacques. She hears the story that if one truly loves the deep sea, then a mermaid will appear at the depths of the sea, and will lead a diver to an enchanted place.

At the next World Diving Championships, Enzo beats Jacques' record. The depths at which the divers are competing enter new territory and the dive doctor suggests they should cease competing, but the divers decide to continue. Jacques is asked to look at a local dolphinarium where a new dolphin has been placed, and where the dolphins are no longer performing; surmising that the new dolphin is homesick, the three of them break in at night to liberate the dolphin and transport her to the sea again. Back at the competition, other divers attempt to break Enzo's new record but all fail. Jacques then attempts his next dive and reaches 400 ft (122 m) breaking Enzo's world record. Angered by this, Enzo prepares to break Jacques' new world record. The doctor supervising the dive warns that the competitors must not go deeper - based upon Jacques' bodily reactions, at around 400 ft, conditions, and in particular the pressure, will become lethal and divers will be killed if they persist in attempting such depths. Enzo dismisses the advice and attempts the dive anyway, but is unable to make his way back to the surface. Jacques dives down to rescue him. Enzo, dying, tells Jacques that he was right and that it is better down there, and begs Jacques to help him back down to the depths, where he belongs. Jacques is grief-stricken and refuses, but after Enzo dies in his arms, finally honors his dying wish and takes Enzo's body back down to 400 ft, leaving him to drift to the ocean floor. Jacques - himself suffering from cardiac arrest after the dive - is rescued and brought back to the surface by supervising scuba divers and requires his heart to be restarted with a defibrillator before being placed in medical quarters to recover.

Jacques appears to be recovering from the diving accident, but later experiences a strange hallucinatory dream in which the ceiling collapses and the room fills with water, and he finds himself in the ocean depths surrounded by dolphins. Johana, who has just discovered she is pregnant, returns to check up on Jacques in the middle of the night, but finds him lying awake yet unresponsive in his bed with bloody ears and a bloody nose. Johana attempts to help him, but Jacques begins to get up and walk to the empty diving boat and gets suited up for one final dive. Desperately, Johana begs Jacques not to go, saying she is alive but whatever has happened at the depths is not, but he says he has to. She tells Jacques that she is pregnant, and sorrowfully begs him to stay, but finally understands he feels he must go. The two embrace and Johana breaks down crying. Jacques then places the release cord for the dive ballast in her hand, and - still sobbing - she pulls it, sending him down to the depths he loves. Jacques descends and floats for a brief moment staring into the darkness. A dolphin then appears and Jacques lets go of his harness and swims away with it into the darkness.

Original and alternate (US) endings

The original ending was intentionally ambiguous, though considering the depth Jacques has swum to, it would seem he is unlikely to regain the surface alive, and he dies. In the American adaptation, the ending is extended with an additional scene: after swimming away with the dolphin, Jacques is returned to the surface.

Richard Mayhew, a Scottish man living in London, encounters an injured girl named Door on the street one night. Despite his fiancée's protests he decides to help her; upon doing so he ceases to exist on Earth and becomes real only to the denizens of "London Below", whose inhabitants are generally invisible and non-existent to the people of "London Above". He loses his flat, his job, and nearly his mind as he travels London Below in an attempt to make sense out of it all, find a way back, and help Door survive as she is hunted down by hired assassins.

In London Below the various familiar names of London all take on a new significance: for example Knightsbridge becomes "Night's Bridge", a stone bridge whose darkness takes its toll in human life; The Angel, Islington is an actual angel. London Below is a parallel world in and beneath the sewers. Its inhabitants are the homeless, but also people from other times, such as Roman legionaries and medieval monks, as well as fictional and fantastical characters.

The United States is devastated by a mysterious plague that reanimates recently-dead human beings as flesh-eating ghouls. At the dawn of the crisis, it has been reported that millions of people have died and reanimated. Despite the government's best efforts, social order is collapsing. Rural communities and the National Guard have been effective in fighting the zombie hordes in open country, but urban centers descend into chaos.

At WGON TV, a television studio in Philadelphia, traffic reporter Stephen Andrews and his pregnant girlfriend, producer Fran Parker, are planning to steal the station's helicopter to escape the city. Across town, police SWAT officer Roger DeMarco and his team raid a low-income housing project, whose mostly African American and Latino tenants are defying the martial law of delivering their dead to the National Guard. The tenants and the officers exchange gunfire as the officers try to gain entry. Roger unsuccessfully tries to restrain Wooley, a brutal and racist officer, after he maniacally kills several unarmed civilians. Wooley is shot dead by an officer from another unit, Peter Washington. As the SWAT team dispatch the reanimated dead that have injured or killed several tenants, a disillusioned Roger suggests that he and Peter desert and join up with Stephen (who is Roger’s friend) in escaping the city. An elderly priest tells them that several zombies are confined in the basement. The two go there and take on the grim job of eliminating all of them.

Later that night, Stephen discovers the dead body of a security operator who had been guarding a traffic helicopter belonging to his employer. Roger and Peter join Fran and Stephen at a police dock and then leave Philadelphia in the stolen helicopter. Following some close calls while stopping for fuel, the group comes across a shopping mall, and decide to remain there since there is plenty of food, medicine, and all kinds of consumables. Peter and Stephen camouflage the entrance to the stairwell which leads to their safe room, and they block the mall entrances with trucks to keep the undead from penetrating. This involves driving through crowds of zombies who are indifferent to their own injuries and attempt to enter the trucks. Roger survives a particularly dangerous encounter, and becomes reckless as a result. He is soon bitten by the zombies.

After clearing the mall's interior of zombies, the four enjoy a hedonistic lifestyle with all the goods available to them, furnishing their safe room with the mall's many commodities. Roger eventually succumbs to his wounds and dies; when he reanimates as a zombie, Peter shoots him in the head and later buries his body in the mall. Sometime later, all emergency broadcast transmissions cease, suggesting that the government has collapsed. Now isolated, the three load some supplies into the helicopter, in case they might need to leave suddenly. Fran gets Stephen to teach her how to fly in case he is killed or incapacitated.

A nomadic biker gang sees the helicopter in flight, and break into the mall, destroying the barriers and allowing hundreds of zombies back inside. Despite having a fallback plan should the mall be attacked; Stephen, overwhelmed by guilt for his previous murder and territorial rage over the mall, blindly fires on the looters, beginning a protracted battle. He gets shot and subsequently mauled by roaming ghouls. When Stephen reanimates, he instinctively returns to the safe room and leads the undead to Fran and Peter. Peter kills the undead Stephen while Francine escapes to the roof. Peter, not wanting to leave, locks himself in a room and contemplates suicide. When the zombies burst in, he has a change of heart and fights his way up to the roof, where he joins Francine. Having escaped and low on fuel, the two then fly away in the helicopter to an uncertain future.

At a jousting tournament in 14th century Europe, several years after the Black Plague, squires William Thatcher, Roland, and Wat discover that their master, Sir Ector, has died. With just one more pass, he could have won the tournament. Destitute, William wears Sir Ector's armour to impersonate him, taking the prize.

Although only nobles are allowed in tournaments, William is inspired to compete and win more prizes. Roland and Wat would rather take their winnings and leave, but William convinces them to stay and help him train. While traveling, the trio encounters a young Geoffrey Chaucer, who is also destitute and agrees to forge a patent of nobility so William can enter, assuming the name of "Sir Ulrich von Liechtenstein" from Gelderland. But William is brought before Simon the Summoner and Peter the Pardoner: Chaucer has a gambling problem and is in their debt. William demands Chaucer be released and promises payment.

During the competition, William's armor is badly damaged; he goads Kate, a female blacksmith, into repairing it without payment. He wins the tournament's sword event, enabling him to pay Chaucer's debt. In the joust, he faces Sir Thomas Colville, who withdraws from the tournament after being injured by William, though they exchange a ceremonial pass so that Colville can retain the honor of never having failed to complete a match. The proceedings are observed by Jocelyn, a noblewoman with whom William has become infatuated, and Count Adhemar of Anjou, a rival both in the joust and for Jocelyn's heart. In the final joust, Adhemar defeats William. At the prize ceremony, William vows revenge on Adhemar, who then taunts William, "You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting."

Kate joins William's party and forges new lightweight armor. In the following tournament, Adhemar and William are both assigned to tilt against Sir Thomas Colville, but they learn that he is actually Prince Edward. Unwilling to risk harming the future King of England, Adhemar immediately withdraws prior to their match. William, despite his friends' objections, chooses to joust against Edward anyway and then addresses him by name, further earning his respect.

Adhemar is called away to the Battle of Poitiers, and William achieves several victories in his absence. William proves his love for Jocelyn by complying when she first asks him to deliberately lose (in contrast to knights who promise to win "in her name"), and then, just before he would be eliminated, to win the tournament after all.

The group travels to London for the World Championship. William recalls leaving his father to squire for Sir Ector and learn to become a knight, hoping to "change his stars". Adhemar has also arrived in London and announces that he is in negotiations with Jocelyn's father for her hand in marriage. William dominates at the tournament, but when he visits and is seen patching his now-blind father's leaky roof, Adhemar discovers his true identity and alerts the authorities.

William is arrested and placed in the pillory, but is defended from the hostile crowd by his friends. Just as the mob reaches its frenzy, Prince Edward reveals himself. He acknowledges William's honor and an ability to inspire his friends' dedication that is in the best traditions of knighthood. Edward then announces that William is in fact descended from an ancient noble family, and knights him "Sir William". He asserts that as Prince-royal, his declaration is "beyond contestation".

William returns to the tournament to face Adhemar in the final match, but Adhemar cheats with an illegally sharpened lance, seriously injuring William. Entering the final pass, William is losing by two lances and must unhorse Adhemar to win. He demands to be stripped of his armor while Chaucer buys time by performing the introduction of William that he omitted earlier. William, unable to hold the lance due to his injuries, asks Wat to strap it to his arm. Finally, he tilts against Adhemar, with his father and Jocelyn in attendance. Bellowing his true name as he charges, he knocks Adhemar to the ground with a crushing blow. On the ground, Adhemar experiences a vision of William and his friends mockingly telling him that ''he'' has been "weighed, measured, and found wanting". With this final blow, William wins the world championship tournament. In the ensuing celebration, as Jocelyn and William embrace, Chaucer remarks that he should write an account of these events.

In Kraków during World War II, the Nazi Germans force local Polish Jews into the overcrowded Kraków Ghetto. Oskar Schindler, a German member of the Nazi Party from Czechoslovakia, arrives in the city, hoping to make his fortune. Schindler bribes Wehrmacht (German armed forces) and SS officials, acquiring a factory to produce enamelware. Schindler hires Itzhak Stern, a Jewish official with contacts among black marketeers and the Jewish business community; he handles administration and helps Schindler arrange financing. Stern ensures that as many Jewish workers as possible are deemed essential to the German war effort to prevent them from being taken by the SS to concentration camps or killed. Meanwhile, Schindler maintains friendly relations with the Nazis and enjoys wealth and status as "Herr Direktor".

SS-''Untersturmführer'' (second lieutenant) Amon Göth arrives in Kraków to oversee construction of the Płaszów concentration camp. When the camp is ready, he orders the ghetto liquidated: two thousand Jews are transported to Płaszów, and two thousand others are killed in the streets by the SS. Schindler witnesses the massacre and is profoundly affected. He particularly notices a young girl in a red coat who hides from the Nazis and later sees her body on a wagonload of corpses. Schindler is careful to maintain his friendship with Göth and continues to enjoy SS support, mostly through bribery. Göth brutalizes his Jewish maid Helen Hirsch and randomly shoots people from the balcony of his villa; the prisoners are in constant fear for their lives. As time passes, Schindler's focus shifts from making money to trying to save as many lives as possible. To better protect his workers, Schindler bribes Göth into allowing him to build a sub-camp.

As the Germans begin losing the war, Göth is ordered to ship the remaining Jews at Płaszów to Auschwitz concentration camp. Schindler asks Göth for permission to move his workers to a munitions factory he plans to build in Brünnlitz near his home town of Zwittau. Göth reluctantly agrees, but charges a huge bribe. Schindler and Stern create "Schindler's List" – a list of 850 people to be transferred to Brünnlitz instead of Auschwitz.

As the Jewish workers are transported by train to Brünnlitz, the women and girls are mistakenly redirected to Auschwitz-Birkenau; Schindler bribes Rudolf Höss, commandant of Auschwitz, for their release. At the new factory, Schindler forbids the SS guards from entering the factory floor without permission and encourages the Jews to observe the Jewish Sabbath. Over the next seven months, he spends his fortune bribing Nazi officials and buying shell casings from other companies. Due to Schindler's machinations, the factory does not produce any usable armaments. Schindler runs out of money in 1945, just as Germany surrenders.

As a Nazi Party member and war profiteer, Schindler must flee the advancing Red Army to avoid capture. The SS guards in Schindler's factory have been ordered to kill the Jewish workforce, but Schindler persuades them to "return to [their] families as men, instead of murderers". Bidding farewell to his workers, he prepares to head west, hoping to surrender to the Americans. The workers give him a signed statement attesting to his role in saving Jewish lives and present him with a ring engraved with a Talmudic quotation: "Whoever saves one life saves the world entire". Schindler breaks down in tears, feeling he should have done more, and is comforted by the workers before he and his wife leave in their car. When the ''Schindlerjuden'' awaken the next morning, a Soviet soldier announces that they have been liberated. The Jews then walk to a nearby town.

An epilogue reveals that Göth was executed via hanging, and Schindler had failed in both business and marriage following the war. In the present, many of the surviving ''Schindlerjuden'' and the actors portraying them visit Schindler's grave and place stones on its marker (the traditional Jewish sign of respect on visiting a grave), with Liam Neeson laying two roses.

The book tells the story of the making of the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (OED) and one of its most prolific early contributors, William Chester Minor, a retired United States Army surgeon. Minor was, at the time, imprisoned in the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, near the village of Crowthorne, in Berkshire, England.

The "professor" referred to in the North American title is Sir James Murray, the chief editor of the ''OED'' during most of the project. Murray was a talented linguist and had other scholarly interests, and had taught in schools and worked in banking. Faced with the enormous task of producing a comprehensive dictionary, with a quotation illustrating the uses of each meaning of each word, and with evidence for the earliest use of each, Murray enlisted the help of dozens of amateur philologists as volunteer researchers.

Season One

Earth astronaut John Crichton is unexpectedly hurled to an unknown part of the Milky Way galaxy via a wormhole. He finds himself in the middle of an escape attempt by Moya, a living spaceship, from the militaristic Peacekeepers, who had been using it as a prison transport. In the chaos, he has an accidental collision with a Peacekeeper fighter which results in the death of its pilot. Crichton's ship and another Peacekeeper fighter are brought into Moya's hold. Although the escape is successful, the Peacekeeper Captain, Bialar Crais, fixates on Crichton as the murderer of the pilot – his brother – and begins a campaign to chase Crichton down.

The various crew have no common goal, each only wishing to go home. Unfortunately, to evade Crais's pursuit, they have to travel into the Uncharted Territories, and thus have no idea how to get home. The other crew also have little respect for Crichton, seeing him only as a "primitive hoo-man" who does not understand even the basic tenets of life in space.

Various episodes explore the characters' back stories. Aeryn, the fighter pilot, begins to learn that the Peacekeepers are not always as correct as she had believed. Zhaan is forced to bring up the dark side she had worked to suppress. D'Argo admits he was framed for his wife's murder and has no idea where his child is. Rygel confronts his former jail keeper and torturer. A new character joins the crew – Chiana, a teenage thief on the run from her own repressive culture. And Moya herself becomes pregnant after a Peacekeeper experiment is accidentally activated.

Meanwhile, Crichton continues to research the wormhole that brought him here. He is forced to sell what little progress he has made to an alien mechanic as payment for repairs on the Farscape module. He is also lured into a wormhole that seems to lead directly back to Earth, only to find the entire situation is a construct created by mysterious aliens called the Ancients, who are testing to see if Earth is suitable for colonization.

Towards the end of the season, Aeryn is injured and the crew is forced to go to a Peacekeeper base to seek medical help. Crichton disguises himself as a Peacekeeper to gain access, but the base's commander, Scorpius, instantly sees through the ruse and imprisons Crichton, calling Crais to come and get him. Under torture Crichton discovers that the Ancients placed specialized knowledge of wormholes in his subconscious mind – knowledge that Scorpius is particularly eager to access. The other Moya crew launch a rescue attempt.

Meanwhile, Moya gives birth to her baby, discovering that the child – named Talyn – is a volatile hybrid warship designed by the Peacekeepers instead of the usual peaceful Leviathan. Upon Crais's arrival, Scorpius takes over his command. Crais defects to Moya to save himself, accepting along the way that Crichton had not meant to kill his brother. But this is only a cover to steal Talyn and escape on his own. Having grown much closer over the course of the season, the crew work together to escape Scorpius – a plan which ends with Crichton and D'Argo floating in space, running out of air.

Season Two

The crew of Moya are now on the run from Scorpius, who wants the wormhole knowledge locked in Crichton's brain for his own purposes. To avoid him the crew are forced into some unwise decisions and alliances, which often result in wacky, mind-altering hijinks for the crew.

Moya encounters an independent Sebacean colony (Sebaceans being the race from which Peacekeepers are drawn), where the heir to the throne has been genetically poisoned by her younger brother so that she cannot procreate with any Sebacean male, which would allow him to take the throne instead. Recognising Crichton as a possible substitute to ensure the continued independence of her world, the Empress insists he marry the Princess, or else she will hand him over to Scorpius. Terrified of Scorpius after his experiences on the base, Crichton is forced to agree. Aeryn, who has been growing attached to Crichton, finds herself jealous.

Despite various plots by Peacekeepers and an agent of their enemies the Scarrans, the Moya crew manage to wheedle their way out once again, although the Princess is indeed left pregnant. Meanwhile, D'Argo and Chiana begin a relationship based mostly on sex, and Zhaan is tasked with protecting Moya by the Leviathian's creator-gods. Crichton has a chance to kill Scorpius, but finds himself unable to do it, blocked by some unknown cause.

That cause is revealed when Crichton is kidnapped by Scarrans – during his torture on the base, Scorpius had implanted Crichton with a neural chip that contains a clone of his personality, designed to track down the wormhole knowledge and protect Crichton and Scorpius both until that knowledge is found. Crichton nicknames the clone Harvey and it begins to manifest as hallucinations to him.

The half-crazed mystic Stark – whom Crichton had met while jailed at the base – returns with information about D'Argo's son, Jothee. The boy is one of a lot of slaves, and they can rescue him by buying the entire lot. To afford to do that they will need to rob a bank. The crew put a plan into action, which is complicated when Scorpius arrives. Scorpius has captured the slaves, but promises to give them Jothee if Crichton will turn himself in. Under intense pressure from the neural clone, Crichton does so.

D'Argo is reunited with his son, and the crew move into action to save Crichton. Even Crais and Talyn return to assist. The rescue is successful, although Moya is severely damaged and Crichton is nearly insane from the effects of the neural clone. At the medical colony to fix them both, the clone takes control of Crichton, seemingly killing Aeryn just as she admits her love for him. With Aeryn dead, Crichton wants the chip removed once and for all. At the same time, Scorpius catches up with them again, killing the doctor and announcing that the chip has completed its work and found the wormhole knowledge. He removes the chip and leaves Crichton incapacitated at the hospital.

Season Three

Having survived Scorpius' attack, the doctor saves Crichton by using biological material from a suitable donor – an alien called an Interon which may be a cousin species to humans. Scorpius fools Crais into thinking he is dead to cover his escape with the neural chip, and Zhaan revives Aeryn, but at the cost of her own life. Feeling guilty over the death of the Interon donor, Crichton has the donor's still living relative brought aboard – an arrogant scientist called Jool.

Investigating another wormhole, Moya crashes into a ship belonging to a race called Pathfinders, experts in wormholes. Zhaan sacrifices the last of her life to separate the ships, adding more guilt to Crichton's conscience. He also discovers that despite the chip's removal, the personality clone Harvey remains in his mind.

Due to a harrowing encounter with another escaped prisoner with a cloning device, Crichton ends up twinned – a duplicate created so that there are two Crichtons, both equal and original. Talyn is attacked by the new Peacekeeper Commando chasing the crew – Xhalax Sun, Aeryn's mother. To escape her, Moya and Talyn starburst in opposite directions, splitting the crew, with one Crichton on each ship.

On Moya, tensions rise over D'Argo's breakup with Chiana, Jool's grating personality, and Crichton's increasing obsession with wormholes. An encounter with an alien Energy Rider also instils precognitive abilities in Chiana (or possibly only activates already present abilities). Meanwhile, Scorpius tries to access the wormhole data, but finds that the chip now contains a neural clone of Crichton, who refuses to allow Scorpius access.

On Talyn, Crais explains that Xhalax wants to recapture him as a renegade Peacekeeper, and to recapture Talyn as a powerful warship. After a vicious battle, Aeryn allows Crais to kill her mother. Crichton discovers that the mechanic, Furlow, has been working on the wormhole data he gave her in the first season, and intends to sell it to the Scarrans. With the help of the Ancients, Crichton unlocks the wormhole knowledge just enough to destroy the Scarran ship, but suffers radiation exposure and dies in Aeryn's arms.

When the two crews finally reunite, Aeryn cannot face the remaining Crichton, and Talyn is becoming increasingly violent and uncontrollable. Crichton resolves to destroy the wormhole information that Scorpius has by pretending to help him and then crippling the project from within. In return for his help, Scorpius grants the Moya crew leniency for their crimes. But high-ranking Peacekeeper Commandant Grayza interferes, claiming that the Moya crew's continued freedom is an embarrassment and Scorpius' own obsession with wormhole tech does not outweigh their criminal record.

Crichton finally decides that the only way to end Scorpius' project is to destroy the ship. Crais orders Talyn to starburst inside the ship, killing them both and destroying the entire Command Carrier. Believing they are finally free from pursuit, the crew buries Talyn's remains and splits up to go their own ways. But at the last second, a strange old woman formerly imprisoned on the Command Carrier informs Crichton that Aeryn is pregnant, and Moya is sucked into a wormhole, leaving Crichton once again alone in space.

Season Four

Alone for months, Crichton has had nothing to do but obsess over Aeryn and wormholes. He finally makes a breakthrough on the latter when he meets a supposed Leviathan specialist, Sikozu, on the run from her employers. When Chiana and Rygel also return, they go together to Arnessk, where Jool, D'Argo and the old woman – Noranti – have joined an Interon archaeological dig. They find artefacts that suggest a connection between humans, Sebaceans and Interons. Commandant Grayza interrupts, having taken Scorpius prisoner and "kills" him to show good faith to Crichton. Crichton wants nothing to do with her and escapes.

Crichton finds that Aeryn has made a deal with Scorpius to let him on Moya after he saved her life. Crichton keeps Scorpius imprisoned but remains paranoid that his former enemy is planning something. Despite Aeryn's desire to reconcile, he pushes her away, even going so far as to suppress his feelings with drugs. A Scarran agent invades Moya, since the Scarrans and Peacekeepers are in an arms race to acquire Crichton's wormhole knowledge.

Crichton is instead kidnapped by an Ancient whom he nicknames Einstein, who explains to him the catastrophic danger if wormhole tech falls into the wrong hands. Returning from that meeting, the entire Moya crew accidentally ends up on Earth, providing humans with their first confirmed contact with extraterrestrials. Crichton is finally home but finds that the world is too paranoid and distrustful to accept his alien friends. He has also been so affected by his experiences that he cannot relax there – a situation not helped when an agent of Grayza attacks and kills several of Crichton's friends. He decides the only thing he can do is leave again.

The crew comes across a secret meeting between Grayza and a Scarran minister, at which Grayza sells out D'Argo's people in return for peace. In disrupting the meeting Aeryn is captured. Desperate to rescue her, Crichton promises to give Scorpius the wormhole tech in return for his help. They infiltrate a Scarran base and rescue Aeryn but Scorpius is captured in the attempt. Crichton is happy to leave him there but the neural clone Harvey informs them that Scorpius already has the wormhole tech and may reveal it to the Scarrans under torture. The crew of Moya are forced to launch yet another attempt to either rescue or kill Scorpius.

They walk into another meeting at the Scarrans' most important base, Katratzi, claiming to want to sell the tech to the highest bidder. Instead they start a riot between the Scarrans' various servant races, blow up the base using a nuclear bomb and escape again. The Scarrans launch an attack against Earth – partly in retaliation but also to secure a source of Strelitzia plants. The plants are vital to a Scarran augmentation process and Crichton had inadvertently revealed to the Scarrans that they can be found on Earth. Crichton's only option to save his home world is to destroy the wormhole that leads there, leaving him stranded in space forever.

That done, Scorpius returns to the Peacekeepers and the Moya crew go to the ocean planet Qujaga to recover. While there, Aeryn reveals that the pregnancy – formerly kept in stasis – has now been released and they are going to have a baby. Crichton proposes to her and she accepts. At the last second they are attacked by random aliens, who appear to kill them both.

The Peacekeeper Wars

Thinking that Crichton is dead and the wormhole tech gone with him, Scorpius deliberately starts a war with the Scarrans in the hope that the element of surprise will be on their side. The tactic is unsuccessful, and the Scarrans are on the verge of overwhelming the Peacekeepers. When the Peacekeeper Grand Chancellor considers surrender, Grayza kills him and takes over to make sure the war continues.

On Qujaga the aliens, called Eidolons, realize that killing Crichton and Aeryn was a mistake and reanimate them. Scorpius instantly realizes this and abandons the war to track him down, hoping to acquire the wormhole tech once and for all as the only way of stopping the Scarrans. Crichton again refuses. Meanwhile, the crew discover that the Eidolons are in fact a lost colony of the people of Arnessk, and have an innate ability to bring peace to others. If they can find more of their people, they will be able to stop the war.

Moya, with Scorpius and Sikozu in tow, heads back to Arnessk, where the ancient people have been revived and are working with Jool. They agree to help, but Scarran Emperor Staleek attacks, destroying the base and killing Jool. Staleek doesn't want peace – he wants victory. Only one Eidolon remains, who is able to transmit the ability to Stark, and the crew escape the Scarrans with the help of D'Argo's son Jothee.

They return to Qujaga to find that the Peacekeeper-Scarran war has reached the planet. Crichton and the others must get through the battle to reach the remaining Eidolons on the planet and pass the techniques of peace to them, all while both sides are still after him for wormhole technology. Once there, Crichton and Aeryn are finally able to marry and Aeryn gives birth, but D'Argo is fatally wounded in the escape and dies offscreen.

Realising that neither side will take no for an answer, Crichton returns to Einstein and convinces him to unlock the knowledge, which Crichton then uses to launch a wormhole weapon – a black hole that will grow and grow until it destroys everything in the universe. Both Grayza and Staleek finally realise that this weapon is too dangerous for anyone to possess, and they agree to a ceasefire. Crichton is able to stop the black hole, but falls into a coma as a result.

With the war finally over, the Eidolons help to broker a peace treaty between the two sides, but Crichton is still in a coma. He is finally brought out of it when Aeryn places his new baby in his arms. The new family looks out onto the now peaceful galaxy, naming the baby D'Argo in honour of their friend, and promising the universe belongs to him.

The series is set in a future age of interstellar travel and concerns the exploits of a group of outlaws. Gareth Thomas played the eponymous character Roj Blake, a political dissident who is arrested, tried and convicted on false charges, and then deported from Earth to a prison planet. En route, he and two fellow prisoners, treated as expendable, are sent to board and investigate an abandoned alien spacecraft found drifting in space. They get the ship working, commandeer it, rescue two more prisoners, and are later joined by an alien guerrilla with telepathic abilities. In their attempts to stay ahead of their enemies and inspire others to rebel, they encounter a great variety of cultures on different planets, and are forced to confront human and alien threats. Blake's group suffer losses and casualties, and recruit newer members to join them. They perform a campaign against the totalitarian Terran Federation until an intergalactic war occurs with aliens from the Andromeda galaxy. Blake disappears and Kerr Avon then leads the group. When their spacecraft is destroyed and another group member is killed, the survivors commandeer another craft (which they enhance with superior technology), and a secret base on a distant planet from which they continue their campaign. In the final episode, Avon finds Blake and, suspecting him of betraying the group, kills him. The group is then shot by Federation guards, who surround Avon in the final scene as shots are heard over the end credits.

Series One

Roj Blake, a worker of high social status classified as "alpha-grade", lives in a domed city. Similar domes house most of the Earth's population. Blake is approached by a group of political dissidents who take him outside the city to meet their leader, Bran Foster. According to Foster, Blake was once the leader of an influential group of political activists opposed to the Federation's Earth Administration. Blake was arrested, brainwashed and coerced into making a confession denouncing the rebellion. His memory of those years was then blocked. Foster wants Blake to rejoin the dissidents. Suddenly, the meeting is interrupted by the arrival of Federation security forces, who shoot and kill the crowd of rebels. Blake, the only survivor, returns to the city, where he begins to remember his past. He is arrested, tried on false charges of child molestation and sentenced to deportation to the prison planet Cygnus Alpha.

Whilst awaiting deportation from Planet Earth, Blake meets thief Vila Restal and smuggler Jenna Stannis. On board the prison ship ''London'', Blake meets convicted murderer Olag Gan and computer engineer and embezzler Kerr Avon. The ''London'' encounters a battle between two alien space fleets and the ''London'' s crew plot a course to avoid the combat zone and continue their voyage. They encounter a strange alien craft, board it and attempt to salvage it but are thwarted by the alien ship's defence mechanism. The commander of the ''London'' sends the expendable Blake, Avon, and Jenna across to the ship. Blake defeats the defence system when it tries to use memories he recently discovered were false. With Jenna as pilot, the three convicts escape in the alien craft.

Blake and his crew follow the ''London'' to Cygnus Alpha in their captured ship, which they have named ''Liberator''. They retrieve Vila and Gan, while Blake leaves the other prisoners. Blake wants to use ''Liberator'' and its new crew to attack the Federation with the others, especially Avon, as reluctant followers. Blake's first target is a communications station on the planet Saurian Major. Blake infiltrates the station and is assisted by Cally, a telepathic guerrilla soldier from the planet Auron. Blake invites Cally to join the crew. With this new arrival, and including ''Liberator'' s computer, Zen, ''Liberator'' has a crew of seven.

As Blake's attacks against the Federation become bolder, he has less success. Political pressure grows on the Administration with planetary commanders threatening to leave the Federation because of its inability to protect them from Blake's attacks. Rumours abound about Blake's heroism and other rebel groups use his name for their actions. Supreme Commander Servalan appoints Space Commander Travis, who has a vendetta against Blake, to eliminate Blake and capture ''Liberator''. Servalan often co-opts Travis for her personal projects and uses Blake as a cover for her own activities. When Travis repeatedly fails to eliminate Blake, Servalan does not assign the task to another officer and does not use more resources to eliminate him.

Blake meets a man named Ensor and discovers a plot by Servalan and Travis to seize a powerful computer named Orac, which is capable of communicating with any computer that uses a component called a Tariel Cell. Blake's crew suffers from radiation sickness but capture the device before Servalan arrives. Blake offers to perform the operation to save Ensor's life aboard the ''Liberator'' but Ensor dies when the power cells for his artificial heart are depleted before they are able to reach ''Liberator''. Aboard the ship, Orac predicts the craft's destruction in the near future.

Series Two

The ''Liberator'' is recaptured by the people that built it and Orac's prophecy is fulfilled when it destroys an identical space vehicle. Blake wants to attack the heart of the Federation and he targets the main computer control facility on Earth. Avon agrees to help on condition that Blake gives him ''Liberator'' when the Federation has been destroyed. Blake, Avon, Vila and Gan reach the control facility and find an empty room. Travis reveals that the computer facility was secretly relocated years before and the old location was left as a decoy. Blake and his crew escape but Travis throws a grenade in the confined area and Gan is killed by falling rubble.

After Gan's death, Blake considers the future of the rebellion, and Travis is convicted of war crimes by a Federation court martial at Space Command Headquarters aboard a space station. Blake decides to restore his group's reputation and attacks the space station but Travis escapes and continues his vendetta against Blake. Blake seeks the new location of the computer control facility. He learns that it is named ''Star One''. When ''Star One'' begins to malfunction, Servalan also becomes desperate to find its location. The facility's failure causes many problems in the Federation. ''Star One'' controls a large defensive barrier that has prevented extra-galactic incursions. Blake discovers ''Star One'' s location and finds that, with help from Travis, aliens from the Andromeda Galaxy have infiltrated it. Vila discovers a fleet of alien spacecraft beyond the barrier. Travis partially disables the barrier. Blake and his crew overcome the aliens at ''Star One'' and kill Travis but the gap in the barrier allows the aliens to invade. Jenna calls for help from the Federation, where Servalan has conducted a military coup, imposed martial law and declared herself President. Servalan dispatches the Federation's battle fleets to repel the invaders, who begin to breach the barrier. With Blake badly wounded, ''Liberator'' by Avon's direction, alone until Servalan's battle fleets arrive, fights against the aliens.

Series Three

''Liberator'' is severely damaged during the battle with the Andromedans, forcing the crew to abandon ship whilst Zen carries out repairs. The Federation defeats the alien invaders but the cost considerably reduces its influence in the galaxy. Blake and Jenna go missing and Avon becomes the new leader. Two new additions, weapons expert Dayna Mellanby and mercenary Del Tarrant, join the crew. Avon is less inclined than Blake to attack the Federation but Servalan realises that if she captures ''Liberator'', the Federation will quickly restore its former power.

Servalan attempts to create clones of herself, but is thwarted when the embryos are destroyed. Avon decides to find the Federation agent who killed Anna Grant, his former lover. The group interrupts an attempt to eliminate Servalan and Avon discovers that Anna is alive and was previously a Federation agent named Bartolemew. Anna tries to shoot Avon in the back but Avon kills her and frees Servalan. Servalan lures Avon into a trap using a faked message from Blake. Servalan finally captures ''Liberator'' and maroons the crew on an artificial planet named Terminal but does not know that ''Liberator'' has been irreparably damaged after flying through a cloud of corrosive fluid particles. As Servalan leaves Terminal, the ship explodes and Servalan is apparently killed as she attempts to escape by teleporting away.

Series Four

Booby traps, set by Servalan in her underground complex on Terminal, explode and Cally is killed. Avon, Tarrant, Vila and Dayna escape with Orac and are rescued by Dorian, a salvage operator. Dorian takes the crew in his spacecraft, ''Scorpio'', to his base on the planet Xenon, where they meet his partner, Soolin. Dorian plans to drain the crew's life-force and take Orac but is foiled by Vila. Avon completes a new teleport system for ''Scorpio'' using the technology left behind by Dorian. Soolin joins the crew and they commandeer ''Scorpio'' and occupy the Xenon base. Avon gains control of Slave, ''Scorpio'' s main computer.

The crew acquires an experimental new stardrive that vastly increases ''Scorpio'' s speed, making it even faster than ''Liberator''. The ''Scorpio'' crew become concerned about the speed at which the Federation is reclaiming its former territory and discover that Servalan survived the destruction of ''Liberator''. Deposed as President of the Federation, she is using the pseudonym Commissioner Sleer and is enacting a pacification programme using a drug named Pylene-50. The ''Scorpio'' crew gain the formula for an antidote to Pylene-50 but this cannot reverse the drug's effects. Avon finds a way to synthesise the antidote and the crew attempt to create an alliance between independent worlds to resist the Federation and get the resources and manpower to mass-produce the Pylene-50 antidote. One of the alliance members, Zukan, betrays the alliance to Servalan and detonates explosives on Xenon base, which is damaged and the ''Scorpio'' crew are forced to abandon it.

Avon tells the rest of the group that Orac has traced Blake to Gauda Prime, an agricultural planet. Blake is masquerading as a bounty hunter; his latest quarry is Arlen, whom he hopes to recruit for his rebellion. ''Scorpio'' approaches Gauda Prime and is attacked. The crew, except Tarrant, use the teleport to abandon the damaged craft. Slave is damaged, Tarrant remains aboard to pilot ''Scorpio'' and is injured during a crash landing. Blake arrives, rescues and takes Tarrant to his base and purportedly captures Tarrant as bounty. Tarrant thinks that Blake has betrayed the group and Blake lets Tarrant escape. Tarrant is nearly killed by Blake's colleagues when Avon and his crew save him, giving credence to Tarrant's accusation that Blake has betrayed them to the Federation. Becoming very suspicious of Blake, Avon kills him. Arlen reveals that she is a Federation officer and Federation guards arrive. Tarrant, Soolin, Vila, and Dayna are shot by Federation troops, who slowly surround Avon with their weapons pointed at him. Avon steps over Blake's body, raises his gun and smiles. Shots are heard over the end credits.

At the beginning of the novel, Mr Lewisham is an 18-year-old teacher at a boys' school in Sussex, earning forty pounds a year. He meets and falls in love with Ethel Henderson, who is paying a visit to relatives. His involvement with her makes him lose his position, but he is unable to find her when he moves to London.

After a two-and-a-half-year break in the action, Mr Lewisham is in his third year of study at the Normal School of Science in South Kensington. He has become a socialist, declaring his politics with a red tie, and is an object of interest to Alice Heydinger, an older student. However, chance brings him together again with his first love at a séance. Ethel's stepfather, Mr Chaffery, is a spiritualist charlatan, and Mr Lewisham is determined to extricate her from association with Chaffery's dishonesty. They marry, and Mr Lewisham is forced to abandon his plans for a brilliant scientific career followed by a political ascent. When Chaffrey absconds to the Continent with money he has embezzled from his clients, Lewisham agrees to move into his shabby Clapham house to look after Ethel and Ethel's elderly mother (Chaffrey's abandoned wife). Wells's friend Sir Richard Gregory wrote to him after reading the novel: "I cannot get that poor devil Lewisham out of my mind head, and I wish I had an address, for I would go to him and rescue him from the miserable life in which you leave him."

In Berlin, a group of children are playing an elimination game in the courtyard of an apartment building, using a chant about a murderer of children. A woman sets the table for lunch, waiting for her daughter to come home from school. A wanted poster warns of a serial killer preying on children, as anxious parents wait outside a school.

Little Elsie Beckmann leaves school, bouncing a ball on her way home. She is approached by Hans Beckert, who is whistling "In the Hall of the Mountain King" by Edvard Grieg. He offers to buy her a balloon from a blind street-vendor and walks and talks with her. Elsie's place at the dinner table remains empty, her ball rolls away across a patch of grass, and her balloon is lost in the telephone lines overhead.

In the wake of Elsie's disappearance, anxiety runs high among the public. Beckert sends an anonymous letter to the newspapers, taking credit for the child murders and promising that he will commit others; the police extract clues from the letter, using the new techniques of fingerprinting and handwriting analysis. Under mounting pressure from the Prussian government, the police work around the clock. Inspector Karl Lohmann, head of the homicide squad, instructs his men to intensify their search and to check the records of recently released psychiatric patients, focusing on any with a history of violence against children. They stage frequent raids to question known criminals, disrupting organized crime so badly that (The Safecracker) summons the crime bosses of Berlin's Ringvereine to a conference. They decide to organize their own manhunt, using beggars to watch the children. Meanwhile, the police search Beckert's rented rooms, find evidence that he wrote the letter there, and lie in wait to arrest him.''Monsters of Weimar'' p. 297

Beckert sees a young girl in the reflection of a shop window and begins to follow her, but stops when the girl meets her mother. He encounters another girl and befriends her, but the blind vendor recognizes his whistling. The vendor tells one of his friends, who follows Beckert and sees him inside a shop with the girl. As the two exit onto the street, the man chalks a large "M" (for , "murderer" in German) on his palm, pretends to trip, and bumps into Beckert, marking the back of his overcoat so that other beggars can easily track him. The girl notices the chalk and offers to clean it for him, but before she finishes, Beckert realizes he is being watched and flees the scene, abandoning the girl.

Attempting to evade the beggars' surveillance, Beckert hides inside a large office building just before the workers leave for the evening. The beggars call , who arrives at the building with a team of other criminals. They capture and torture one of the watchmen for information and, after capturing the other two, search the building and catch Beckert in the attic. When one of the watchmen trips the silent alarm, the criminals narrowly escape with their prisoner before the police arrive. Franz, one of the criminals, is left behind in the confusion and captured by the police. By falsely claiming that one of the watchmen was killed during the break-in, Lohmann tricks Franz into admitting that the gang only broke into the building to find Beckert and revealing where he will be taken.

The criminals drag Beckert to an abandoned distillery to face a kangaroo court. He finds a large, silent crowd awaiting him. Beckert is given a "lawyer", who gamely argues in his defense but fails to win any sympathy from the improvised "jury". Beckert delivers an impassioned monologue, saying that he cannot control his homicidal urges, while the other criminals present break the law by choice, and further questioning why they as criminals believe they have any right to judge him:

What right have you to speak? Criminals! Perhaps you are even proud of yourselves! Proud of being able to crack into safes, or climb into buildings or cheat at cards. All of which, it seems to me, you could just as easily give up, if you had learned something useful, or if you had jobs, or if you were not such lazy pigs. I can not help myself! I have no control over this evil thing that is inside me—the fire, the voices, the torment!

Beckert pleads to be handed over to the police, asking: "Who knows what it is like to be me?" His "lawyer" points out that , presiding over the proceedings, is wanted on three counts of manslaughter, and that it is unjust to execute an insane man. Just as the enraged mob is about to kill Beckert, the police arrive to arrest both him and the criminals.

As a panel of judges prepares to deliver a verdict at Beckert's real trial, the mothers of three of his victims weep in the gallery. Elsie's mother says that "No sentence will bring the dead children back" and that "One has to keep closer watch over the children". The screen fades to black as she adds, "All of you".

Jeff Slade is a detective with the Criminal Investigation Department of the local police force led by Kate Grisham; although unusually for such a position he is an armed officer, carrying a handgun as routine. Slade is a good detective who gets results although his approach is somewhat maverick and his methods do leave a lot to be desired and have more than once landed him in trouble. Amongst Slade's colleagues at the department is science officer Holly Turner who has a secret that Slade manages to uncover. Holly owns a working time machine that was built by her late father. The machine is able to take Slade and Holly back far enough in time to witness a crime as it happens and discover who committed it. As a result, Slade's track record with crime solving goes through the roof with case after case being solved in record time.

Setting

One thousand years before the events in the game, on a floating continent hovering high above the surface of an unnamed planet, a technologically advanced civilization sought to harness the power of the four elemental crystals of light. They did not realize that they could not control such fundamental forces of nature. This power of light would have consumed the world itself had the light crystals not had their natural counterparts: the four dark elemental crystals. Disturbed by the sudden interruption of the careful balance between light and dark, four warriors were granted the power of the dark crystals to recapture the power of the light crystals. These so-called Dark Warriors succeeded in their quest, and restored harmony to the world. But their victory came too late to save the doomed civilization, whose culture was reduced to ruin, though their floating continent remained. On that continent, the circle of Gulgans, a race of blind soothsayers and fortune-tellers, predicted that these events will ultimately repeat.

Characters

''Final Fantasy III'' focuses around four orphans from the remote village of Ur (while in the remakes players only begin as Luneth, slowly picking up the other 3 characters as they progress; a change from the original and from other early ''Final Fantasy'' titles), each starting off as an Onion Knight in the original game.

is the antagonist the party seeks to stop for most of the game, though he is eventually revealed to merely be a pawn of the (DarkCloud in the fan translation): a malevolent and vicious deity who wishes to push the world into a state of chaos and destruction by upsetting the equilibrium between light and darkness, allowing the Void to consume the world. Appearing in a female-like form, the Cloud of Darkness refers to herself in first-person plural because her two tentacles have minds of their own. Although she initially defeats the Light Warriors, they are resurrected with Unei and Doga's help. Then, with help from the Dark Warriors, they defeat the Cloud of Darkness, saving the world.

Story

An earthquake opens up a previously hidden cavern in Altar Cave near the village of Ur on the floating continent. Four young orphans under the care of Topapa, the village elder, explore the earthquake's impact and come across a crystal of light. The crystal grants them a portion of its power, and instructs them to go forth and restore balance to the world. Not knowing what to make of the crystal's pronouncements, but nonetheless recognizing the importance of its words, the four inform their adoptive family of their mission and set out to explore an overworld outside the area in which they were brought up, in order to bring balance back to the world.

Their adventures lead them to discover that there lies a whole world beyond the boundaries of the floating continent upon which they were living. In the world below, they discover a warlock named Xande, one of three apprentices to the legendary Archmage Noah, is trying to possess the crystals of light, so as to bring forth chaos and disorder. The four warriors eventually arrive at the Crystal Tower where they discover that the Cloud of Darkness is the source of the recent events. The Cloud attempts to create a similar situation to the Flood of Light a millennium earlier so that the world is pulled into the void. The Light Warriors traverse into the domain of the dark crystals to free the imprisoned Dark Warriors and defeat the Cloud of Darkness, thereby restoring the crystals and balance to the world. In the DS remake, there are several "side quests" that can also be completed.

The story is virtually the same in the remakes, but with some major differences in the introductory sequence. In the remakes, Luneth goes to the Altar Cave alone, but while exploring he trips and falls into a hole created by the earthquake. He is then beset by goblins, and while he is frantically searching for a way out, he comes upon a room, where he is ambushed by a Land Turtle. After defeating it, he finds the Wind Crystal, which tells him that he has been chosen as a Warrior of Light, destined to restore balance to the world, and there are three others like him, but before Luneth can ask it to elaborate, he is teleported to the surface. He returns to Ur, but Elder Topapa does not elucidate much on the matter besides stating that someone had brought him to Topapa. Going to a corner of town, Luneth finds his friend Arc being bullied by some of the kids. When Luneth intervenes, the kids run away, with Arc running away to Kazus, proving that he is not scared of ghosts.

Luneth chases Arc to Kazus and, upon reuniting with Arc, discovers that the rumors of a curse on Kazus are not false. The people there are see-through, and one such person, Cid of Canaan, instructs the two boys to take his airship and look for Refia, the mythril smith Takka's adoptive daughter. They find her on the airship, and accompany her to Castle Sasune as per her suggestion. There, they meet Ingus, a soldier of Sasune who had been away during the curse's happening. He joins the trio after an audience with the king, who instructs them to find his daughter, Sara. They catch up to her in the Sealed Cave behind a wall that could only be accessible by interacting with 'the skeleton key.' So, with her accompanying them, they battle the monster who cast the curse: the Djinn. Just as Sara seals the Djinn away, however, Luneth, Arc, Refia and Ingus all disappear before her eyes. As it transpires, the wind crystal had summoned the four youths in order to grant them a portion of its power which allows you access to the jobs Thief, Warrior, Black Mage, White Mage, and Red Mage. After this, Luneth and company reunite with Sara at Castle Sasune. She completes the process of dispelling the Djinn's curse by tossing the ring into a fountain of water underneath the castle, but becomes depressed when Luneth reveals that he and his companions must leave at once. After Sara stops crying long enough to see them off, they go back to Kazus, where Takka drags Refia home. The three boys consult with Cid, then with Takka, who builds a mythril ram on the ship. Refia is not with Takka when the boys return to ask for a mythril ram, and when the party once more finds her aboard Cid's airship, the player would be able to piece together why she wasn't with him. She had told Takka that she is a Warrior of Light like the boys, and therefore has to leave. The new introductory sequence ends with the airship being used to demolish the boulder in Nelv Valley along with the ship.

The play's focus is Southerner Regina Hubbard Giddens, who struggles for wealth and freedom within the confines of an early 20th-century society where fathers considered only sons as their legal heirs. As a result of this practice, while her two avaricious brothers Benjamin and Oscar have wielded the family inheritance into two independently substantial fortunes, she's had to rely upon her manipulation of her cautious, timid, browbeaten husband, Horace. He's no businessman, just her financial support; although he's pliable enough for her ambition, that ambition has driven him into becoming merely the tool of her insatiable greed. He uses a wheelchair.

Her brother Oscar married Birdie, his much-maligned alcoholic wife, solely to acquire her family's plantation and cotton fields. Oscar now wants to join forces with his brother, Benjamin, to construct a cotton mill. They need an additional $75,000 and approach Regina, asking her to invest in the project. Oscar initially proposes marriage between his son Leo and Regina's daughter Alexandra—first cousins—as a means of getting Horace's money, but Horace and Alexandra are repulsed by the suggestion, as is Birdie. Horace refuses when Regina asks him outright for the money, so Leo, a bank teller, is pressured into stealing Horace's railroad bonds from the bank's safe deposit box.

Horace, after discovering this, tells Regina he is going to change his will in favor of their daughter, and also will claim he gave Leo the bonds as a loan, thereby cutting Regina out of the deal completely. When he has a heart attack during this chat, she makes no effort to help him. He dies within hours, without anyone knowing his plan and before changing his will. This leaves Regina free to blackmail her brothers by threatening to report Leo's theft unless they give her 75% ownership in the cotton mill (it is, in Regina's mind, a fair exchange for the stolen bonds). The price Regina ultimately pays for her evil deeds is the loss of her daughter Alexandra's love and respect. Regina's actions cause Alexandra to finally understand the importance of not idly watching people do evil. She tells Regina she will not watch her be "one who eats the earth," and abandons her. Having let her husband die, alienated her brothers, and driven away by her only child, Regina is left wealthy but completely alone.

In this game the player adopts the role of a deity and assumes the responsibility of shepherding people by direction, manipulation, and divine intervention. The player has the ability to shape the landscape and grow their civilization – and their divine power – with the overall aim of having their followers conquer an enemy force, which is led by an opposing deity.

After her mother Aliane dies in a car accident, 13-year-old Amy Alden is brought from New Zealand to Ontario, Canada, by her estranged father Thomas Alden, a sculptor and inventor, to live with him and his girlfriend Susan.

When a construction crew destroys a small wilderness area near the Alden home, Amy finds an abandoned nest of 16 goose eggs. Without Thomas, Susan, or her uncle David knowing, she takes the eggs and keeps them in a dresser in her father's old barn to incubate. When the eggs hatch, she is allowed to keep the goslings as pets. Thomas asks for help from local Animal Regulation officer Glen Seifert on how to care for the geese. Seifert comes over to the Alden house, and explains that the geese have imprinted on Amy as their mother. He explains that geese learn everything from their parents including migratory routes, but also warns Thomas that a private ordinance dictates that all domestic geese must have their wings pinioned (clipped) to render them flightless. He promptly tries to demonstrate the process with one of the chicks, which upsets Amy. Thomas throws Seifert off his property, only for Seifert to threaten the Aldens that if the birds start flying, he will have to confiscate them.

Thomas decides to use an ultralight aircraft he had been constructing to teach the birds to fly and show them their migratory routes, but quickly realizes the birds will only follow Amy. Aided by his friend Barry, Thomas teaches Amy how to fly an ultralight aircraft of her own. David knows someone running a bird sanctuary in North Carolina, and arranges for the geese to go to the sanctuary. The birds have to arrive before November 1, or the sanctuary will be torn down by developers who plan to turn it into a coastal housing development.

Amy and Thomas practice flying the aircraft, but Igor, the weakest of the geese, who has a limp, accidentally hits the front of Amy's aircraft and lands in an isolated forest. While the group goes off to search for the bird, Glen Seifert returns to the Alden farm and confiscates the other geese. The next day, the Aldens free the geese, and Amy leads them on their migration to North Carolina.

Making an emergency landing at Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station in western New York on the south shore of Lake Ontario, Amy and Thomas almost get arrested. They become national news, with residents cheering them on.

Thomas and Amy meet an old woman with a vendetta against goose shooting, and she invites them to stay the night at her house. That night Amy asks Thomas why he seldom visited her and her mother. From her mother, she knows that her parents were artists, who tend to be selfish, and that her mother left for both of their sakes. Thomas tells her that he was afraid and angry at himself for letting them leave, so he spent the next ten years buried in his work. He apologizes to Amy.

Thirty miles before reaching the bird sanctuary, Thomas's aircraft suffers a structural failure and crashes in a cornfield; having suffered a dislocated shoulder he tells Amy to finish the journey by herself. Thomas hitchhikes to the bird sanctuary. While waiting for the geese, Thomas, Susan, David, Barry, and many animal enthusiasts stand up to developers who are waiting to start the excavation of the site.

Amy eventually appears with the geese, much to the joy of the townspeople and Amy's family, and to the dismay of the developers. The townspeople and the Aldens celebrate their victory. During the end credits, all 16 geese -including Igor- return to the Aldens' farm on their own in the following spring.

Surveillance expert Harry Caul, who runs his own company in San Francisco, is obsessed with his own privacy. His apartment is almost bare behind its triple-locked door and burglar alarm, he uses pay phones to make calls, claims to have no home telephone, and his office is enclosed in a chain-link cage in a corner of a much larger warehouse. He has no friends, his girlfriend Amy knows little about him, and his sole hobby is playing along to jazz records on a tenor saxophone alone in his apartment.

Caul insists that he is not responsible for the actual content of the conversations he records or the use to which his clients put his surveillance activities. He is racked by guilt, though, over a past wiretap job after which three people were murdered. This sense of guilt is amplified by his devout Catholicism.

Caul, his colleague Stan, and some freelance associates have been tasked with bugging the conversation of a couple as they walk through crowded Union Square in San Francisco, surrounded by a cacophony of background noise. Amid the small talk, the couple discusses fears that they are being watched, and mention a discreet meeting at a hotel room in a few days. The challenging task of recording this conversation is accomplished by a number of surveillance operatives located in different positions around the square. After Caul has merged and filtered the different tapes, the final result is a sound recording in which the words themselves are clear, but the meaning is ambiguous.

When the client is not in his office, Caul refuses to leave the tape with his client's assistant, Martin Stett. The assistant warns him against getting involved, telling him that the tapes are "dangerous". Feeling increasingly uneasy about what may happen to the couple once the client hears the tape, Caul repeatedly plays the tape, gradually refining the recording. Using a filter, he reveals a key phrase hidden under the sound of a street musician: "He'd ''kill'' us if he got the chance."

Caul avoids handing in the tape to the aide of the man who commissioned the surveillance. Afterward, he finds himself increasingly pressured by the client's aide and is himself followed, tricked, and bugged. The tape of the conversation is eventually stolen from him while his guard is down. He goes to the client ("the Director") to find he has received the tapes, and learns that the woman in the recording is the client's wife, apparently having an affair with the other man in the tapes.

Caul books a hotel room next to one mentioned in the recording of the conversation. He uses equipment to overhear the client in a heated argument with his wife. When he goes to the balcony to curiously watch the events through the windows, he sees what he believes to be the wife being murdered, and retreats in shock. He later breaks into the hotel room to find no sign of a murder scene, save for the toilet which overflows with bloody toilet paper.

Caul later attempts to confront the client at his office in the Embarcadero Center, but the client is absent. While departing, Caul notices the wife, alive and unharmed, in a limousine. He learns that his client was killed in an "accident" and discovers the truth; the couple he heard in Union Square was talking about killing the woman's husband, and the murder Caul witnessed was actually that of his client and not the wife. The man in the recording actually said, "He'd kill ''us'' if he got the chance."

Caul gets a phone call from Stett, who plays a recording of Caul's saxophone playing from seconds earlier and tells him not to look any further into the matter, adding, "We'll be listening to you." Caul frantically searches for a listening device, tearing up his apartment, to no avail. He sits amid the wreckage playing his saxophone, the only thing in his apartment left intact.

Comedian Alvy Singer is trying to understand why his relationship with Annie Hall ended a year ago. Growing up in Brooklyn, he vexed his mother with impossible questions about the emptiness of existence, but he was precocious about his innocent sexual curiosity, suddenly kissing a classmate at six years old and not understanding why she was not keen to reciprocate.

Annie and Alvy, in a line for ''The Sorrow and the Pity,'' overhear another man deriding the work of Federico Fellini and Marshall McLuhan; Alvy imagines McLuhan himself stepping in at his invitation to criticize the man's comprehension. That night, Annie shows no interest in sex with Alvy. Instead, they discuss his first wife, whose ardor gave him no pleasure. His second marriage was to a New York writer who didn't like sports and was unable to reach orgasm.

With Annie, it is different. The two of them have fun making a meal of boiled lobster together. He teases her about the unusual men in her past. He met her playing tennis doubles with friends. Following the game, awkward small talk leads her to offer him a ride uptown, and then a glass of wine on her balcony. There, what seemed a mild exchange of trivial personal data is revealed in "mental subtitles" as an escalating flirtation. Their first date follows Annie's singing audition for a night club ("It Had to be You"). After their lovemaking that night, Alvy is "a wreck", while Annie relaxes with a joint.

Soon, Annie admits she loves Alvy, while he buys her books on death and says that his feelings for her are more than just love. When Annie moves in with him, things become very tense. Eventually, Alvy finds her arm-in-arm with one of her college professors, and the two begin to argue about whether this is the "flexibility" they had discussed. They eventually break up, and he searches for the truth of relationships, asking strangers on the street about the nature of love, questioning his formative years, and imagining a cartoon version of himself arguing with a cartoon Annie portrayed as the Evil Queen in ''Snow White''.

Alvy attempts a return to dating, but the effort is marred by neurosis and an episode of bad sex that is interrupted when Annie calls in the middle of the night, insisting that he come over immediately to kill two spiders in her bathroom. A reconciliation follows, coupled with a vow to stay together, come what may. However, their separate discussions with their therapists make it evident there is an unspoken and unbridgeable divide. When Alvy accepts an offer to present an award on television, they fly out to Los Angeles with Alvy's friend, Rob. However, on the return trip, they agree that their relationship is not working. After losing Annie to her record producer, Tony Lacey, Alvy unsuccessfully tries rekindling the flame with a marriage proposal. Back in New York, he stages a play of their relationship, but changes the ending: now she accepts.

The last meeting between Annie and Alvy is a wistful coda on New York's Upper West Side after they have both moved on to someone new. Alvy's voice returns with a summation: love is essential, especially if it is neurotic. Annie sings "Seems Like Old Times", and the credits roll.

In the Maine town of Chamberlain in the year 1979, Carietta "Carrie" White is a 16-year-old girl who is a target of ridicule for her frumpy appearance and unusual religious beliefs, instilled by her despotic mother, Margaret. One day, Carrie has her first period while showering in the girls' locker room after a physical-education class. Carrie is terrified, having no understanding of menstruation as her mother, who despises everything related to intimacy, never told her about it. While Carrie believes she is dying, her classmates, led by a wealthy, popular girl named Chris Hargensen, insult her and throw tampons and sanitary napkins at her. The gym teacher, Rita Desjardin, helps Carrie clean up and tries to explain. On the way home, Carrie practices her unusual ability to control objects from a distance. The only time she recalls using this power was when she was three years old and caused stones to fall from the sky by her house. Once Carrie gets home, Margaret furiously accuses Carrie of sin and locks her in a closet so that she may pray.

The next day, Desjardin reprimands the girls who bullied Carrie and gives them a week's detention; Chris defiantly leaves and is punished with suspension and exclusion from the prom. After an unsuccessful bid to get her privileges reinstated through her influential father, Chris decides to exact revenge on Carrie. Sue Snell, another popular girl who tormented Carrie in the locker room, feels ashamed of her behavior; she convinces her boyfriend, Tommy Ross, to invite Carrie to the prom instead. Carrie is suspicious, but accepts and begins sewing herself a prom dress. Meanwhile, Chris persuades her boyfriend Billy Nolan and his gang of greasers to gather two buckets of pig blood as she prepares a measure to rig the prom queen election in Carrie's favor.

The prom initially goes well for Carrie: Tommy's friends are welcoming, and Tommy finds that he is attracted to Carrie as a friend. Chris's plan to rig the election is successful, and Carrie and Tommy are elected prom queen and king. However, at the moment of the coronation, Chris, from outside, dumps the pig blood onto Carrie's and Tommy's heads. Tommy is knocked unconscious by one of the buckets and dies due to serious blood loss. The sight of Carrie drenched in blood invokes laughter from the audience. Carrie leaves the building, humiliated.

Outside, Carrie remembers her telekinesis and decides to enact vengeance on her tormentors. Using her powers, she hermetically seals the gym, activates the sprinkler system, inadvertently electrocuting many of her classmates, and causes a fire that eventually ignites the school's fuel tanks, causing a massive explosion that destroys the building. Most present at the prom are killed by electric shock, fire, or smoke; a few lucky staff and students escape. Carrie, in an overwhelming fit of rage, thwarts any incoming effort to fight the fire by opening the hydrants within the school's vicinity, then destroys gas stations and cuts power lines on her way home. She unleashes her telekinetic powers on the town, destroying several buildings and killing hundreds of people. As she does all this, she broadcasts a telepathic message, making all the townspeople aware that the carnage was caused by her, even if they do not know who she is.

Carrie returns home to confront Margaret, who believes Carrie has been possessed by Satan and must be killed. Margaret tells her that her conception was a result of what may have been marital rape. She stabs Carrie in the shoulder with a kitchen knife, but Carrie fights back by mentally stopping Margaret’s heart as she says a prayer. Mortally wounded, Carrie makes her way to the roadhouse where she was conceived. She sees Chris and Billy leaving, having been informed of the destruction by one of Billy's friends. After Billy attempts to run Carrie over, she mentally takes control of his car and sends it racing into a wall, killing both Billy and Chris.

Sue, who has been following Carrie's "broadcast," finds her collapsed in the parking lot, bleeding from the knife wound. The two have a brief telepathic conversation. Carrie had believed that Sue and Tommy had set her up for the prank, but realizes that Sue is innocent and has never felt real animosity towards her. Carrie forgives her and then dies, crying out for her mother.

A state of emergency is declared and the survivors make plans to relocate. Chamberlain foresees desolation in spite of the government allocation of finances toward rehabilitating the worker districts. Desjardin and the school's principal blame themselves for what happened and resign from teaching. Sue publishes a memoir based on her experiences. A "White Committee" report investigating paranormal abilities concludes that there are and will be others like Carrie. An Appalachian woman enthusiastically writes to her sister about her baby daughter's telekinetic powers and reminisces about their grandmother, who had similar abilities.

Part 1

In the Sandleford warren,The map in the front of the book indicates the story begins in the real-life Wash Common, just beyond the western tip of the park and parish of Sandleford, on the Berkshire-Hampshire border. Fiver, a runty buck rabbit who is a seer, receives a frightening vision of his warren's imminent destruction. He and his brother Hazel fail to convince the Threarah, their Chief Rabbit, of the need to evacuate; they then try to convince the other rabbits, but only succeed in gaining nine followers, all bucks. Captain Holly of the Sandleford Owsla (the warren's military caste) accuses the group of fomenting dissension against the Threarah and tries to stop them leaving, but is driven off.

Once out in the world, the travelling group of rabbits finds itself following the leadership of Hazel, who had been considered an unimportant member of the warren before. The group travels far through dangerous territory. Bigwig and Silver, both former Owsla and the strongest rabbits among them, keep the others protected, helped by the ingenuity of Blackberry (the cleverest rabbit) and Hazel's good judgment. Along the way, they cross the River Enborne, and evade a badger, a dog, a crow, and a car. Hazel and Bigwig also stop three rabbits from attempting to return to the Sandleford warren.

They meet a rabbit named Cowslip, who invites them to join his own warren. The majority of Hazel's group are relieved to finally be able to sleep and feed well, and therefore decide to overlook the strange and evasive behavior of the new rabbits. Fiver, however, senses nothing but death in the new warren. Later, Bigwig is caught in a snare, only surviving the ordeal thanks to Blackberry and Hazel's quick thinking. Fiver deduces the new warren is managed by a farmer, who protects and feeds the rabbits but also harvests a number of them for their meat and skins. He admonishes the others in a crazed lecture for not realizing the residents of Cowslip's warren were simply using Hazel and the others to increase their own odds of survival. The Sandleford rabbits, badly shaken, continue on their journey. They are soon joined by Strawberry, a buck who leaves Cowslip's warren after his doe is killed by one of the snares.

Part 2

Fiver's visions instruct the rabbits to seek a home atop the hills. The group eventually finds and settles in a beech hangar on Watership Down. While digging the new warren, they are joined by Captain Holly and his friend Bluebell. Holly is severely wounded, and both rabbits are ill from exhaustion, having escaped both the violent human destruction of the Sandleford Warren and an attack by Cowslip's rabbits along the way. Holly's ordeal has left him a changed rabbit, and after telling the others that Fiver's terrible vision has come true, he offers to join Hazel's band in whatever way they will have him.

Although Watership Down is a peaceful habitat, Hazel realizes there are no does, making the future of the new warren certain to end with the inevitable deaths of the buck rabbits present. With the help of their useful new friend, a black-headed gull named Kehaar, they locate a nearby warren called Efrafa, which is overcrowded. Hazel sends a small embassy, led by Holly, to Efrafa to present their request for does.

Meanwhile, Hazel and Pipkin, the smallest member of the group, scout the nearby Nuthanger Farm, where they find a hutch with rabbits inside. Despite their uncertainty about living wild, the hutch rabbits are willing to come to Watership. Two nights later, Hazel leads a raid on the farm, which frees three of the hutch rabbits before the farmer returns. Hazel's leg is wounded by a shotgun blast, and he is rescued by Fiver and Blackberry. When the embassy returns soon after, Hazel and his rabbits learn that Efrafa is a police state led by the despotic General Woundwort, who refuses to allow anyone to leave his range of control. Holly and the other rabbits dispatched have managed to escape with little more than their lives intact.

Part 3

However, Holly's group has managed to identify an Efrafan doe named Hyzenthlay, who wishes to leave the warren and can recruit other does to join in the escape. Hazel and Blackberry devise a plan to rescue Hyzenthlay's group and bring them to Watership Down. Bigwig is sent to do the mission, and infiltrates Efrafa in the guise of a member of the Owsla, while Hazel and the rest wait by a nearby river. With help from Kehaar, Bigwig manages to free Hyzenthlay and nine other does, as well as a condemned prisoner named Blackavar. Woundwort and his officers pursue, but the Watership rabbits and the escapees use a punt to escape down the River Test, though one doe is killed when the punt strikes a bridge. Once clear of Efrafa, they make the long journey home, losing one more rabbit to a fox along the way. They eventually reach Watership, unaware they are being shadowed by one of Woundwort's patrols, which reports back to Efrafa.

Part 4

Later that summer, the Owsla of Efrafa, led by Woundwort himself, unexpectedly arrives to destroy the warren at Watership Down and take back the escapees. Through Bigwig's bravery and loyalty, Fiver's visions, and Hazel's ingenuity, the Watership Down rabbits ensure the defeat of the Efrafans by holding off the attack and unleashing the Nuthanger Farm watchdog on them. Despite being gravely wounded by Bigwig, Woundwort refuses to back down; his followers flee the dog in terror, leaving Woundwort to stand his ground against the dog unobserved. His body is never found, and Groundsel, one of his former followers, continues to fervently believe in his survival.

After loosing the dog, Hazel is nearly killed by one of the farmhouse cats. He is saved by young Lucy, the former owner of the escaped hutch rabbits. Upon returning to Watership, Hazel effects a lasting peace and friendship between the remaining Efrafans and his own rabbits. Some time later, Hazel and Campion, the intelligent new chief of Efrafa, send rabbits to start a new warren at Caesar's Belt, to relieve the effects of overcrowding at both their warrens.

Epilogue

As time goes on, the three warrens on the downs prosper under Hazel, Campion, and Groundsel (their respective chiefs). Woundwort never returns, and becomes a heroic legend to some rabbits, and a sort of bogeyman to frighten children, to others. Kehaar rejoins his flock, but continues to visit the rabbits every winter. However, he refuses to search for Woundwort, showing even he still fears him.

Many years later, on a cold March morning, an elderly Hazel is visited by El-ahrairah, the spiritual overseer of all rabbits and the hero of the traditional rabbit stories told over the course of the book. El-ahrairah invites Hazel to join his own Owsla, reassuring Hazel of Watership's future success and prosperity. Leaving his friends and no-longer-needed physical body behind, Hazel departs Watership Down with the spirit guide.

In 1954, six strangers arrive by ominous invitation at a secluded New England mansion, despite most of the guests being from the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. Greeted by Wadsworth the butler and Yvette the maid, each guest receives a pseudonym: Colonel Mustard, Mrs. White, Mrs. Peacock, Mr. Green, Professor Plum, and Miss Scarlet.

A seventh guest arrives, Mr. Boddy, who Wadsworth reveals has been blackmailing the others: Mrs. Peacock is accused of taking bribes for her husband, a US senator, but denies any wrongdoing and claims she has paid the blackmail to keep the scandal quiet; Mrs. White is suspected in the death of her husband, a nuclear physicist, she denies guilt and states that she does not want the allegations made public; Professor Plum has lost his medical license due to an affair with a patient; Miss Scarlet runs an underground brothel in Washington, D.C.; Colonel Mustard, though initially suspected of being one of Miss Scarlet's clients, is actually a war profiteer who sold plane parts on the black market, resulting in several deaths; Mr. Green is a homosexual, a secret that would cost him his job at the State Department if anyone found out.

Wadsworth tells them that the police had been notified and they have approximately 45 minutes before they arrrive. While threatening to expose the guests if he is arrested, Mr. Boddy gives them each a weapon—a candlestick, a knife, a lead pipe, a revolver, a rope, and a wrench and suggests that someone kill Wadsworth, who has the key to the front door and whose death will ensure that "no one but the seven of us will ever know" of their secrets. Mr. Boddy turns out the lights; deathly moans are heard and a gunshot rings out, and when the lights are turned back on to reveal Mr. Boddy he is apparently dead, without any indication at first glance as to how.

As the guests investigate Boddy's death, Wadsworth explains to the guests that his wife had committed suicide due to Mr. Boddy's blackmail because she refused to name friends who were socialists, forcing him to become Boddy's butler and that he has summoned the guests to force a confession out of Mr. Boddy and turn him over to the police. The group suspects the cook, but they find her dead as well, having been stabbed with the knife. Mr. Boddy's body disappears, but the guests find his now bleeding body in the bathroom, having been struck on the head with the candlestick.

Wadsworth locks the weapons in a cupboard. He attempts to throw the key away, but a stranded motorist arrives, and Wadsworth locks him in the lounge. While the guests search the mansion in pairs, an unknown individual burns the blackmail evidence, unlocks the cupboard and kills the motorist with the wrench. Discovering a secret passage, Colonel Mustard and Miss Scarlet find themselves locked in the lounge with the motorist's corpse until Yvette shoots the door open with the revolver.

A police officer investigating the motorist's abandoned car arrives to use the phone. The mansion receives a call from J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI, which Wadsworth takes alone. After distracting the police officer successfully, the guests resume their search until another unknown person turns off the electricity. Yvette, the police officer, and a singing telegram girl who arrived while the lights were out are murdered with the rope, lead pipe, and revolver, respectively.

Wadsworth and the others regroup after he turns the electricity back on, and he reveals he knows who the murderer is. Recreating the night's events, Wadsworth explains that the five other victims were Mr. Boddy's informants. An evangelist interrupts the gathering, but Mrs. Peacock turns him away by slamming the door, and Wadsworth continues his explanation, with one of three possible outcomes.

How It Might Have Happened

Yvette murdered the cook and Mr. Boddy on orders from Miss Scarlet, for whom she once worked as a call girl. Scarlet then killed Yvette and the other victims. Planning to sell the guests' secrets, Scarlet prepares to shoot Wadsworth, who asserts there are no more bullets, causing them to bicker over how many shots there have been, and disarms Scarlet as law enforcement raid the house. The evangelist, revealed to be the police chief, congratulates Wadsworth – an undercover FBI agent. Wadsworth attempts to demonstrate the revolver was empty, but a remaining bullet brings down a chandelier, narrowly missing Colonel Mustard whilst Miss Scarlet laughs about being correct.

How About This?

Mrs. Peacock killed all the victims to conceal her taking bribes from foreign powers. She holds the others at gunpoint as they allow her to leave. Wadsworth reveals he is an undercover FBI agent sent to investigate her. While escaping to her car, Mrs. Peacock is surprised by the evangelist, who is revealed to be the police chief, as the police raid the property. After the police chief assures her arrest, Wadsworth asks if anyone would care for some fruit or dessert.

What Really Happened

Apart from Mr. Green, everyone has killed at least one person: Professor Plum missed Mr. Boddy with the revolver but later killed him with the candlestick; Mrs. Peacock stabbed the cook, her former employee; Colonel Mustard bludgeoned the motorist, who was his driver during World War II; Mrs. White throttled Yvette out of jealousy and hatred for the latter's affair with her husband, whom she had also killed; and Miss Scarlet clubbed the cop, whom she was bribing. Wadsworth reveals that he shot the singing telegram girl (the patient Professor Plum had the affair with) and that he is the real Mr. Boddy; the person that Professor Plum killed was Mr. Boddy's butler. With his spies and informants disposed of, he plans to continue blackmailing the guests. Mr. Green then draws his own revolver, kills Wadsworth, and reveals himself to be an undercover FBI agent and that the earlier phone call from J. Edgar Hoover was for him. Green then opens the front door, bringing in the authorities to arrest the others as the evangelist is revealed to be the police chief. After telling the police chief they all did it, but he has killed Mr. Boddy in the hall with the revolver, Mr. Green says: "Okay, Chief, take 'em away! I'm gonna go home and sleep with my wife!"

Sergeant Nico Toscani, who traces his roots to Palermo, Sicily, is a detective in the Chicago Police Department's vice squad. At an early age he had become interested in martial arts, and moved to Japan to study them. In 1969, Toscani was recruited to join the CIA by Nelson Fox and was involved in covert operations on the Vietnamese-Cambodian border during the Vietnam War. There, he became disgusted with DCI Kurt Zagon, who tortured prisoners. A stand-off occurred when Toscani tried to stop a torture session, and he left the CIA. Toscani returned to Chicago, joined the police department, and got married.

Toscani and his new partner Detective Delores "Jacks" Jackson are investigating a drug ring, and after busting two of the dealers, including Salvadorian drug lord Tony Salvano, Toscani finds C-4 explosive. Shortly afterward, the men that Toscani and Jackson arrested are released at the request of federal officials, and Toscani is ordered to stand down. Later, the priest of Toscani's parish is killed in an explosion during Mass. Fox calls Toscani and tells him to move his family to a safer location, saying that he is in danger. Under pressure from the feds, Toscani is asked to turn in his badge. He eventually discovers that the dealers he busted are linked to Zagon, who is still with the CIA, and who is being accused of human rights violations by a Central American priest who was being sheltered by Toscani's priest. While Zagon is torturing the priest, Toscani bursts in and a gun battle ensues. Detectives Lukich and Jackson are wounded during the shootout, and Toscani has to flee.

Senator Ernest Harrison is investigating Zagon's group to reveal their covert operations and drug dealing. When Toscani finds out that Zagon killed the priest and is planning to kill Harrison, he goes after Zagon. Toscani confronts Fox, but they are interrupted by Zagon's men. Fox is killed and Toscani is captured. He is held in the kitchen of a hotel during a Harrison campaign rally. Before Zagon can kill Harrison, Toscani breaks free and kills Zagon and all of his remaining men. After, Toscani meets Harrison, who has been informed of everything.

Harrison promises justice and Toscani says he is now willing to testify about his experiences with Zagon and covert operations in the CIA.

Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent and decorated soldier John Hatcher returns from Colombia, where drug dealers killed his partner Chico, and John killed the dealers. As a result of Chico's death and years of dead-end work, Hatcher retires and heads to his family's hometown of Lincoln Heights, in suburban Chicago. He visits the local high school to meet old friend and former U.S. Army buddy Max Keller who works there as a football coach and physical education teacher.

As John and Max celebrate their reunion at a club, a gunfight breaks out between local drug dealers and a Jamaican gang at the venue. The gang, an unnamed Jamaican Posse, is led by a notorious psychotic drug lord named Screwface. John arrests one of Screwface's henchmen as the gunfight ends.

News of Posse crimes occurring in Chicago and across the United States spread as the Posse expands its operations and recruits more members. The next day, Screwface sends his henchmen to do a drive-by shooting on the house where John, his sister Melissa, and Melissa's 12-year-old daughter Tracey live. Tracey is injured and hospitalized in critical condition.

In the subsequent investigation, John encounters a gangster named Jimmy Fingers, whom he is forced to kill. A Jamaican gangster named Nesta arrives and is subdued by John, who asks about Screwface. Nesta gives information but tells him to go after Screwface alone and jumps out the window to his death. The next day, John discovers a strange symbol engraved on a carpet, and with the help of Jamaican voodoo and gang expert Leslie Davalos, a detective for the Chicago Police Department, learns that it is an African black magic ideogram symbolizing blood that is used to mark their crimes. John decides to come out of retirement to join Max in a battle against Screwface.

On the night of their rendezvous, John gets a phone call from Melissa, which is cut short when Screwface and his men invade the Hatcher household. They leave upon John's arrival, and Melissa is unharmed. The next day, John and Max encounter another batch of Screwface's henchmen, resulting in a car chase. The chase ends in a high-end jewelry store, wherein two henchmen are wounded and one is killed by Hatcher amidst the chaos of shoppers fleeing the scene.

Later, during a meeting with Leslie, she informs John that the only way to stop the Jamaican Posse is to bring down Screwface. That evening, Screwface ambushes John under the guise of a construction crew; he plants a Molotov cocktail in John's car. John barely escapes before the car explodes.

John and Max then team up with Charles, a Jamaican-born detective of the Chicago police who has been trailing Screwface for five years. They acquire weaponry from a local weapons dealer, and, after testing the arsenal, they head for Kingston, Jamaica. Upon arrival, Max and Charles ask people in the streets for information about Screwface. A Jamaican local presents them a photo of a woman who is acquainted with Screwface and informs them of a nightclub which she frequents. John meets the woman in the nightclub, where she provides him details of Screwface such as her frequent hangouts with him, his drug business, and the address of his mansion, as well as the death of her sister by Screwface's hands. The woman also informs John of a cryptic clue: the secret of Screwface's power is that he has two heads and four eyes.

By nightfall, John, Max, and Charles (disguised as members of the Posse) head for Screwface's mansion. Secretly infiltrating the premises through a nearby plantation, John eliminates three roving henchmen on the estate's balcony with his silenced sniper rifle, plants a bomb at a nearby power station, and infiltrates the inner grounds. While Max and Charles keep a lookout and observe the party in progress, John detonates the bomb, causing the party to erupt into chaos. With Max and Charles opening fire on the Posse gang, John enters the building and disposes of many henchmen. He makes his way to a sacrificial area, but gets captured by Screwface and his remaining henchmen. John manages to break free and kill or wound every henchman before decapitating Screwface with his own sword.

Upon returning to Chicago, the trio display Screwface's severed head to the Chicago Posse to try to convince them to end their crimes and leave town. However, Charles is impaled by a man who is revealed to be Screwface's twin brother, making the gang believe that Screwface has returned from the dead using voodoo. A gunfight breaks out wherein Max holds off the henchmen despite being shot in the leg while John dispatches more gang members before he engages Screwface's twin in a sword fight. The fight moves to a nightclub owned by the twin, where Hatcher gives him more fatal injuries by gouging his eyes and breaking his spine before dropping him down an elevator shaft, impaling him in the process. As the surviving Posse members discover their boss' corpse, their fates remain ambiguous, although the death of the Screwface twins implies their arrest by law enforcement.

John leaves the scene carrying Charles' body with Max limping next to him as they walk off into the early morning.

In 1983, Mason Storm (Steven Seagal), a Los Angeles police detective investigates a mob meeting that takes place by a pier. He records a shadowy figure who assures the mob they can rely on his political support. Mason is spotted, but escapes. Unaware that he is monitored by corrupt cops, Mason informs his partner, Becker and his friend Lt. O’Malley that he has evidence of corruption.

Mason hides the videotape in his house. When he goes upstairs, a hit squad composed of corrupt policemen, including Jack Axel and Max Quentero, break in and proceed to murder Mason's wife and shoot him. Mason's young son, Sonny, escapes out of a window. The corrupt policemen frame Mason, making it look like a murder-suicide. At the same time, assassins kill Mason's partner. Later at the hospital, Mason is first pronounced dead, but is then discovered to be alive, although in a coma. To prevent the assassins from finishing the job, Lieutenant O'Malley tells the medics to keep Mason's status a secret.

Seven years later, Mason wakes from his coma. Andy Stewart (Kelly LeBrock), one of his nurses, makes a phone call, which is intercepted by corrupt police officers. They send Axel to finish the job and kill the nurses to whom Mason might have talked. Mason realizes that he is still in danger, but his muscles have atrophied to where he can barely move. He manages to get to an elevator, and when Andy sees her co-workers killed, she helps Mason escape.

Needing time to recuperate, Andy takes Mason to a friend's house, where Mason uses his knowledge of acupuncture, moxibustion and other meditation techniques to recover his strength. While training, Mason hears a commercial for Senator Vernon Trent and recognizes the voice from the pier. Mason contacts O'Malley, who supplies him with weapons and tells him that his son is still alive. O'Malley adopted Sonny and sent him to a private school so that he would be out of danger. He arranges to meet O'Malley and his now-teenage son, Sonny, at a train station later. After O'Malley leaves, Senator Trent's men find the house and attempt to kill Andy and Mason, but they both manage to escape.

Posing as a real estate agent, Mason recovers the hidden videotape from his old house. O'Malley and Sonny arrive at the train station, but are confronted by some of the Senator's men. Sonny is able to run away with the tape, but O'Malley is killed. When Mason arrives, he sees Sonny running away from Quentero and Nolan. Mason catches up with the men, subdues Nolan by breaking his leg and throwing him in a trash bin. He then reaches Quentero before Sonny is grabbed, and the two fight one another. Mason beats up Quentero and recognizes him as one of the men who took part in the assault on Mason's home and the murder of his wife. Mason then proceeds to snap Quentero's neck, killing him and saving his son. Mason then goes after Senator Trent.

At the Senator's mansion, Mason sneaks in and manages to eliminate the Senator's men one by one. Mason fights with Axel in the billiard room and avenges Felicia by jamming a piece of a pool cue into Axel's neck, killing him. Next, Mason leaves a death taunt to Capt. Hulland, another corrupt cop who betrayed Mason to Trent, and stalks Hulland through the house before cornering the corrupt captain near the fireplace. Mason then strangles Hulland with his necktie and breaks his neck, killing him. Mason finally confronts Senator Trent and holds him at gunpoint when the police storm the mansion. However, they reveal that they had already seen the film and knew that Mason was set up. Trent is arrested, and Mason is reunited with Andy and his son and walks off as the image from the videotape is played on the news, showing Trent coming out of the shadows briefly.

Original ending

Originally, the movie ended with Mason actually killing Trent, and some time later Mason, Andy and Sonny attending a funeral for O'Malley. The theatrical trailer shows parts of the original ending.

The battleship arrives at Pearl Harbor, where then-President George H. W. Bush announces that the ship will be decommissioned in California. Casey Ryback, a Chief Petty Officer assigned as a culinary specialist, prepares meals in celebration of the birthday of Commanding Officer Captain Adams, against the orders of Executive Officer Commander Krill, who is having food and entertainment brought by helicopter. Krill provokes a brawl with Ryback. Unable to imprison Ryback in the brig without clearance from the captain, Krill detains Ryback in a freezer and places Marine Private Nash on guard. A helicopter lands on the ship's deck with a musical band and a group of caterers (who are in fact a band of mercenaries led by disillusioned former CIA operative William "Bill" Strannix), and also with ''Playboy'' Playmate Jordan Tate.

Strannix's forces seize control of the ship with Krill's help. Several officers are killed, including Captain Adams. The surviving ship's company are imprisoned in the forecastle, except for some stragglers in unsecured areas. Ryback hears the gunshots and persuades Nash to call the bridge, inadvertently alerting Strannix of this loose end. Strannix sends two mercenaries to eliminate Ryback and Nash. Nash is killed, but Ryback slays the assassins, runs into Tate, who was sedated during the takeover, and reluctantly allows her to tag along.

Strannix and his men seize control of the ship's weapon systems, shooting down a jet sent to investigate, and plan on covering their escape by using missiles to obliterate tracking systems in Pearl Harbor. Strannix intends to sell the ship's Tomahawks by unloading them onto a submarine he previously stole from North Korea, as revenge for the CIA trying to assassinate him prior to the events of the film.

Strannix contacts Admiral Bates at the Pentagon to make demands, but then learns that Ryback has escaped. Krill discovers that Ryback is a former Navy SEAL with extensive training in counterterrorism tactics; Captain Adams kept him on as a cook after Ryback was demoted for striking a superior officer because a mission in Panama went wrong due to inadequate intel, and Krill was unaware of this beforehand as Ryback's file was kept in the captain's personal safe. Ryback contacts Bates and is told that the Navy plans to send a SEAL team to retake the ship. Ryback moves throughout the ship, eliminating any hijackers he comes across. To keep the missile-theft plan in place, Krill activates the fire suppression system in the forecastle, leaving the crew members to drown. The terrorists correctly assume this will force Ryback to refocus his efforts to rescue his crew mates, and set up an ambush in anticipation.

Ryback and Tate come upon six imprisoned sailors. Together, they overcome the ambush and shut off the water in the forecastle. Ryback shuts down ''Missouri'' s weapon systems to allow the incoming Navy SEALs to land, but the submarine crew shoots down the helicopter carrying the Navy SEALs with shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. The Pentagon responds by ordering an air strike that will sink ''Missouri''. Strannix regains control of the ship's weapon systems and loads the Tomahawks onto the submarine. With the aid of a retired World War II gunner's mate among the rescued sailors, Ryback uses the battleship's 16 inch guns to attack the submarine, killing Krill and everyone on board.

His plan foiled, Strannix launches two retaliatory nuclear-tipped Tomahawks towards Honolulu. As the sailors recapture the ship, Ryback finds his way into the control room, where he encounters Strannix; Ryback recognizes Strannix as his former superior officer from multiple operations they participated in while deployed abroad and the two engage in a knife fight. Ryback gains the upper hand and kills Strannix, then uses the launch code disk needed to destroy the Tomahawk missiles. A jet destroys one of the missiles, and the other is deactivated just in time; the Navy calls off its airstrike.

The remaining crew members are freed as the ship sails towards San Francisco harbor. Ryback kisses Tate. A funeral ceremony for Captain Adams is held on the deck of ''Missouri'', showing Ryback saluting the captain's casket in his formal dress uniform with full decorations.

Gino Felino is an NYPD detective from Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, who has strong ties within his neighborhood. Gino and his partner Bobby Lupo wait to bust up a multimillion-dollar drug deal, but Gino sees a pimp violently assaulting one of his girls and intervenes. Shortly afterward, Richie Madano murders Bobby in broad daylight in front of his wife, Laurie, and his two children.

Richie is a crack addict who grew up with Gino and Bobby. He has become psychotic and homicidal due to rage and drug use, and seems not to care about the consequences of his actions. Richie then murders a woman at a traffic stop because she abruptly tells him to move his car. He heads off into Brooklyn alongside his goons, who are horrified by what he does, but continue to work alongside him.

Gino knows that Richie is not going to leave the neighborhood. Ronnie Donziger, his captain, gives him the clearance for a manhunt and provides him with a shotgun and an unmarked car. Gino visits his mob connection Frankie and his boss Don Vittorio, and he tells them he will not get out of the way of their own plans to take out Richie, whom they view as a loose cannon. While driving, Gino sees a fellow driver discard something moving from his car. Upon investigating, Gino rescues an abandoned German Shepherd puppy.

Gino starts the hunt for Richie at a bar run by Richie's brother Vinnie Madano. Vinnie and his friends all refuse to provide information, so Gino beats up a number of them. He still does not find out where Richie is, but his concern about getting an attitude problem has been taken care of. Gino attempts to get Richie out of hiding by arresting his sister Pattie and by talking to his estranged, elderly father.

Afterwards, Gino and his wife, Vicky, who are in the middle of a divorce, decide not to get one and reconcile, but they, along with their son, Tony, are attacked by Richie's men when they storm into their apartment. Gino kills them all and saves his wife and son. Richie later comes back to the bar and beats up Vinnie for not killing Gino when the situation was one cop against a bar full of armed men. He also has information leaked to the mob that he is at the bar, then emerges from hiding and ambushes the mob's hitmen in a shoot-out.

After visiting a number of local hangouts and establishments trying to find information, Gino discovers Richie killed Bobby because Bobby was having an affair with two women – Richie's girlfriend, Roxanne Ford, and a waitress named Terry Malloy. When Gino goes to Roxanne's home, he finds she is dead. Gino believes that Richie killed Roxanne before he killed Bobby. Gino goes to Laurie's house and tells the widow what is going on. In Laurie's purse, Gino finds the picture that Richie dropped on Bobby's body after killing him. Bobby turns out to have been a corrupt cop who had wanted a money-making lifestyle like Richie's, and Laurie knew Bobby was corrupt. Laurie had found a picture of Bobby and Roxanne having sex. She had given Richie the picture out of jealousy, never expecting Richie to kill Bobby for sleeping with Roxanne. Laurie took the picture away from where Richie dropped it on Bobby because she wanted to protect her husband's reputation.

Following a tip from his local snitch Picolino, Gino eventually finds Richie in a house in the old neighborhood having a party. Gino kills or wounds all of Richie's men. Gino then finds Richie and fights him hand-to-hand. After beating Richie senseless, Gino finally kills him by stabbing him in the forehead with a corkscrew. The mobsters arrive soon after, also intent on killing Richie. Gino uses the lead mobster's gun to shoot the already-dead Richie several times, then tells him to return to his boss and take credit for Richie's death.

Gino and his wife adopt the puppy as a family pet, naming him Coraggio (Italian for courage or bravery). While out walking, they encounter the same man who abandoned the puppy earlier, and Gino confronts him. When the man attacks him, Gino defends himself, knocking the man down. Gino and his wife laugh as the puppy urinates on the man's head.

Aegis Oil operates in upstream and midstream oil production, and owns various oil refineries and rigs in Alaska, where the company faces great opposition from the public due to the increasing environmental damage done by its operations. Aegis had purchased the oil production rights from the local Tribal Council 20 years prior; however, the rights will revert to the natives if Aegis 1, the company's newest oil platform and biggest refinery, is not online within a certain deadline. Further, thirteen days before the said deadline, provisions of blowout preventers to Aegis turn out to be defective, and shipments of adequate replacements end up being delayed up to 90 days.

Unable to legally complete the rig with safe equipment without missing the deadline and losing the oil rights, Aegis's CEO Michael Jennings forces his workers to use substandard preventers. Rig foreman Hugh Palmer is aware of this; as he predicts, his rig suffers a blowout due to the faulty preventer. It takes Forrest Taft, a firefighting and blowout specialist in dealing with oil drilling-related fires, to extinguish the blaze.

Initially skeptical of Palmer's claims, Taft discovers the delays in the equipment shipments via restricted computer files. After being informed of Palmer's efforts to alert the EPA about the use of the substandard equipment and of Taft's restricted file access, Jennings arranges for them to be eliminated by his Chief Security Officer, MacGruder and his assistant Otto. The two trash Palmer's cabin and brutally murder him, then leave his corpse in a seemingly damaged pump station rigged to explode, which Jennings lures Taft into under the guise of an emergency. Taft discovers the trap and barely manages to escape as MacGruder sets off the explosives. He survives and is rescued by Masu, the daughter of Inuit tribe chief Silook. Jennings publicly blames the recent accidents at Aegis facilities on Palmer and Taft, stating that they both died in the latter explosion.

Taft receives care from Silook's tribe. At the behest of Silook, he undergoes a vision quest in which he sees the full truth and vows to make amends for his part in Aegis's crimes. Meanwhile, when the Aegis security team is unable to locate Taft's body, Jennings figures he has survived and orders him found. They track him to Silook's village and when the tribe refuses to cooperate, a confrontation ensues, ending with MacGruder fatally shooting Silook. Taft returns in time to have one last talk with Silook before he succumbs to his wounds, vowing to avenge him and bring down Aegis.

Taft and Masu make their way to Palmer's cabin. While gathering supplies, they find his incriminating disk containing proof of Aegis's crimes. Meanwhile, Otto and three Aegis security guards track the pair back to the cabin and proceed to storm the place. Taft successfully ambushes the aggressors, quickly killing all of them. He and Masu then access the incriminating disc and discover that Jennings intends to use the refinery to cause a spill in order to keep the oil rights, and later profit off the empty oil field by refilling it with toxic substances. With little time left to alert authorities, Taft decides to resort to violence in order to prevent Aegis from committing the crime.

Meanwhile, Jennings hires a group of New Orleans-based mercenaries led by Stone to prevent Taft from stopping Aegis 1 from going online. While being pursued by Stone's men, Taft and Masu collect weapons and explosives stashed by him in the mountains and then proceed to sneak into the refinery complex. Taft begins to effectively sabotage Aegis 1 by killing the main power and forcing a reboot, then releasing hydrochloric acid gas inside the refinery. This causes the evacuation of the plant, and the immediate withdrawal of an FBI anti-terrorism unit summoned by Liles. Stone suggests from these methods that Taft is an ex-CIA. Taft then enters the Aegis 1 control room, fatally sabotage the rig's safety measures, and places C-4 on the preventers to implode them and prevent the spill.

MacGruder and Liles attempt to escape, but Taft kills the former and the latter is killed in an explosion while making her getaway. Jennings heads for the platform, guarded by Stone and his crew. Taft then enters the rig, eliminating every opposing mercenary on the way to the preventer, then confronts Jennings, and drops him to his death into a pool of oil sludge leaked from the faulty preventer. He and Masu then leave the rig just as the hidden C-4 charges detonate, causing a chain of explosions that ravages the whole plant. They flee the exploding refinery in an Aegis truck, escaping as Aegis 1 is completely torn down by the fire.

Later, Taft, far from being arrested for industrial sabotage and multiple murders, delivers a speech at the Alaska State Capitol about the dangers of oil pollution and the companies that are endangering the ecosystem.

Lieutenant Colonel Austin Travis leads an unsuccessful Special Forces black ops raid on a Chechen mafia safe house in Trieste, Italy, to recover a stolen Soviet nerve agent, DZ-5. Three months later, Oceanic Airlines Flight 343, a Boeing 747-200, leaves Athens bound for Washington, D.C., with over 400 passengers aboard including Nagi Hassan, lieutenant of the imprisoned terrorist leader El Sayed Jaffa. Hassan and his men hijack the flight, demanding Jaffa's release. Meanwhile, just moments before the hijacking, a suicide bomber working for Jaffa destroys a London Marriott hotel restaurant.

Dr. David Grant, the U.S. Army intelligence consultant behind the botched raid, is summoned to a meeting at the Pentagon to plan an operation to retake the plane. Grant doubts Hassan's demands, suspecting he engineered Jaffa's capture, and intends to use the 747 to detonate a bomb loaded with the DZ-5 in U.S. airspace. The Pentagon authorizes a mid-air insertion of Travis' special operations team onto the hijacked airliner using the experimental "Remora F117x" aircraft. Grant and DARPA engineer Dennis Cahill reluctantly join the mission.

The Remora intercepts and docks with the airliner. Grant, Cahill, and team members Cappy, Baker, Louie and Rat successfully board but Cappy is injured after a fall. Severe turbulence strains the docking tunnel. Travis sacrifices himself by closing the 747's hatch before it decompresses. The Remora is destroyed along with the team's communications equipment, leaving the Pentagon unaware of their survival. They conduct a covert search for the bomb, hoping to neutralize it and storm the cabin. Grant accidentally reveals who he is to flight attendant Jean, but successfully recruits her to assist their search, despite Hassan's suspicions.

The team locates the bomb and Cappy, despite his injuries, guides Cahill in disarming it until they discover its arming device has an additional, remote-controlled trigger. Jaffa, released by U.S officials in an attempt to resolve the situation, calls Hassan from a private jet to tell him he is on his way to Algeria, but Hassan abruptly ends the call. Grant and the others realize Hassan's men are unaware of the bomb and Hassan's true intentions, after he kills one of them for rebuking him. He also inadvertently reveals that one of the passengers is a sleeper agent and the trigger-man for the bomb.

The Pentagon dispatches U.S. Navy F-14 Tomcats to shoot down the 747, prompting Hassan to execute U.S. Senator Mavros (a passenger) as a warning. Baker uses Morse code via the 747's taillights to signal the fighters that the team made it aboard, requesting an extra ten minutes to neutralize the bomb and retake the 747, despite already crossing into U.S. airspace. Jean spots a man with an electronic device and informs Grant, who enters the passenger cabin to take the suspected individual by surprise, only to find he is merely a diamond thief. Grant spots the real sleeper, Demou, and fights him for the detonator. Hassan attempts to shoot Grant, but is himself shot by an on-board air marshal.

The commandos storm the cabin as a firefight ensues. Grant struggles to wrestle the detonator from Demou's grip while Baker and Rat gun-down several terrorists. Louie assists Grant by fatally shooting Demou and eliminating the remaining terrorists. Demou, however, manages to arm the bomb before dying, and stray bullets from a terrorist's weapon pierce a window causing explosive decompression. The bomb is disarmed just in time by Cappy and Cahill as the 747 stabilizes. Hassan kills the pilots and damages the controls, before being shot and killed by Rat.

Despite his limited flying experience and poor flying technique, Grant takes control of the 747 and attempts a landing but misses the approach to Dulles International Airport. Grant recognizes the area surrounding his training airfield, Frederick Field, and attempts to land the 747 there. With Jean's assistance, Grant successfully lands the airliner and the passengers are safely evacuated. Grant is saluted by Baker, Louie, Rat and Cappy for his leadership before being summoned to the Pentagon.

Following his retirement from the United States Navy, Casey Ryback settles in Denver, Colorado, where he starts and runs a restaurant business. Sometime later, his estranged brother, James Ryback, perishes in a plane crash. Upon receiving news of the incident, Casey meets James's daughter, Sarah, whom he will accompany to Los Angeles to attend his funeral. The two board the Grand Continental, a train traveling through the Rocky Mountains from Denver to Los Angeles. On board, they befriend a porter named Bobby Zachs and the train's chefs.

As the train reaches the Rocky Mountains, a group of terrorists flag it down and murder the engineer and brakeman. The group, led by former U.S. government employee and computer genius Travis Dane and his second-in-command Marcus Penn, cuts the train phone lines and takes passengers and staff hostage, herding them into the last two cars. Casey kills one terrorist, then slips away. Dane worked on Grazer One, a top secret military satellite particle weapon for underground targets. The military fired Dane, who later faked his suicide.

Dane threatens two former Department of Defense colleagues with burning needles in their eyes unless they reveal codes to take over Grazer. Despite their disclosures, after the codes are confirmed to work, they are thrown from the train over a deep valley.

Middle Eastern terrorists have offered Dane $1 billion to destroy the Eastern seaboard by using Grazer to target a nuclear reactor located under the Pentagon. Dane demonstrates Grazer to investors by destroying a Chinese biological weapons facility that was passing itself off as a fertilizer production plant. After one investor offers an additional $100 million, despite the weapon's primary intention for subterranean targets, Dane destroys an airliner carrying the investor's ex-wife.

The U.S. government has difficulty locating Dane or Grazer. When officials destroy what they think is Grazer, Dane explains the NSA's best intelligence satellite was destroyed. As long as the train keeps moving, his location cannot be determined.

With Zachs' help, Casey takes matters into his own hands. He faxes a message to the owner of the Mile High Cafe, who relays the word to Admiral Bates. Bates quickly understands that Dane and the terrorists are on the train, and reluctantly approves a mission by two F-117 stealth bombers to destroy the train.

Zachs discovers that they are on the wrong tracks and are on a collision course with a Southern Pacific bulk freight train carrying gasoline tank cars. Casey kills the mercenaries one by one and releases the hostages, but Dane uses his computer skills to find the Stealth bombers and re-target Grazer to knock them out before they complete their mission. Aware of Casey's past, Penn uses Sarah as a bait to lure him to a fight, but Casey gains the upper hand and fatally breaks his neck.

Casey finds Dane about to depart in a chopper hovering over the train. When Dane informs Casey that there is no way to stop the satellite from destroying Washington, Casey shoots him. The bullet destroys his computer and injures Dane, who falls out of a window of the train. Control of the satellite is restored at the Pentagon and it is destroyed by remote control one second before it would have fired on the Pentagon, just before the two trains collide.

The crash happens on a trestle, resulting in an explosion that destroys the bridge and kills Scotty, the mercenary driving the train. Casey races through the exploding train, and grabs a rope ladder hanging from the chopper. Dane, who survived the gunshot and the crash, also catches onto the ladder. He attempts to climb onto the helicopter, screaming that he and Casey should join forces. Casey shuts the door, severing Dane's fingers and the latter falls to his death.

Casey informs the Pentagon that the passengers are safe, having previously detached the last two cars from the rest of the train. Later on, Sarah and Casey pay their final respects at James' gravestone.

Jack Cole was once a CIA operative known as "The Glimmer Man," because he could move so quickly and quietly through the jungle that his victims would only see a glimmer before they died. Having retired from Central Intelligence, Cole versed in Buddhism and unaccustomed to working with others has become a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department.

Cole is partnered with tough, no-nonsense detective Jim Campbell... who has little patience for Cole's New Age philosophies and "outsider" attitude. Cole and Campbell must set aside their differences when they're assigned to track down a serial killer known as "The Family Man," named for his habit of killing entire households.

The Family Man's latest victims turn out to be Cole's former wife Ellen and her current husband Andrew Dunleavy. When Cole's fingerprints are found on Ellen's body, he and Campbell suspect that Smith - Jack's former superior in the CIA - may be connected with the killings. Cole contacts Smith, who (unbeknownst to him and Campbell) has been working with local crime boss Frank Deverell.

Cole and Campbell receive a tip which leads them to Christopher Maynard. Maynard insists that the Family Man murders were actually committed by more than one killer. Only the slayings that occurred prior to Jack's arrival in Los Angeles were Maynard's work; more recently, a second party has been massacring households and blaming it on Maynard... whom Cole is forced to shoot in self defense.

Seeking a lead on the "other" Family Man, Cole goes to the home of Celia Rostov: Deverell's Russian translator and a recent victim of the serial killer. Jack finds out that the Rostovs had tickets to Russia, paid for by Deverell's company. The Family Man makes an unsuccessful attempt on the lives of both Cole and Campbell, blowing up the latter's apartment. It is revealed that the Family Man works for both Deverell and Smith, who have murder contracts out on both of the detectives... and also on Johnny, Deverell's own stepson.

Cole and Campbell chat with Johnny's girlfriend Millie, who tells them where to find Johnny. The detectives trick and kill a hitman sent by Johnny's stepfather. Johnny informs Campbell and Cole that Donald Cunningham, Deverell's private security chief, is the other Family Man... whose killings were confused with Maynard's. Johnny also reveals Smith's partnership with Deverell.

The detectives confront Smith, who reveals that Deverell has been smuggling chemical weapons into the USA from Russia... and selling said arms to the Serbian underworld. Smith is arranging contacts for the deal, which is being cut by the Russian Liberation Fighters (aka the Organizatsiya). The sale has been scheduled to take place at a welfare hotel in Downtown Los Angeles.

When Cole and Campbell storm the hotel to disrupt the weapons deal, Cunningham kills Deverell (because Deverell set up Cunningham for the LAPD, in order to clear himself of the arms-running charges) and wounds Jim. Cole fights Cunningham, who is finally tossed through a window and impaled on a wrought iron fence. Campbell half-jokes that Cole has brought him nothing but bad luck ever since they became partners. Cole says he'll keep that in mind, as Campbell is driven off to the hospital.

In the peaceful Appalachian hills of eastern Kentucky, toxins are being dumped into abandoned mines, causing environmental havoc, but the locals, mindful of their jobs and the power of the mine owners, can do nothing. EPA CID agent Jack Taggert is sent to investigate, after a fellow agent, revealed to be Jack’s friend and partner, is found dead, probably not by accident. The EPA has received an anonymous letter from Jackson, Kentucky, and Taggert goes there undercover to continue his colleague's investigations.

It is discovered that Hanner Coal Company, owned by Orin Hanner Sr., is being paid to dump toxic waste into an abandoned coal mine shaft, so Jack is assigned to go to the small town of Jackson, where his cover is that of assistant and volunteer carpenter to a local church. He stays in a room in the church's basement, and begins his cover work by repairing the roof at a house where one of the children is sick because of the pollution. He attempts to question the family, but they do not have much to say. He has little better results elsewhere; even the man who tipped off the EPA is decidedly taciturn. While testing the water, Taggert wanders into a local marijuana field, and is accosted by the growers. After disarming them, he tells them that he has no interest in arresting them.

The men responsible for the other agent's death soon notice Taggert's presence. As a newcomer to the small local community, he is threatened by Hanner's son Orin, Jr. (Brad Hunt), the incompetent local tool of the company, the corrupt local Sheriff Lloyd Foley, and several thugs that work for them. The thugs in question start by leaving two rattlesnakes in his dwelling; Taggert responds by capturing the snakes alive and leaving them in the pickup that the thugs were driving, causing them to crash. Soon after, five of them attack him while he is buying supplies, and receive a severe beating as a result. Orin then orders one of his truck drivers to arrange an "accident" by running him off the road, but Taggert escapes alive while the driver is killed after falling off an open-pit mine cliff.

While these conflicts are occurring, Taggert strikes up a relationship with Sarah Kellogg, a young woman who lives in the town. She is regarded as an outcast because of her father's murder, a crime of which she was accused but not convicted. Eventually, she agrees to testify against Orin and his people, much to the anger of her estranged brother Earl, who actually committed the murder, after their father found out about his sexual abuse against her. Earl is revealed to be working as one of Hanner's thugs, and sets the church on fire, in the process killing the preacher who was helping Taggert. He then attempts to collapse the mine with Taggert inside it. Taggert escapes, while several mercenaries are killed, including Earl.

With evidence and a witness, Taggert calls the FBI to take Sarah into protective custody. However, they are revealed to be corrupt, and a firefight ensues. Taggert kills one agent, then sends the second back to Orin with a message that he'll be coming for him next. However, when Orin is arrested and charged, he gets off with a slap on the wrist for the environmental violations. Taggert goes back into the town and fights his way past the last of Orin Jr's thugs, then demands the truth from him. Orin agrees to turn state's evidence, implicating his father on racketeering, conspiracy, and murder charges. Taggert goes to a casino to arrest Orin, Sr. Upon hearing about the reception awaiting him in federal prison, Orin produces a gun and resists, but Taggert shoots him in the shoulder and he is taken into custody. Taggert then returns to Jackson, where he is reunited with Sarah.

12-year-old J.J. Somerled (Frankie Nasso) runs away because his mother died and he has been placed in the care of an abusive foster mother. He takes his electronic keyboard, and lives in Central Park in New York City. He learns a lot, and meets a lot of people there including a person called "The Guardian" (Harvey Keitel).

A SWAT team converges on the house of a United States Senator, who is being held hostage. The bomb squad arrives; Frank Glass (Steven Seagal) finds a bomb in the basement and works to disarm it while the SWAT team is in a shootout with the hostage takers. Glass disarms the bomb but deems it too easy, believing it was designed to mislead him. The real bomb detonates, killing everyone inside.

A year later in San Francisco, narcotics cops Ray Nettles (Tom Sizemore) and partner Art "Fuzzy" Rice (Nas) arrest a suspect on drug charges. Ray lets a woman go who pleads for her and her child; Fuzzy tells Ray to get some help for his "demons" - he has never mourned the car bombing death of his wife and son. They see people entering a warehouse late at night and investigate. Ray apprehends a woman and three men converge on him; Fuzzy is shot by their leader (Dennis Hopper) and the three men flee. Ray arrests the woman, Claire (Jaime Pressly), but she refuses to say anything about the men. She is wearing an odd-looking bracelet which Nettles takes to the bomb squad for Glass to look over. The bracelet is found to contain detonation cord and Semtex explosive. The leader tells the police they have one hour to release Claire; when they do not, he bombs a bar.

Ray takes Glass back to the warehouse where they find a French cigarette and matchbook from a jazz club. They go to the club and kill one of the bombers, disarming his bomb. Ray questions Claire again; she reveals the bomber's names - Alex Swan, the leader, and Vershbow, the surviving member. She claims that no matter what happens, she will be killed for getting caught, and has decided to cooperate. Swan intends to plant a bomb at the police station, but Vershbow gets cold feet and forces Swan to give him the bomb at gunpoint. The police corner him and Glass apparently prevents the detonation, but Swan detonates several more bombs using a pay phone.

Swan arranges a massive bombing with a crew led by Vincent Cruichshank (Ice-T). Ray convinces the police to release Claire, hoping to avert another bombing, and they give her a tracking device. Once she meets up with Swan, however, she disables the tracker and works with him. They discuss their upcoming "masterpiece," and Claire goes to a phone booth to activate the bomb. She detonates a car bomb in Swan's car, instead. Confused, Glass tells Ray they must both be dead. Seeing City Hall on TV, Ray remembers Claire's story about her husband and realizes she was the mastermind all along. They rush to City Hall and split up - Ray goes to the basement and Glass to the roof. Ray is forced to disarm a bomb with advice over the radio from Glass, who coaches him to relax and forget his grief, but the device is a decoy. Glass disarms the real bomb on the roof.

Detroit Police Department's detective Orin Boyd (Steven Seagal) is a cop in Detroit's 21st precinct, who saves the Vice President of the United States (Christopher Lawford) from a right-wing Michigan militant group trying to kill him. As Boyd saved the Vice President's life via disobeying orders and killing all the militants, captain Frank Daniels (Bruce McGill) transfers Boyd to the 15th precinct — Detroit's worst precinct.

Boyd's new captain, former internal affairs officer Annette Mulcahy (Jill Hennessy), knows of his reputation, and she tells him that she will not tolerate it. Annette sends Boyd to an anger management class where he meets Henry Wayne (Tom Arnold), the high-strung host of a local talk show called ''Detroit AM''. Boyd comes across local drug dealer Latrell Walker (Earl "DMX" Simmons) and his fast-talking sidekick T.K. Johnson (Anthony Anderson) doing a shady deal with a man named Matt Montini (David Vadim). After a brief fight, Boyd discovers that Montini has been working undercover trying to nail Walker and Boyd ruined the sting, and that does not sit well with Montini's musclebound partner Useldinger (Matthew G. Taylor).

Sergeant Lewis Strutt (Michael Jai White) steps in to cool things down when Boyd gets in a fight with Useldinger. After Boyd stumbles upon the theft of $5,000,000 worth of heroin from evidence storage, Boyd and new partner George Clark (Isaiah Washington) begin focusing their efforts on Walker and T.K. Intrigued by what little they have on Walker, they investigate why he has been visiting Shaun Rollins (Mel Jason "Drag-On" Smalls). Henry discovers is that Walker is not a drug dealer. Walker is a computer expert and billionaire whose real name is Leon Rollins — he is Shaun Rollins' brother. Boyd confronts Leon, who explains that a group of corrupt cops needed a fall guy for a deal gone bad and pinned it on Shaun. It is further revealed that Strutt is the leader of the group, which also includes Montini and Useldinger. Leon and his friend Trish (Eva Mendes) have been videotaping the activities of Strutt's gang, hoping that it might help prove Shaun's innocence and get him out of jail.

Boyd meets Mulcahy at a parking lot and to inform her what he has uncovered. Montini, Useldinger, and some other men try to kill Boyd and Annette. Mulcahy is killed in the chase and Boyd escapes. Boyd calls Frank and tells him that Strutt will be having a meeting at a warehouse in about an hour, to sell the heroin that was stolen. Strutt plans to try to sell it to Leon and T. K., not knowing that Leon is working against him. Frank promises that he will be there with some backup.

Boyd and Daniels show up, but Strutt tells Frank to keep Boyd under control. Boyd realizes that it is Frank who is behind everything. Clark blows open the door and barges in with backup, including police chief Hinges (Bill Duke). Useldinger shoots Boyd and as he is about to shoot him again, George shoots Useldinger dead. Chief Hinges kills Frank by shooting him four times with a shotgun. After a fight with Boyd, Strutt grabs a case full of money and runs up to the roof, where a helicopter is waiting. Montini gets the upper hand in his fight with Leon after he damages Leon's vision with indigo fabric dye. Leon manages to stab Montini in the leg with a piece of broken glass, before killing him by having his neck impaled on a clothes rack. As the helicopter ladder is dragging Boyd across the roof with Strutt hanging on to the ladder, Strutt falls and is impaled on a metal pipe.

At dawn, Leon gives Hinges the videotape that proves the corruption, hoping that the tape will help prove Shaun's innocence. Hinges does not believe the courts will care about the tape, so Hinges had Shaun released from county about an hour before. Boyd decides to stay with the 15th precinct with George as his partner, and T. K. becomes Henry's television co-host.

In San Francisco, FBI agent Sasha Petrosevitch (Steven Seagal) goes undercover as a Russian car thief and is brought in by criminal Nick Frazier (Ja Rule) to work for crime boss Sonny Eckvall (Richard Bremmer), who apparently shot and killed Sasha's wife. After some time, FBI Special Agent Ellen "E. Z." Williams (Claudia Christian) and her team show up to nail Nick, but things go wrong, and Sasha gets shot.

After eight months of recovery following his brief bout of being clinically dead from the shooting, Sasha is incarcerated along with Nick in the newly reopened Alcatraz prison. Run by the charismatic warden, Juan Ruiz "El Fuego" Escarzaga (Tony Plana), the place is known for its new state of the art death chamber where the condemned can choose from five different ways to die: lethal injection, gas chamber, hanging, firing squad, or electric chair.

Lester McKenna (Bruce Weitz), is the first death row prisoner brought to the new Alcatraz and also the first prisoner scheduled to be executed. An older man, he stole $200,000,000 worth of gold bricks in a heist that resulted in five deaths, and hid the loot at an unknown location. Federal Bureau of Prisons head Frank Hubbard (Stephen J. Cannell) and Supreme Court Justice Jane McPherson (Linda Thorson) have arrived to witness the execution, which is a result of Jane sentencing Lester.

But she's not the only one interested in Lester. A small but well equipped team of terrorists who call themselves the "49ers" have parachuted onto the Alcatraz island, and gained control of it. Led by 49er One, a.k.a. Hubbard's assistant Donny Johnson (Morris Chestnut), and 49er Six (Nia Peeples), the team finds Lester, and they want him to give up the location of his hidden stash of gold. When Lester will not tell them, Donny shoots a nearby priest (Eva-Maria Schönecker), and threatens to kill others if the information is not delivered.

Donny's plan is disrupted, however, when Sascha decides to step in and fight back. At this point, Sasha's true identity is revealed and he used Nick to get to Sonny Eckvall, whom he seeks revenge on for the death of his wife. When Sasha rescues Lester, the 49ers strap Jane to the electric chair and threaten to kill her, all while Ellen and her team prepare a rescue plan from the mainland.

With the help of Nick and some of the other inmates such as Twitch (Kurupt) and Little Joe (Michael "Bear" Taliferro), Sasha sets out to rescue Jane and bring Donny down, before Alcatraz becomes everyone's final resting place.

In 1964, eleven-year-old Harriet M. Welsch is an aspiring writer who lives in New York City's Upper East Side. Harriet is precocious, ambitious and enthusiastic about her future career. Encouraged by her nanny, Catherine "Ole Golly," Harriet carefully observes others and writes her thoughts down in a notebook as practice for her future career, to which she dedicates her life. She follows an afternoon "spy route", during which she observes her classmates, friends, and people who reside in her neighborhood. One subject that Harriet observes is a local store, where the younger son Fabio cannot make anything of his career in contrast to the hardworking and loyal Bruno, and where the stock boy Joe Curry or "Little Joe" is eating in the storeroom and feeding homeless kids instead of working.

Harriet's best friends are Simon "Sport" Rocque, a serious boy who wants to be a CPA or a ball player, and Janie Gibbs, who wants to be a scientist. Harriet's enemies in her class are Marion Hawthorne, the teacher's pet and self-appointed queen bee of her class, and Marion's best friend and second-in-command, Rachel Hennessy.

Harriet enjoys having structure in her life. For example, she regularly eats tomato sandwiches and adamantly refuses to consume other types of sandwiches. She also resists "girlie" activities, as when her parents expect her to attend dance school and she stubbornly refuses. Ole Golly gets Harriet to change her mind on dance school by telling her the stories of Mata Hari.

Harriet's life changes abruptly when Ole Golly's suitor, Mr. Waldenstein, proposes and she accepts. Mrs. Welsch (who, ironically, had threatened to fire her earlier in a fit of panicked rage at finding Harriet missing in the middle of the night) exclaims, "You can't leave, what will we do without you?" Ole Golly replies that she had planned to leave soon anyway, because she believes Harriet is old enough to care for herself. Harriet is crushed by the loss of her nanny, to whom she was very close. Her mother and father, who have been largely absentee parents because of their obligations to work and social life, are at a loss to understand Harriet's feelings and are of little comfort to her.

At school, during a game of tag, Harriet loses her notebook. Her classmates find it and are appalled at her brutally honest documentation of her opinions of them. For example, in the notebook she compares Sport to a "little old woman" for his continual worrying about his father, and says that Marion Hawthorne is destined to grow up to be a "lady Hitler." The students form a "Spy Catcher Club" in which they think up ways to make Harriet's life miserable, such as stealing her lunch and passing nasty notes about her in class. When the kids orchestrate a prank to spill ink on Harriet and make it look like an accident, it backfires when she slaps Marion in revenge, leaving a blue hand print on Marion's face.

Harriet regularly spies on the Spy Catcher Club through a back fence and concocts vengeful ways to punish them. She realizes the consequences of the mean things she wrote, but because she is hurt and lonely, she thinks up special punishments for each member of the club. After getting into trouble for carrying out some of her plans, Harriet tries to resume her friendship with Sport and Janie as if nothing had ever happened, but they both reject her. Harriet stops doing schoolwork and spends all her time in class writing in her notebook, making plans against the Spy Catcher Club. She skips school for days at a time and stays in bed because of depression. When her grades go down, Harriet's parents confiscate her notebook, which only depresses her further.

Harriet's mother takes her daughter to see a child psychiatrist, who advises Harriet's parents to get in touch with Ole Golly and ask her to write to Harriet. In her letter, Ole Golly tells Harriet that ''if'' anyone ever reads her notebook, "you have to do two things, and you are not going like either one of them. 1: You have to apologize. 2: You have to lie. Otherwise you are going to lose a friend."

Meanwhile, dissension is rippling through the Spy Catcher Club. Marion and Rachel are calling all the shots, and Sport and Janie are tired of being bossed around. When they quit the club, most of their classmates do the same.

Harriet's parents speak with her teacher and the headmistress, and Harriet is appointed editor of the class newspaper, replacing Marion. The newspaper—featuring stories about the people on Harriet's spy route and the students' parents—becomes an instant success. Harriet also uses the paper to print a retraction of the things she had written in her journal. Harriet is forgiven by Sport and Janie.

In 1951, Robert "Dutch" Holland (James Stewart) is a professional baseball player with the St. Louis Cardinals. A B-29 bomber pilot during World War II, he retains a commission as a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force Reserve, but is on inactive, non-drilling status. During spring training at Al Lang Field in St. Petersburg, Florida, he is recalled to active duty for 21 months. He reports to his posting at Carswell Air Force Base, a bomber base in Fort Worth, Texas, to qualify in the Convair B-36. He arrives in civilian clothing for which he is rebuked by General Hawkes (Frank Lovejoy), the commander of SAC, and replies that his uniforms are "the wrong color" (implying he has been inactive at least since the Air Force discontinued the brown United States Army Air Forces uniform in favor of a blue service dress uniform three years earlier, in 1949). The General's character is clearly patterned after the real SAC commander of the time, General Curtis LeMay.

Dutch is given a staff job with the bombardment wing at Carswell that involves a lot of flying. He soon has a B-36 crew of his own, selecting a former World War II colleague as his flight engineer, and becomes enamored with both flying and the role of SAC in deterring war. He is joined by his wife, Sally (June Allyson), who had not bargained on being an Air Force wife, and who struggles with his repeated absences and the dangers of flying. On any given night, Dutch might find his aircraft on airborne alert far from the continental United States, in secret, only telling his wife when he returns days later. Even so, Sally tells Dutch that she is happy as long as they can be together, no matter what he decides to do with his life.

The B-36 is a complex aircraft when introduced, but improvements are being worked on all the time. One challenge was leakage from the fuel tanks, but a new fix is introduced to address this once and for all. On their next flight, Dutch's crew has to fly their B-36 from Carswell AFB to Thule Air Base, Greenland. The fix does not work and one of the engines bursts into flame, causing the entire left wing to catch fire. The crew is forced to abandon the aircraft and bail out over the ice and snow of Greenland before arriving at Thule. Dutch and his radar navigator stay on board for a forced landing, which causes Dutch to injure his right shoulder.

Dutch becomes a favorite of General Hawkes, and he is rewarded with a revised assignment flying the new Boeing B-47 Stratojet at MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa, Florida, across the bay from St. Petersburg where his old baseball team continues to conduct its spring training. Promoted to "full bird" colonel and made deputy wing commander of his B-47 wing at MacDill AFB, Dutch decides, to Sally's displeasure, to remain in the Air Force, rather than return to baseball at the end of his active duty obligation.

On a full B-47 wing deployment exercise that involves flying nonstop from MacDill to Yokota Air Base, Japan, they encounter severe wind and storms. Low on fuel, they divert to Kadena Air Base, Okinawa. As they prepare to land, Dutch realizes that his shoulder injury from the B-36 crash was worse than he thought, and his arm is almost immobile. He is unable to operate the engine power levers (throttles) during final landing phase, and he has to rely on his co-pilot to do so, while Dutch works the flight controls with his left arm and two feet.

This injury not only bars him from further flying and causes the Air Force to medically discharge him, but it also appears to threaten his baseball career. General Hawkes suggests that he would make an excellent team manager.

During World War II, newly commissioned Ensign Willis Seward "Willie" Keith reports to the minesweeper USS ''Caine,'' commanded by Lieutenant Commander William De Vriess, also meeting the executive officer (XO), Lieutenant Stephen Maryk, and the communications officer, Lieutenant Thomas Keefer. De Vriess, popular with the men but disliked by Keith, is relieved by Lieutenant Commander Queeg. Keith is freshly out of college and officer candidate school and is courting May Wynn, who is not approved by his mother. Maryk is a career officer and Keefer is an aspiring novelist.

Queeg attempts to instill strict discipline on the ''Caine's'' lax crew, which makes him unpopular with the officers and men.

After a day of gunnery target towing, Queeg orders a turn to head back to Pearl Harbor, but distracts himself by berating Keith and Keefer over a crewman's appearance. Ignoring the helmsman's repeated warnings, he allows the ''Caine'' to turn in a full circle and cut the towline, setting the target adrift. Queeg tries to cover up the incident.

Assigned to escort a group of landing craft during an invasion of a small Pacific island, Queeg abandons his mission before he reaches the designated departure point, and instead orders the dropping of a yellow dye marker, leaving the landing craft to fend for themselves. Queeg asks his officers for their support, but they remain silent and nickname him "Old Yellowstain," which implies cowardice.

Keefer, believing Queeg to be paranoid, encourages Maryk to consider relieving Queeg on the basis of mental incapacity under Article 184 of Navy Regulations. Though Maryk angrily rejects that possibility, he does begin keeping a medical log documenting the captain's behavior.

When strawberries go missing from the officers' mess, Queeg convenes an elaborate investigation to determine the culprit. The investigation involves searching the ship and stripping all crew members. Convinced of Queeg's instability, Maryk asks Keefer and Keith to go with him to see Admiral Halsey about the matter. Arriving aboard Halsey's flagship, Keefer backs down and they return to the ship.

At the height of a typhoon, Maryk urges the captain to reverse course into the wind and take on ballast, but Queeg refuses. Maryk, supported by Keith, relieves Queeg of command under Article 184. The ''Caine'' returns to San Francisco, where Maryk and Keith face a court-martial for mutiny. Wounded Naval Aviator, Lieutenant Barney Greenwald, an attorney before entering the Navy, becomes Maryk's defense counsel.

At the court-martial, Keefer claims he never observed any mental illness in Queeg and was "flabbergasted" when he was relieved. Under Greenwald's relentless cross-examination, Queeg exhibits odd behavior on the stand, and Maryk is acquitted.

Following the acquittal, the officers of the ''Caine'' hold a party, where Keefer receives a frosty reception from Maryk. A drunken Greenwald arrives and berates all the officers for not appreciating Queeg's long service and failing to give him the support he asked for, instead deriding him as an incompetent, and claims their mistreatment of Queeg, who had been suffering from "battle fatigue" from his previous tour in the Atlantic, caused the captain to ultimately become indecisive during the typhoon. He denounces Keefer as the real "author" of the mutiny and throws a glass of champagne, the "yellow wine", in Keefer's face. The rest of the officers walk out, leaving Keefer alone in the room.

Keith, reconciled with May Wynn, is assigned to a new destroyer commanded by now Commander De Vriess.

Joe Gideon is a theater director and choreographer trying to balance staging his latest Broadway musical, ''NY/LA'', while editing a Hollywood film he has directed, ''The Stand-Up''. He is a workaholic who chain-smokes cigarettes and a womanizer who constantly flirts and has sex with a stream of women. Each morning, to keep himself going, he plays a tape of Vivaldi and takes doses of Visine, Alka-Seltzer, and Dexedrine, always finishing by looking at himself in the mirror and telling himself "It's showtime, folks!" Joe's ex-wife, Audrey Paris, is involved with the production of the show, but disapproves of his womanizing ways. Meanwhile, his girlfriend Katie Jagger and daughter Michelle keep him company. In his imagination, he flirts with an angel of death named Angelique in a nightclub setting, chatting with her about his life.

As Joe continues to be dissatisfied with his editing job, repeatedly making minor changes to a single monologue, he takes his anger out on the dancers and in his choreography, putting on a highly sexualized number with topless women during one rehearsal and frustrating both Audrey and the show's penny-pinching backers. The only moment of joy in his life occurs when Katie and Michelle perform a Fosse-style number for Joe as an homage to the upcoming release of ''The Stand-Up'', moving him to tears. During a particularly stressful table-read of ''NY/LA'', Joe experiences severe chest pains and is admitted to the hospital with severe angina. Joe brushes off his symptoms, and attempts to leave to go back to rehearsal, but he collapses in the doctor's office and is ordered to stay in the hospital for several weeks to rest his heart and recover from his exhaustion. ''NY/LA'' is postponed, but Gideon continues his antics from the hospital bed, continuing to smoke and drink while having endless strings of women come through his room; as he does, his condition continues to deteriorate, despite Audrey and Katie both remaining by his side for support. A negative review for ''The Stand-Up'' — which has been released during Joe's time in the hospital — comes in despite the film's monetary success, and Gideon has a massive coronary event.

As Joe undergoes coronary artery bypass surgery, the producers of ''NY/LA'' realize that the best way to recoup their money and make a profit is to bet on Gideon's dying: the insurance proceeds would result in a profit of over half a million dollars. As Gideon goes on life support, he directs extravagant musical dream sequences in his own head starring his daughter, wife, and girlfriend, who all berate him for his behavior; he realizes he cannot avoid his own death, and has another heart attack. As the doctors try to save him, Joe runs away from his hospital bed behind their backs and explores the basement of the hospital and the autopsy ward before he allows himself to be taken back. He goes through the five stages of grief — anger, denial, bargaining, depression and acceptance — featured in the stand-up routine he had been editing, and as he gets closer to death, his dream sequences become more and more hallucinatory. As the doctors try one more time to save him, Joe imagines a monumental variety show featuring everyone from his past where he takes center stage in an extensive musical number ("Bye Bye Life", a whimsical parody of "Bye Bye Love"). In his dying dream, Joe is able to thank his family and acquaintances as he cannot from his hospital bed, and his performance receives a massive standing ovation. Joe finally dreams of himself traveling down a hallway to meet Angelique at the end, but the film then abruptly cuts to his corpse being zipped up in a body bag.

Samuel Sayer and his sister Rose are British missionaries in German East Africa in August 1914. Their post and supplies are delivered by a small steamboat named the ''African Queen'', helmed by the rough-and-ready Canadian mechanic Charlie Allnut, whose coarse behavior they stiffly tolerate.

When Charlie warns the Sayers that war has broken out between Germany and Britain, they choose to remain in Kungdu, only to witness German colonial troops burn down the village and herd the villagers away to be pressed into service. When Samuel protests, he is struck by an officer and soon becomes delirious with fever, dying shortly afterward. Charlie helps Rose bury her brother and they escape in the ''African Queen''.

Charlie mentions to Rose that the British are unable to attack the Germans because of the presence of a large gunboat, the , patrolling a large lake downriver. Rose comes up with a plan to convert the ''African Queen'' into a torpedo boat and sink the . After some persuasion, Charlie goes along with the plan.

Charlie allows Rose to navigate the river by rudder while he tends the engine, and she is emboldened after they pass the first set of rapids with minimal flooding in the boat. When they pass the German fortress, the soldiers begin shooting at them, damaging the boiler. Charlie manages to reattach a pressure hose just as they are about to enter the second set of rapids. The boat rolls and pitches as it goes down the rapids, leading to more severe flooding on the deck. While celebrating their success, Charlie and Rose find themselves in an embrace and kiss. The third set of rapids damages the boat's propeller shaft. Rigging up a primitive forge on shore, Charlie straightens the shaft and welds a new blade onto the propeller, allowing the two to set off again.

All appears lost when the boat becomes mired in the mud and dense reeds near the mouth of the river. With no supplies left and short of potable water, Rose and a feverish Charlie pass out, both accepting that they will soon die. Rose says a quiet prayer. As they sleep, torrential rains raise the river's level and float the ''African Queen'' into the lake.

Over the next two days, Charlie and Rose prepare for their attack. The returns and Charlie and Rose steam the ''African Queen'' out onto the lake in darkness, intending to set her on a collision course. A strong storm strikes, causing water to pour into the ''African Queen'' through the torpedo holes. Eventually the boat capsizes, throwing Charlie and Rose into the water. Charlie loses sight of Rose in the storm.

Charlie is captured and taken aboard the ''Königin Luise'', where he is interrogated by German officers. Believing that Rose has drowned, he makes no attempt to defend himself against accusations of spying and the German captain sentences him to death by hanging. Rose is brought aboard the ship just after Charlie's sentence is pronounced. The captain questions her, and Rose proudly confesses the plot to sink the ''Königin Luise'', deciding that they have nothing to lose. The captain sentences her to be executed with Charlie, both as British spies. Charlie asks the German captain to marry them before they are executed. The captain agrees, and after conducting the briefest of marriage ceremonies, is about to carry out the execution when the is rocked by a series of explosions, quickly capsizing. The ship has struck the overturned submerged hull of the ''African Queen'' and detonated the torpedoes. The newly married couple is able to escape the sinking ship and swim to safety together.

Larry Talbot makes an urgent phone call to a railway station in Florida, where Chick Young and Wilbur Grey work as baggage clerks. Talbot tries to warn Wilbur of a shipment due to arrive for "McDougal's House of Horrors". However, before he finishes, the moon rises and Talbot transforms into a werewolf, causing Wilbur to think the call is a prank. Meanwhile, McDougal demands the crates be personally delivered to his wax museum.

Chick and Wilbur deliver the crates after hours. They open the first one and find Dracula's coffin. When Chick leaves the room to retrieve the second crate, Wilbur reads the Dracula legend, and the coffin suddenly opens, and Dracula sneaks out. Wilbur is so frightened he can barely articulate his call for help. When Chick returns, he refuses to believe the story. The boys open the second crate, and Chick goes to greet McDougal. Dracula hypnotizes Wilbur, finds Frankenstein's Monster in the second crate, and reanimates him. Both leave, and McDougal finds the crates empty and has Wilbur and Chick arrested.

That night, Dr. Sandra Mornay welcomes Dracula and the Monster to her island castle. Sandra has seduced Wilbur as part of Dracula's plan to give the monster a more obedient brain. Meanwhile, Wilbur and Chick are bailed out of jail by Joan Raymond, an undercover insurance investigator who feigns love for Wilbur, hoping to gain information. Wilbur invites Joan to a masquerade ball that evening. Talbot takes the apartment across the hall from Wilbur and Chick and asks them to help him find and destroy Dracula and the Monster. Wilbur agrees, but Chick remains skeptical.

Wilbur, Chick and Joan go to Sandra's castle to pick her up for the ball. Wilbur answers a telephone call from Talbot, who informs them that they are in fact in the "House of Dracula". Wilbur reluctantly agrees to search the castle and soon stumbles upon a basement staircase, where he has a few close encounters with the monsters. Meanwhile, Joan discovers Dr. Frankenstein's notebook in Sandra's desk, and Sandra finds an Insurance Investigator ID in Joan's purse.

Dracula, under the alias of Dr. Lejos, introduces himself to Joan and the boys. Also working at the castle and attending the ball is the naïve Professor Stevens, who questions some of the specialized equipment that has arrived. After Wilbur says that he was in the basement, Sandra feigns a headache and tells the others to attend the ball without her. In private, Sandra admits to Dracula that she feels they are not safe to conduct the experiment. Dracula then turns her into a vampire.

At the masquerade ball, Talbot accuses Lejos of being Dracula, but no one takes him seriously. Joan soon disappears. Sandra lures Wilbur into the woods and attempts to bite him, but fails. While looking for Joan, Talbot becomes the Wolfman and attacks McDougal. Since Chick's costume is a wolf, McDougal accuses Chick, who escapes and witnesses Dracula hypnotizing Wilbur. Chick is also hypnotized and rendered helpless, while Dracula and Sandra bring Wilbur, Stevens, and Joan back to the castle. The next morning, Chick and Talbot meet up in the bayou and set out to rescue Wilbur and Joan.

Wilbur is quickly freed, but Dracula uses hypnotism to call him back. As Sandra prepares to cut into Wilbur's brain, Talbot and Chick burst in. Chick knocks out Sandra with a chair, and Talbot tries to free Wilbur but turns into the Wolfman again. Frankenstein's Monster breaks free of his bonds—Sandra tries to control him, but he throws her out the window. After a chase through the house between Chick, Wilbur and the Monster and a face-off between Dracula and The Wolf Man, Dracula transforms into a bat but is pounced on by the Wolfman, who drags the two of them to their deaths. Chick, Stevens, Joan and Wilbur escape in boats; Stevens sets the pier ablaze while the Monster is standing on it, and he dies in the flames.

Wilbur scolds Chick for his earlier skepticism, and Chick remarks they have nothing to fear now. The Invisible Man addresses them from the boat's thwart, and they flee the boat in terror.

Doris Attinger follows her husband with a gun in Manhattan one day, suspecting he is having an affair with another woman. In her rage, she fires wildly and blindly around the room and at the couple multiple times. One of the bullets hits her husband in the shoulder. His lover escapes unscathed.

The following morning, the married New York lawyers Adam and Amanda Bonner read about the incident in the newspaper. Adam is an assistant district attorney, while Amanda is a solo-practicing defense attorney. They argue over the case. Amanda sympathizes with the woman, particularly noting the double standard that exists for men and women regarding adultery. Adam thinks Doris is guilty of attempted murder. When Adam arrives at work, he learns that he has been assigned to prosecute the case. When Amanda hears this, she seeks out Doris and becomes her defense lawyer.

Amanda bases her case on the belief that women and men are equal, and that Doris had been forced into the situation by her husband's adultery and emotional abuse. Adam thinks Amanda is showing contempt for the law, since there should never be any excuse for such criminal behavior. Tension increasingly builds at home as the two battle each other in court. The situation comes to a head as Adam feels humiliated during the trial when Amanda encourages one of her witnesses, a woman weightlifter, to lift him overhead. Later at home that evening, Adam still angry, gives Amanda an ear full; he doesn't want to be married to a liberated "new woman." Having just packed his bags, he storms out of their apartment. When the verdict is returned, Amanda's plea to the jury to "judge this case as you would if the sexes were reversed" proves successful, and Doris is acquitted.

That night, Adam, who has left their upper-floor apartment, looks through its window and sees the silhouettes of his wife Amanda and their neighbor Kip Lurie, a popular singer, songwriter and piano player who has shown a keen interest in Amanda all along, and repeatedly taunted Adam, as the two of them seem to be dancing and drinking together. Adam breaks into the apartment enraged, pointing a gun at the pair. Amanda is horrified and says to Adam, "You've no right to do this nobody does!" Adam feels he has proven his point about the injustice of Amanda's line of defense. He puts the gun in his mouth, as Amanda and Kip scream in terror. Then Adam bites a large piece off the gun and chews it. It is made of licorice. Amanda is furious with this prank and a three-way fight ensues.

Now in the midst of a divorce, Adam and Amanda reluctantly reunite for a meeting with their tax accountant. Going through their expenses for the year, they talk about their relationship in the past tense. They talk about the farm they own and recall burning the mortgage. Tears begin to roll down Adam's cheeks. Astonished and touched, Amanda gently bundles her sobbing husband out of the office and to the farm. That night, while they are getting ready for bed — in an antique, curtained four poster — Adam announces that he has been selected as the Republican nominee for County Court Judge. Amanda perches on the edge of the bed and jokes about running for the post as the Democratic candidate. Adam replies, no she won't, because then he would cry. He demonstrates how easily he can turn on the tears, remarking that men can do it too, they just don't think to. Amanda says that just goes to show that there is no difference between the sexes...Well, maybe there is a ''little'' difference. "You know what the French say," Adam declares 'Vive la différence!'...'Hurray for that little difference!'" as he jumps onto the bed and closes the curtains.

Hard-drinking family man Egbert Sousé has strained relations with his wife and mother-in-law over his drinking, smoking and habit of taking money out of the piggy bank of his younger daughter Elsie Mae and replacing it with IOUs. He tries to hit Elsie Mae with a concrete urn but is interrupted when his older daughter Myrtle wants to introduce him to her fiancé Og Oggilby.

When A. Pismo Clam, the director of a film that is shooting in town, goes on a bender, producer Mackley Q. Greene offers the job to Sousé. While on his lunch break, he catches a man who has robbed the bank where Og works. The grateful bank president offers Sousé a job as the bank's "special officer," a bank detective ("dick").

After being conned by swindler J. Frothingham Waterbury, Sousé convinces Og to steal $500 from the bank to invest in a questionable mining company. Og hopes to return the money to the bank four days later when he expects to receive his annual bonus, but bank examiner J. Pinkerton Snoopington arrives to immediately audit the bank. Sousé invites him to the Black Pussy Cat Café, a saloon run by Joe Guelpe, and drugs him with knockout drops and has him examined by the quack Dr. Stall. Despite this, Snoopington is determined to do his duty and proceed with the audit. Og faints when he sees the examiner in the bank, and Sousé tries to delay the audit further by depriving Snoopington of his glasses.

As Snoopington is about to discover the missing funds, the swindler shows up to buy back the stocks from Og at a discount, but Sousé learns that the mine has struck it rich, and he and Og are now wealthy and no longer must worry about the audit. However, the escaped bank robber Repulsive Brogan returns to rob the bank a second time, and escapes with the bank's money and Og's mining-company stock, taking Sousé hostage. The robber forces him to drive the getaway car, and the police, the bank director, Og and the movie producer chase them, with parts of the getaway car continuously breaking loose. Sousé once again receives the credit for catching the thief and receives $5,000 for the capture of Brogan, $10,000 from the film producer for his screen story and a contract to direct a film based on it.

Now that he is rich, Sousé lives in a mansion and his family is elegant and well-spoken and treats him with respect, but he still follows Joe Guelpe on his way to open the Black Pussy Cat Café.

In 1937, a woman identifying herself as Evelyn Mulwray hires private investigator J. J. "Jake" Gittes to follow her husband, Hollis Mulwray, the chief engineer at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, whom she suspects of having an affair. Trailing him, Gittes hears Mulwray state at a public meeting that building a new dam would be unsafe in light of the catastrophic failure of a previous dam. Gittes follows Mulwray, who makes several stops at Los Angeles Department of Water and Power facilities, eventually tailing him to the Pacific Ocean where both Gittes and Mulwray witness a large discharge of water into the ocean.

The next day, back at his office, Gittes gets a call from one of his operatives who has found Mulwray in the company of a young woman. Gittes photographs Mulwray with the young woman, and the images are published in the next day's newspaper.

Back at his office, Gittes is confronted by the real Evelyn Mulwray, who threatens to sue him. Realizing he was set up, Gittes assumes that Hollis Mulwray is the real target. Gittes goes to a reservoir to search for clues but instead finds his old police associate, Lieutenant Lou Escobar of the Los Angeles Police Department; Mulwray's body had been found in the reservoir, having apparently drowned.

Now working for Evelyn, Gittes investigates Mulwray's death as a homicide. He discovers that although there is supposedly a drought, huge quantities of water are being released from the reservoir every night. Gittes is warned off by Water Department Security Chief Claude Mulvihill and a henchman who slashes Gittes' left nostril. Back at his office, Gittes receives a call from Ida Sessions, who identifies herself as the fake Mrs. Mulwray. She refuses to disclose who hired her but tells Gittes to check that day's obituaries.

Gittes learns that Mulwray was once the business partner of Evelyn's wealthy father, Noah Cross. At Cross' home, Cross offers to double Gittes' fee to search for Mulwray's missing mistress. At the hall of records, Gittes discovers that much of the northwest San Fernando Valley has recently changed ownership. At an orange grove in the valley, he is attacked by angry landowners who believe him to be an agent of the water department, which they claim is sabotaging the water supply to force them out.

Gittes deduces that the water department is drying up the land so it can be bought cheaply, and that Mulwray was murdered when he uncovered the plan. From the tip-off from Ida Sessions, Gittes discovers that some of the San Fernando Valley property was seemingly purchased by a recently deceased retirement home resident. Gittes and Evelyn bluff their way into the retirement home and confirm that other real-estate deals were surreptitiously transacted in the names of unknowing residents. Their visit is interrupted by the suspicious director, who has called Mulvihill.

After escaping Mulvihill and his thugs, Gittes and Evelyn hide at Evelyn's house and sleep together. During the night, Evelyn receives a phone call and must leave suddenly; she warns Gittes that her father is dangerous. Gittes follows Evelyn's car to a house where he sees Evelyn comforting Mulwray's mistress. He accuses Evelyn of holding the woman hostage, but she claims the woman is her sister, Katherine.

The next day, an anonymous call draws Gittes to Ida Sessions' apartment, where he finds her body. Lieutenant Escobar, who is waiting there, says the coroner found salt water in Mulwray's lungs, indicating that he did not drown in the fresh-water reservoir. Escobar suspects Evelyn murdered him and tells Gittes to produce her quickly. At the Mulwray mansion, Gittes finds Evelyn gone and the servants packing up the house. He discovers that the garden pond is salt water and spots a pair of eyeglasses in it. He confronts Evelyn about Hollis' mistress, who Evelyn now claims is her daughter. Gittes slaps Evelyn repeatedly until she breaks down and reveals Katherine is both her sister and her daughter; her father raped her when she was 15 years old. She says that the eyeglasses are not Mulwray's, as he did not wear bifocals.

Gittes arranges for the women to flee to Mexico and instructs Evelyn to meet him at her butler's home in Chinatown. He summons Cross to the Mulwray home to settle their deal. Cross admits his intention to incorporate the Northwest Valley into the City of Los Angeles, then irrigate and develop it. Gittes confirms that the bifocals he found are Cross' and accuses Cross of murdering Mulwray. Cross has Mulvihill take the bifocals from Gittes at gunpoint. Gittes is then forced to drive them to Chinatown, where Evelyn is waiting. The police are already there and detain Gittes. When Cross approaches Katherine, identifying himself as her grandfather, Evelyn shoots him in the arm and starts to drive away with Katherine. The police open fire, killing Evelyn. Cross clutches the hysterical Katherine and leads her away. Escobar orders Gittes to be released. One of Gittes's employees leads him away from the scene, telling him, "Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown."

Mike Hammer is a tough private investigator who, with the assistance of his associate and lover Velda, typically works on "penny-ante divorce cases." One evening, Hammer is forced to suddenly stop his sports car by Christina, an escapee from a nearby psychiatric hospital, who is running barefoot along the road, wearing nothing but a trench coat. Hammer gives her a ride. Christina asks him, whatever happens, to "remember me," alluding to a poem by Christina Rossetti. Thugs waylay them, and Hammer hears Christina screaming as she is tortured to death. The thugs then push Hammer's car off a cliff with Christina's body and an unconscious Hammer inside. Hammer comes to in a hospital with Velda hovering over him. He decides to investigate Christina's death believing that it "must be connected with something big." He retrieves a book of poetry from the dead woman's apartment and reads aloud several lines from Rosetti's poem, "Remember", as he tries to figure out what that something might be.

Hammer goes to the apartment of Lily Carver, who says she was Christina's roommate. Lily tells Hammer she is in hiding and asks Hammer to protect her. She is after a mysterious box that, she believes, has contents worth a fortune. Hammer later arrives at the lavish mansion of gangster Carl Evello, who is also seeking the mysterious box. Hammer fends off Charlie Max and Sugar Smallhouse, two of Evello's henchmen, and then confronts Evello, who is initially impressed by Hammer's brazenness and offers to work out a deal, but swiftly retracts the offer.

Hammer's friend, Nick the auto mechanic, is then murdered. Carl's thugs kidnap Hammer and take him to an isolated beach house, where another of their associates, Dr. G. E. Soberin (revealed to be Christina and Nick's murderer), injects him with sodium pentothal before interrogating him. Hammer kills Carl and Sugar and escapes, but when he goes to his friend Lieutenant Murphy for help, Murphy warns him off, hinting that it all has to do with a top-secret government experiment akin to the Manhattan Project. Hammer goes back to the beach house and finds Lily, now revealed to be an imposter named Gabrielle, together with Soberin. They have Velda locked in a bedroom and they have the box. Gabrielle shoots Soberin to get the box for herself. With his dying words, Soberin urges Gabrielle not to open it.

When Hammer comes into the room, Gabrielle shoots him. She then opens the box, which emits a blinding light and piercing sound. Gabrielle screams and bursts into flames. Hammer, wounded, struggles to his feet, and looks for Velda. Together, the pair flee the burning house, helping each other along the beach to the ocean as the house explodes behind them.

Cary Scott is an affluent widow in the town of Stoningham, in suburban New England, whose social life revolves around the weekend visits of her college-age son and daughter, her best friend's country-club activities, and a few men vying for her affection. Feeling stuck in a rut, she becomes interested in Ron Kirby, her arborist. He is an intelligent, down-to-earth, and respectful, yet passionate, younger man, and she discovers he is content with his simple life outside the materialistic society in which they live. Ron introduces Cary to his friends, who seem to have no need for wealth or status, and their exuberance provides a welcome contrast to her staid existence.

Ron and Cary fall in love, and Ron proposes. Cary accepts, but she has concerns about the viability of their relationship, due to their different ages, classes, and lifestyles. These concerns are magnified when she tells her children and friends about the engagement and is met with a solid wall of disapproval, and, eventually, she breaks up with Ron. Particularly influential in her change of mind are her children's protestations against Cary's plan to sell the family home and move to Ron's tree nursery, as they will not want to visit her there.

After spending most of the Christmas season alone, Cary misses her life with Ron, but she thinks she has missed her opportunity for happiness because she mistakenly believes Ron is seeing another woman. On Christmas, her daughter announces she will be getting married soon and her son says that, since he is likely going to study abroad and then work overseas, they should start thinking about selling their house, which is too big for just Cary. She is overwhelmed by how pointless her sacrifice was, and her spirits are not lifted when her children give her a television set to fill her empty life.

Cary goes to see a doctor about recurrent headaches she has started having, and he suggests they are being caused by her body punishing her for ending her relationship with Ron. Leaving the appointment, she runs into one of Ron's friends, and in the course of their conversation she learns that Ron is still single. She goes to his property, but then changes her mind and leaves. Ron sees her from a precipice and excitedly, though unsuccessfully, tries to get her attention. The ground collapses out from under him, and he falls off the cliff.

That night, Ron's friend tells Cary about the accident, and she hurries over to his house. She decides she no longer wants to allow other people to dictate how she lives her life and settles in to nurse Ron back to health. When Ron regains consciousness, Cary tells him that she has come home.

In the late 1890s, Cappadocian Greek Stavros Topouzoglou (Giallelis) lives in an impoverished village below Mount Argaeus in Ottoman Turkey. The life of the Cappadocian Greeks and Armenians of Kayseri is depicted, including the Derinkuyu Underground City traditional cliff cave dwellings in which Stavros' grandmother lives.

Stavros witnesses the Hamidian massacres against Armenians which leave his friend, Vartan, dead. Vartan and Stavros had been planning to go to America together. Stavros is nearly imprisoned after trying to recover Vartan's corpse. Knowing that the Greeks won't remain safe from violence forever, the family sends Stavros to Constantionople. Stavros is entrusted by his father with the family's financial resources in a mission of hope to the Turkish capital Constantinople (renamed Istanbul in 1930), where he is to work in the carpet business of his father's cousin (Harry Davis), although his own dream is to reach the faraway land of opportunity, America.

His odyssey begins with a long voyage on a donkey and on foot through the impoverished towns and villages on the way to Constantinople. Out of his naivete, he loses all the money and arrives at the cousin's home penniless. The older man is deeply disappointed at this turn of events since he was counting on the infusion of funds to rescue his failing carpet store. Nevertheless, he attempts to salvage the situation by proposing that Stavros marry a wealthy merchant's (Paul Mann) young daughter (Linda Marsh). Stavros realizes that such a marriage would mean the end of his American dream and adamantly refuses, abruptly leaving the angry cousin.

Now homeless on the streets of the capital, Stavros survives by eating discarded food and working at backbreaking and hazardous jobs. After nearly a year of scrimping and self-denial, he has some savings, but his first sexual encounter with a young prostitute (Joanna Frank) leaves him, once again, penniless. Sinking even lower, he now finds himself living in an overcrowded subterranean hovel, which becomes a scene of chaos and bloodshed when it is attacked with gunfire by authorities purportedly searching for anarchists and revolutionaries. Severely injured in the mayhem, the unconscious Stavros is thrown among piles of dead bodies slated for disposal into the sea. He subsequently topples from the cart transporting the bodies and painfully makes his way to the cousin's residence. The relative takes pity on the young man and allows him to recover at his home. Deprived now of all resistance, Stavros agrees to marry his intended bride. Upon being questioned by her regarding his moodiness, however, he admits that he still plans to emigrate to America, using the dowry money to pay for his passage.

At this point Stavros becomes reacquainted with Hohannes (Gregory Rozakis), a young Armenian, whom Stavros aided with food and clothing during his original voyage to Istanbul. Hohannes informs him that he is being sponsored to America by an employer seeking labor. Stavros manages to secure his own passage with the aid of the middle-aged wife (Katharine Balfour) of wealthy Armenian-American businessman Artoon Kebabian (Robert H. Harris), a client of his prospective father-in-law. He tells his intended bride that he cannot marry her, and subsequently embarks on the voyage on board SS Kaiser Wilhelm.

There is, however, another major impediment. Kebabian, enraged to learn of a shipboard affair between his wife and Stavros, lodges a criminal complaint against him and rescinds his offer of a job in America, threatening Stavros with deportation back to Turkey. However, as everything looks bleak, Hohannes, who is discovered by the immigration services to be afflicted with tuberculosis, jumps off the ship out of the realization he can never enter America. This sacrifice enables Stavros to take Hohannes' place.

With the climactic image of the Statue of Liberty as the boatload of immigrants docks in New York Harbor, Stavros puts his tribulations behind him, starting out as a shoeshine boy and gathering the pennies and dollars that will eventually bring his family to the land where their descendants, including Elia Kazan, will have the chance to fulfill their potential.

On their last evening of summer vacation in 1962, high school graduates and friends Curt Henderson and Steve Bolander meet two other friends, John Milner, the drag-racing king, and Terry "The Toad" Fields, in the parking lot of Mel's Drive-In in Modesto, California. Curt and Steve are to travel "Back East" the following morning to start college. Curt has second thoughts about leaving Modesto. Steve gives Terry his car to care for until he returns. Laurie, Steve's girlfriend and Curt's sister, arrives. Steve suggests to Laurie that they see other people while he is away to "strengthen" their relationship. Though not openly upset, she is affecting their interactions through the night.

Curt, Steve, and Laurie attend the back-to-high-school sock hop. En route, Curt sees a beautiful blonde woman driving a white Ford Thunderbird. She mouths the words "I love you" to Curt before turning. Curt becomes desperate to find her; one of his friends tells him "The Blonde" is the wife of a local jeweler, but Curt does not believe it. After leaving the hop, Curt is coerced by a group of greasers ("The Pharaohs") into hooking a chain to a police car and ripping out its back axle. The Pharaohs tell Curt that "The Blonde" is a prostitute, which he does not believe.

Curt drives to the radio station to ask disc jockey "Wolfman Jack" to read a message for her on the air. Curt encounters an employee who tells him the Wolfman does not work there and that the shows are pretaped for replay. The employee accepts the message and promises to try to have the Wolfman air it. As he is leaving, Curt sees the employee talking into the microphone and, hearing the voice, realizes it is the Wolfman, who reads the message, asking "The Blonde" to meet Curt or call him on the pay phone at Mel's. Curt is awakened by the phone the next morning. "The Blonde" does not reveal her identity but tells Curt maybe they will meet that night. Curt replies that they probably will not because he is leaving town.

Terry and John cruise the strip. Terry picks up flirtatious and rebellious Debbie. John inadvertently picks up Carol, an annoying, precocious 12-year-old who manipulates him into driving her around all night. Bob Falfa is searching out John to challenge him to a race. Steve and Laurie continue to argue and make up through the evening. They finally split and as the story lines intertwine, Bob picks up Laurie then finds John and goads him into racing. Many follow them to "Paradise Road" to watch. As John takes the lead, Bob's tire blows out, causing him to lose control. His car swerves into a ditch, rolls over, and catches fire. Steve and John leap out of their cars and rush to the wreck while Bob and Laurie crawl out and stagger away just before it explodes. Laurie grips Steve tightly and begs him not to leave her. He assures her that he will stay.

At the airfield, Curt says goodbye to his parents, Laurie, Steve, John, and Terry. As the plane takes off, Curt gazes out the window and sees the white Thunderbird driving in parallel to his plane. An on-screen epilogue reveals that John was killed by a drunk driver in 1964, Terry was reported missing in action near An Lộc in 1965, Steve is an insurance agent in Modesto, and Curt is a writer in Canada.

In a small rural village with an African American population, a church group is holding a riverside baptismal service, and one of the faithful being immersed is the recently married Martha (Cathryn Caviness). However, Martha's husband Ras (Spencer Williams) is absent from the service – he claims he was hunting, but he actually poached a neighbor's boar. At home, Ras accidentally shoots Martha when his rifle drops on the floor and discharges. The church congregation gathers at Martha's bedside to pray for her recovery, and during this period an angel (Rogenia Goldthwaite) arrives to take Martha's spirit from her body. She is brought to the Crossroads between Heaven and Hell, and initially she is tempted by the slick Judas Green (Frank H. McClennan), who is an agent for Satan (James B. Jones). Judas takes Martha to a nightclub, where the floor show includes an acrobat and a jazz singer. Judas arranges to have Martha employed by the roadhouse owner Rufus Brown, but the angel returns and advises Martha to flee. As she is escaping, a nightclub patron mistakenly believes Martha is a pickpocket who robbed him. A chase ensues and Martha races back to the Crossroads between Hell and Zion, where Satan (along with a jazz band on a flatbed truck) is waiting for her arrival. The voice of Jesus Christ challenges the mob who go away. The sign at the Crossroad is transformed into the vision of Jesus Christ being crucified, and Christ's blood drips down on Martha's face. She awakens to discover she is home and her health is restored. Martha is reunited with her husband, who has now embraced religion. The angel who took Martha on her journey returns to bless the marriage.[http://www.filmthreat.com/index.php?section=features&Id=1801 “The Bootleg Files: The Blood of Jesus,” Film Threat, September 1, 2006]

Holly Sargis narrates the film as a 15-year-old living in Fort Dupree, a dead-end South Dakota town. She has a strained relationship with her father, a sign painter, since her mother's death from pneumonia years earlier. Holly meets Kit Carruthers, a 25-year-old garbage collector, troubled greaser and Korean War veteran. He resembles James Dean, an actor whom Holly admires. After Kit charms Holly, he takes her virginity. As they become closer, his violent and anti-social tendencies are gradually revealed.

Holly's father disapproves of her relationship with Kit and kills her dog as punishment for spending time with him. Kit breaks into Holly's house and insists she run away with him. When her father protests and threatens to call the police, Kit shoots him dead. After Kit and Holly fake suicide by burning down the house, they head for the badlands of Montana. They build a tree house in a remote area and live there happily, fishing and stealing chickens for food. They flee after being found by three men (who Kit later tells Holly were bounty hunters) whom Kit shoots dead. They seek refuge with Kit's former co-worker Cato, but when he attempts to summon help, Kit shoots him too. Kit forces a young couple who arrive to visit Cato into a storm cellar. He shoots into the closed cellar door and leaves without checking to see if they are dead.

Kit and Holly are pursued across the Midwest by law enforcement. They stop at a rich man's mansion and take supplies, clothing and his Cadillac, sparing the lives of the man and his deaf housemaid. As they drive across Montana to Saskatchewan, the police find and chase them.

Holly, who has grown tired of life on the run and of her relationship with Kit, refuses to go with him and turns herself in. Kit leads the police on a car chase but is soon caught. He charms the arresting officers and National Guard troops, tossing them his personal belongings as souvenirs of his crime spree. Holly reveals at the end that she received probation and married her defense attorney's son, and Kit was executed for his crimes.

Cantor Rabinowitz wants his son to carry on the generations-old family tradition and become a cantor at the synagogue in the Jewish ghetto of Manhattan's Lower East Side. But, thirteen-year-old Jakie Rabinowitz is performing so-called jazz tunes at the beer garden. Moisha Yudelson spots the boy and tells Jakie's father, who drags him home. Jakie clings to his mother, Sara, as his father declares, "I'll teach him better than to debase the voice God gave him!" Jakie threatens: "If you whip me again, I'll run away—and ''never come back!''" After the whipping, Jakie kisses his mother goodbye and, true to his word, runs away. At the Yom Kippur service, Rabinowitz mournfully tells a fellow celebrant, "My son was to stand at my side and sing tonight—but now I have no son." As the sacred Kol Nidre is sung, Jakie sneaks back home to retrieve a picture of his loving mother.

About ten years later, Jakie has changed his name to the more assimilated Jack Robin. Jack is called up from his table at a cabaret to perform on stage ("Dirty Hands, Dirty Face").

Jack wows the crowd with his energized rendition. Afterward, he is introduced to the beautiful Mary Dale, a musical theater dancer. "There are lots of jazz singers, but ''you'' have a tear in your voice," she says, offering to help with his budding career. With her help, Jack eventually gets his big break: a leading part in the new musical ''April Follies''.

Back at the family home Jack left long ago, the elder Rabinowitz instructs a young student in the traditional cantorial art. Jack appears and tries to explain his point of view, and his love of modern music, but the appalled cantor banishes him: "I never want to see you again—you ''jazz singer!''" As he leaves, Jack makes a prediction: "I came home with a heart full of love, but you don't want to understand. Some day you'll understand, the same as Mama does."

Two weeks after Jack's expulsion from the family home and 24 hours before the opening night of ''April Follies'' on Broadway, Jack's father falls gravely ill. Jack is asked to choose between the show and duty to his family and faith: in order to sing the Kol Nidre for Yom Kippur in his father's place, he will have to miss the big premiere.

That evening, the eve of Yom Kippur, Yudelson tells the Jewish elders, "For the first time, we have no Cantor on the Day of Atonement." Lying in his bed, weak and gaunt, Cantor Rabinowitz tells Sara that he cannot perform on the most sacred of holy days: "My son came to me in my dreams—he sang Kol Nidre so beautifully. If he would only sing like that tonight—surely he would be forgiven."

As Jack prepares for a dress rehearsal by applying blackface makeup, he and Mary discuss his career aspirations and the family pressures they agree he must resist. Sara and Yudelson come to Jack's dressing room to plead for him to come to his father and sing in his stead. Jack is torn. He delivers his blackface performance ("Mother of Mine, I Still Have You"), and Sara sees her son on stage for the first time. She has a tearful revelation: "Here he belongs. If God wanted him in His house, He would have kept him there. He's not ''my'' boy anymore—he belongs to the whole world now."

Jack Robin on stage, in a publicity shot representing the film's final scene

Afterward, Jack returns to the Rabinowitz home. He kneels at his father's bedside and the two converse fondly: "My son—I love you." Sara suggests that it may help heal his father if Jack takes his place at the Yom Kippur service. Mary arrives with the producer, who warns Jack that he'll never work on Broadway again if he fails to appear on opening night. Jack can't decide. Mary challenges him: "Were you lying when you said your career came before ''everything?''" Jack is unsure if he even can replace his father: "I haven't sung Kol Nidre since I was a little boy." His mother tells him, "Do what is in your heart, Jakie—if you sing and God is not in your voice—your father will know." The producer cajoles Jack: "You're a ''jazz singer'' at heart!"

At the theater, the opening night audience is told that there will be no performance. Jack sings the Kol Nidre in his father's place. His father listens from his deathbed to the nearby ceremony and speaks his last, forgiving words: "Mama, we have our son again." The spirit of Jack's father is shown at his side in the synagogue. Mary has come to listen. She sees how Jack has reconciled the division in his soul: "a jazz singer—singing to his God."

"The season passes—and time heals—the show goes on." Jack, as "The Jazz Singer," is now appearing at the Winter Garden theater, apparently as the featured performer opening for a show called ''Back Room''. In the front row of the packed theater, his mother sits alongside Yudelson. Jack, in blackface, performs the song "My Mammy" for her and the world.

During the Great Depression, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker of Texas meet when Clyde tries to steal Bonnie's mother's car. Bonnie, who is bored by her job as a waitress, is intrigued by Clyde and decides to take up with him and become his partner in crime. They pull off some holdups, but their amateur efforts, while exciting, are not very lucrative.

The duo's crime spree shifts into high gear once they hook up with a dim-witted gas station attendant, C.W. Moss. Clyde's older brother Buck and his wife, Blanche, a preacher's daughter, also join them. The two women dislike each other at first sight, and their antipathy escalates. Blanche has nothing but disdain for Bonnie, Clyde, and C.W., while Bonnie sees Blanche's flightiness as a constant danger to the gang's survival.

Bonnie and Clyde turn from small-time heists to bank robbing. Their exploits also become more violent. After C.W. botches parking during a bank robbery and delays their escape, Clyde shoots the bank manager in the face when he jumps onto the slow-moving car's running board. In Joplin, Missouri, local police drive to the hideout thinking the gang are bootleggers; two policeman are killed in a shootout. The gang is pursued by law enforcement, including Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, whom they capture and humiliate before setting him free. A raid later catches the outlaws off guard in which more law officers are killed, Buck is mortally wounded by a shot to his head, and Blanche is injured in the eye. Bonnie, Clyde, and C.W. barely escape alive. With Blanche sightless and in police custody, Hamer tricks her into revealing C.W.'s name (until then he was only an "unidentified suspect").

Hamer finds Bonnie, Clyde, and C.W. hiding at the house of C.W.'s father Ivan, who thinks the couple have corrupted his son (as evidenced by an ornate tattoo Bonnie convinced C.W. to get). The elder Moss strikes a bargain with Hamer: in exchange for leniency for C.W., he sets a trap for the outlaws. When Bonnie and Clyde stop on the side of the road to help Mr. Moss fix a flat tire, the police in the bushes open fire and riddle them with bullets. Hamer and his posse come out of hiding and look pensively at the couple's bodies as a nearby flock of swallows flies away.

Private investigator Philip Marlowe is called to the home of the wealthy and elderly General Sternwood, in the month of October. He wants Marlowe to deal with an attempt by a bookseller named Arthur Geiger to blackmail his wild young daughter, Carmen. She had previously been blackmailed by a man named Joe Brody. Sternwood mentions that his other, older daughter Vivian is in a loveless marriage with a man named Rusty Regan, who has disappeared. On Marlowe's way out, Vivian wonders if he was hired to find Regan, but Marlowe will not say.

Marlowe investigates Geiger's bookstore and meets Agnes, the clerk. He determines that the store is a pornography lending library. He follows Geiger home, stakes out his house, and sees Carmen enter. Later, he hears a scream, followed by gunshots and two cars speeding away. He rushes in to find Geiger dead and Carmen drugged and naked, in front of an empty camera. He takes her home but when he returns, Geiger's body is gone. He quickly leaves. The next day, the police call him and let him know the Sternwoods' car was found driven off a pier, with their chauffeur dead inside. It appears that he was hit on the head before the car entered the water. The police also ask if Marlowe is looking for Regan.

Marlowe stakes out the bookstore and sees its inventory being moved to Brody's home. Vivian comes to his office and says Carmen is being blackmailed with the nude photos from the previous night. She also mentions gambling at the casino of Eddie Mars and volunteers that Eddie's wife, Mona, ran off with Rusty. Marlowe revisits Geiger's house and finds Carmen trying to get in. They look for the photos, but she plays dumb about the night before. Eddie suddenly enters; he says he is Geiger's landlord and is looking for him. Eddie demands to know why Marlowe is there; Marlowe takes no notice and states that he is no threat to him.

Marlowe goes to Brody's home and finds him with Agnes, the bookstore clerk. Marlowe tells Brody that he knows they are taking over the lending library and blackmailing Carmen with the nude photos. Carmen forces her way in with a gun and demands the photos, but Marlowe takes her gun and makes her leave. Marlowe interrogates Brody further and pieces together the story: Geiger was blackmailing Carmen; the family driver, Owen Taylor, did not like it and so he snuck in and killed Geiger, then took the film of Carmen. Brody was staking out the house too and pursued the driver, knocked him out, stole the film, and possibly pushed the car off the pier. Suddenly, the doorbell rings and Brody is shot dead; Marlowe gives chase and catches Geiger's male lover, who shot Brody thinking he killed Geiger. He had also hidden Geiger's body, so he could remove his own belongings before the police got wind of the murder.

The case is over, but Marlowe is nagged by Rusty’s disappearance. The police accept that he simply ran off with Mona, since she is also missing, and since Eddie would not risk committing a murder in which he would be the obvious suspect. Mars calls Marlowe to his casino and seems to be nonchalant about everything. Vivian is also there, and Marlowe senses something between her and Mars. He drives her home and she tries to seduce him, but he rejects her advances. When he gets home, he finds Carmen has snuck into his bed, and he rejects her, too.

A man named Harry Jones, who is Agnes's new partner, approaches Marlowe and offers to tell him the location of Mona. Marlowe plans to meet him later, but Eddie’s henchman Canino is suspicious of Jones and Agnes's intentions, and kills Jones first. Marlowe manages to meet Agnes anyway and receives the information. He goes to the location in Realito, a repair shop with a home at the back, but Canino - with the help of Art Huck, the garage man - jumps him and knocks him out. When Marlowe awakens, he is tied up, and Mona is there with him. She says she has not seen Rusty in months; she only hid out to help Eddie and insists he did not kill Rusty. She frees Marlowe, and he shoots and kills Canino.

The next day, Marlowe visits General Sternwood, who remains curious about Rusty's whereabouts and offers Marlowe an additional $1,000 fee if he is able to locate him. On the way out, Marlowe returns Carmen's gun to her, and she asks him to teach her how to shoot. They go to an abandoned field, where she tries to kill him, but he has loaded the gun with blanks and merely laughs at her; the shock causes Carmen to have an epileptic seizure. Marlowe brings her back and tells Vivian he has guessed the truth: Carmen came on to Rusty and he spurned her, so she killed him. Eddie, who had been backing Geiger, helped Vivian conceal it by helping to dispose of Rusty's body, inventing a story about his wife running off with Rusty, and then blackmailing her himself. Vivian says she did it to keep it all from her father, so he would not despise his own daughters, and promises to have Carmen institutionalised.

With the case now over, Marlowe goes to a local bar and orders several double Scotches. While drinking, he begins to think about Mona "Silver-Wig" Mars, but never sees her again.

Harry Tasker leads a double life: to his legal secretary wife Helen and his rebellious daughter Dana, he is a boring computer salesman often away on business trips, while in actuality he is a secret agent for a U.S. counterterrorism and intelligence agency named Omega Sector. Harry, along with fellow Agents Albert "Gib" Gibson and Faisil, infiltrate a party in Switzerland hosted by billionaire Jamal Khaled, where Harry meets beautiful art dealer Juno Skinner. Eventually they learn that Juno is not only Khaled's art dealer, but that she is being paid by an Islamic terrorism group called "Crimson Jihad", led by Salim Abu Aziz. Harry visits her undercover as a potential buyer to learn more, leading Aziz and his men to attempt to kill him. Harry fights them off, but loses Aziz in pursuit. As a result, he misses the birthday party that his wife and daughter had planned for him.

Harry goes to Helen's office the next day to smooth things over and surprise her for lunch, but overhears her making secret arrangements to meet a man named Simon. Suspecting Helen is having an affair, he uses Omega Sector resources to learn that Simon is a used car salesman who pretends to be a covert agent to flirt with women. In disguise, Harry and other Omega agents kidnap Helen and Simon. After terrifying Simon into keeping away from Helen, Harry and Gib interrogate Helen using a voice masking device and learn that she is desperately seeking adventure because of Harry's constant absences. Harry thus arranges for Helen to participate in a staged spy mission, where she is to seduce a mysterious figure (who is actually Harry himself) and plant a bug in his hotel room. Aziz's men suddenly burst in, kidnap the couple, and take them to an island in the Florida Keys.

On the island, Harry's suspicions about Juno are confirmed: Crimson Jihad paid her to help them smuggle four stolen MIRV nuclear warheads into the country by hiding them in priceless antique statues. Aziz demands that the United States remove all U.S. military forces from the Persian Gulf forever or else he will detonate a warhead each week in a major U.S. city. He also says he will detonate one warhead on the uninhabited island to demonstrate that Crimson Jihad is a nuclear power. Before he and Helen are tortured, Harry is administered a truth serum and confesses his double life to Helen. They escape to watch as one warhead is set to explode in 90 minutes and the others are loaded onto vehicles to be taken into the U.S. via the Overseas Highway, thus bypassing U.S. Customs. Harry and Helen get separated in the ensuing melee where Harry kills most of the terrorists, but Aziz gets away with one of the warheads. Helen is caught by Juno and taken in a limousine following the convoy. Gib and other Omega agents pick up Harry and they use two Marine Harrier Jump Jets to stop the convoy by destroying part of the Seven Mile Bridge. Harry rescues Helen from Juno's limo before it careens into the ocean below, killing Juno.

The warhead left on the island detonates in front of the public without killing anyone. Gib tells Harry that Aziz and his men are holding Dana hostage in a downtown Miami skyscraper and are threatening to detonate their last warhead. Harry commandeers one of the Harriers to rescue his daughter. Faisil gets into the building by posing as part of a news team requested by Aziz. When he kills several of Aziz's men, Dana steals the missile control key and flees to the building's roof, eventually climbing a tower crane and threatening to drop the key to the street. Aziz pursues and nearly catches her before Harry arrives. Harry rescues a shocked Dana and after a tense struggle with Aziz, he eventually has him ensnared on the end of one of the plane's missiles, which Harry fires at a terrorist helicopter, killing Aziz and the remnants of Crimson Jihad. Harry, Helen, and Dana are then safely reunited.

A year later, Harry and Helen are working together as Omega agents. While on a mission at a formal party, they encounter Simon, working as a waiter and pretending to be a spy as before. He runs away in fear after they reveal themselves and threaten to kill him. They dance a passionate tango while waiting for their contact and with Gib pleading with them to take their work seriously.

When Western & Atlantic Railroad train engineer Johnnie Gray arrives in Marietta, Georgia, he visits the home of Annabelle Lee, one of the two loves of his life, the other being his locomotive, ''The General''. News arrives that the American Civil War has broken out, and Annabelle's brother and father rush to enlist in the Confederate Army. To please Annabelle, Johnnie hurries to be first in line to enlist, but is rejected because he is more valuable as an engineer, although he is not told that reason. On leaving, he runs into Annabelle's father and brother, who beckon to him to join them in line, but he walks away, leaving them with the impression that he does not want to enlist. Annabelle informs Johnnie that she will not speak to him again until he is in uniform.

A year passes, and Annabelle receives word that her father has been wounded. She travels north on the W&ARR to see him, with ''The General'' pulling the train. When it makes a stop, the passengers and crew detrain for a quick meal. As previously planned, Union spies led by Captain Anderson use the opportunity to steal the train. Anderson's objective is to burn all the railroad bridges he passes, thus preventing reinforcement and resupply of the Confederate army. Annabelle, who returned to a baggage car, becomes an inadvertent prisoner of the raiders.

Johnnie gives chase, first on foot, then by handcar and boneshaker bicycle, before reaching the station at Kingston. He alerts the army detachment there, which boards another train to give chase, with Johnnie manning the locomotive the ''Texas''. However, the flatcars are not hooked up to the engine and the troops are left behind. By the time Johnnie realizes he is alone, it is too late to turn back.

The Union agents try various methods to shake their pursuer, including disconnecting their trailing car and dropping railroad ties on the tracks. As the chase continues northward, the Confederate Army of Tennessee is ordered to retreat and the Northern army advances in its wake. Johnnie finally notices he is now behind Union lines, and the hijackers see that Johnnie is by himself. Johnnie stops the ''Texas'' and runs into the forest to hide just as a downpour develops.

At nightfall, Johnnie climbs through the window of a house to steal some food, but hides underneath a table when some Union officers enter. He overhears their plan for a surprise attack and that the Rock River Bridge is essential for their supporting supply trains. He then sees Annabelle brought in; she is taken to a room under guard while they decide what to do with her. Johnnie manages to knock out both guards and free Annabelle. They escape into the rainy woods.

As day breaks, Johnnie and Annabelle find themselves near a railway station where Union soldiers and equipment are being organized for the attack. Seeing ''The General'', Johnnie devises a plan to warn the South. After sneaking Annabelle onto a boxcar, Johnnie steals his engine back. Two Union trains, including the ''Texas'', set out after the pair, while the Union attack is launched. In a reversal of the first chase, Johnnie now has to fend off his pursuers. Finally, he starts a fire behind ''The General'' in the center of the Rock River Bridge, to cut off the Union's important supply line.

Reaching friendly lines, Johnnie warns the Confederate commander of the impending attack and their forces rush to meet the enemy. Meanwhile, Annabelle is reunited with her convalescing father. The pursuing ''Texas'' drives onto the burning bridge, which collapses. When Union soldiers try to ford the river, Confederate fire drives them back.

Afterward, Johnnie returns to his locomotive to find the Union officer whom he had knocked out in escaping earlier has now regained consciousness. He takes the officer prisoner and is spotted by the Confederate general. As a reward for his bravery, he is commissioned a lieutenant and given the captured officer's sword.

Returning to ''The General'' with Annabelle, he tries to kiss her, but has to repeatedly return the salutes of troops walking past. Johnnie finally uses his left hand to embrace Annabelle while using his right to salute the passing soldiers.

Industrialist John Hammond has created a theme park of cloned dinosaurs, Jurassic Park, on tropical Isla Nublar. After a dinosaur handler is killed by a ''Velociraptor'', the park's investors, represented by lawyer Donald Gennaro, demand a safety certification. Gennaro invites mathematician Ian Malcolm, while Hammond invites paleontologist Alan Grant and paleobotanist Ellie Sattler. Upon arrival, the group is shocked to see a live ''Brachiosaurus''.

At the park's visitor center, the group learns that the cloning was accomplished by extracting dinosaur DNA from prehistoric mosquitoes preserved in amber. DNA from frogs was used to fill in gaps in the genome of the dinosaurs, and to prevent breeding, all the dinosaurs were made female by direct chromosome manipulation. The group witnesses the hatching of a baby ''Velociraptor'' and visits the raptor enclosure. During lunch, the group debates the ethics of cloning and the creation of the park; Malcolm warns about the implications of genetic engineering and scoffs at the park's conceptualization, saying that it will inevitably break down.

Hammond's grandchildren, Lex and Tim Murphy, join for a tour of the park, while Hammond oversees from the control room. The tour does not go as planned, with most of the dinosaurs failing to appear and the group encountering a sick ''Triceratops''; it is cut short as a tropical storm approaches. Most of the park employees leave for the mainland on a boat while the visitors return to their electric tour vehicles, except Sattler, who stays behind with the park's veterinarian to study the ''Triceratops''.

Jurassic Park's disgruntled lead computer programmer, Dennis Nedry, has been bribed by Dodgson, a man working for Hammond's corporate rival, to steal fertilized dinosaur embryos. Nedry deactivates the park's security system to gain access to the embryo storage room and stores the embryos inside a container disguised as a shaving cream can. Nedry's sabotage also cuts power to the tour vehicles, stranding them just as they near the park's ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' paddock. Most of the park's electric fences are also deactivated, allowing the ''Tyrannosaurus'' to escape and attack the group. After the ''Tyrannosaurus'' overturns a tour vehicle, it injures Malcolm and devours Gennaro, while Grant, Lex and Tim escape. On his way to deliver the embryos to the island's docks, Nedry becomes lost in the rain, crashes his Jeep Wrangler, and is killed by a ''Dilophosaurus''.

Sattler helps the game warden, Robert Muldoon, search for survivors; they only find an injured Malcolm, just before the ''Tyrannosaurus'' returns and chases them away. Grant, Tim, and Lex take shelter in a treetop, and encounter a ''Brachiosaurus''. They later discover the broken shells of dinosaur eggs, and Grant concludes that the dinosaurs have been breeding, which occurred because of their frog DNA—some West African frogs can change their sex in a single-sex environment, allowing the dinosaurs to do so as well.

Unable to decipher Nedry's code to reactivate the security system, Hammond and chief engineer Ray Arnold reboot the park's system. The group shuts down the park's grid and retreats to an emergency bunker, while Arnold heads to a maintenance shed to complete the rebooting process. When Arnold fails to return, Sattler and Muldoon head to the shed. They discover the shutdown has deactivated the remaining fences and released the ''Velociraptors''. Muldoon distracts the raptors, while Sattler goes to turn the power back on, before being attacked by a raptor and discovering Arnold's severed arm. Meanwhile, Muldoon is caught off-guard and killed by the other two raptors.

Grant, Tim and Lex reach the visitor center. Grant heads out to look for Sattler, leaving Tim and Lex inside. Tim and Lex are pursued by the raptors in a kitchen, but they escape and join Grant and Sattler, who have returned. The group reaches the control room and Lex uses Nedry's computer to restore the park's power, allowing them to call Hammond, who calls for help. As they try to escape by the front entrance, they are cornered by the raptors, but they escape when the ''Tyrannosaurus'' appears and kills the raptors. Hammond arrives in a jeep with Malcolm, and the group boards a helicopter to leave the island.

In 1902 Washington state, a gambler named John McCabe arrives mysteriously and mumbling to himself in the town of Presbyterian Church, named after its only substantial building, a tall but mostly unused chapel. McCabe quickly takes a dominant position over the town's simple-minded and lethargic miners, thanks to his aggressive personality and rumors that he is a gunfighter. McCabe establishes a makeshift brothel, consisting of three prostitutes purchased for $200 from a pimp in the nearby town of Bearpaw. British cockney Constance Miller arrives in town and tells him she could run a brothel for him more profitably. The two become financially successful business partners, open a higher class establishment including a bathhouse for hygiene, and a romantic relationship develops between the two, though she charges him for sex.

As the town becomes richer, Sears and Hollander, a pair of agents from the Harrison Shaughnessy Mining Company in Bearpaw, arrive to buy out McCabe's business, as well as the surrounding zinc mines. Shaughnessy is notorious for having people killed when they refuse to sell. McCabe does not want to sell at their initial price of $5,500, but he overplays his hand in the negotiations in spite of Mrs. Miller's warnings that he is underestimating the violence that will ensue if they do not take the money.

Three bounty hunters – Butler, Breed and Kid – are dispatched by the mining company to kill McCabe, as well as make an example of him, but he refuses to abandon the town. Clearly afraid of the gunmen when they arrive in town, McCabe initially tries to appease them. Butler confronts him about his earlier story that he is successful gunfighter "Pudgy McCabe", who shot someone in a card game. After hearing McCabe's story, with the addition that the gun was a Derringer, Butler proclaims that McCabe has never killed anyone in his life. McCabe later tries to find Sears and Hollander to try to settle on a price, but upon learning that they have left the area, he visits lawyer Clement Samuels to try to obtain legal protection from Harrison Shaughnessy. Although the lawyer agrees to help McCabe bust the mining company's monopoly on the area, McCabe returns to town convinced that he must face the bounty hunters on his own.

When a lethal confrontation becomes inevitable, McCabe arms himself and hides in the chapel during the early morning hours, but is evicted by the armed pastor, who is then shot by the assassin Butler in a case of mistaken identity. A broken lantern starts a fire in the church and the townspeople rush to help extinguish it. McCabe continues his evasion, shooting two of the hired guns from hidden positions, killing them; unfortunately, one wounds McCabe as he falls. As the townsfolk mobilize to fight the chapel fire, McCabe plays cat-and-mouse with the last gunman, Butler. McCabe is shot in the back and mortally wounded, but feigns death and kills Butler with a Derringer when he approaches to confirm McCabe's identity. As the townspeople celebrate extinguishing the fire, McCabe dies alone in the snow, while Mrs. Miller lies sedated in an opium den.

The plot is focused on Bridget's love life. She worries on a regular basis about dying without someone and going on to be eaten by dogs when her singleness causes her death not to be discovered promptly, an obsession that a ''USA Today'' reviewer called "one of [Bridget's] more cheerful daydreams".Deirdre Donahue. "Following the lovable and loony 'Bridget Jones', ''USA Today'', May 28, 1998, page 5D. However, during the course of the year she becomes involved in two romantic relationships. The first is with her charming and handsome boss Daniel Cleaver, who eventually cheats on Bridget with a younger, more conventionally attractive woman. Bridget's second relationship is with the stuffy human-rights barrister Mark Darcy, whom she initially dislikes when they are reintroduced at a New Year's party where her mother reminds them they were childhood playmates. These two men are connected by more than their relationships with Bridget, as Fielding reveals near the end of the novel.

Bridget not only obsesses about her love life, but also details her various daily struggles with her weight, her over-indulgence in alcohol and cigarettes, and her career. Bridget's friends and family are the supporting characters in her diary. These friends are there for her unconditionally throughout the novel; they give her advice about her relationships, and support when problems arise. Her friends are essentially her surrogate family in London.

Bridget's parents live outside of the city, and while they play a lesser role than her friends, they are important figures in Bridget's life. Her mother is an overconfident, doting woman who is constantly trying to marry Bridget off to a rich, handsome man; and her father is considerably more down-to-earth, though he is sometimes driven into uncharacteristically unstable states of mind by his wife.

Bridget often visits her parents, as well as her parents' friends, primarily Geoffrey and Una Alconbury; Geoffrey creates a mildly uncomfortable situation for Bridget by insisting she call him "Uncle Geoffrey" despite his propensity for groping her rear end whenever they meet. In these situations, Bridget is often plagued with that perennial question "How's your love life?" and exposed to the eccentricities of middle class British society, manifested in turkey curry buffets and tarts and vicars parties at which the women wear sexually provocative ("tart") costumes, while the men dress as Anglican priests ("vicars").

Jernau Morat Gurgeh, a famously skillful player of board games and other similar contests, lives on Chiark Orbital, and is bored with his successful life. The Culture's Special Circumstances (SC) inquires about his willingness to participate in a long journey but won't explain further unless Gurgeh agrees to participate. While he is considering this offer, one of his drone friends, Mawhrin-Skel, which had been ejected from SC due to its unstable personality, convinces him to cheat in one of his matches in an attempt to win in an unprecedentedly perfect fashion. The attempt fails, but Mawhrin-Skel uses its recording of the event to blackmail Gurgeh into accepting the offer, so that he can use his connections with SC to request that Mawhrin-Skel be admitted back into SC as well.

Gurgeh spends the next two years travelling to the Empire of Azad in the Small Magellanic Cloud, where a complex game (also named Azad) is used to determine social rank and political status. The game itself is sufficiently subtle and complex that a player's tactics reflect their own political and philosophical outlook. By the time he arrives, he has grasped the game but is unsure how he will measure up against opponents who have been studying it for their entire lives.

Gurgeh lands on the Empire's home planet of Eä, accompanied by another drone, Flere-Imsaho. As a Culture citizen, he naturally plays with a style markedly different from his opponents, many of whom stack the odds against him one way or another, such as forming backroom agreements to cooperate against him (which is allowed by the game's rules). As he advances through the tournament he is matched against increasingly powerful Azad politicians, and ultimately the Emperor himself in the final round. The final contests take place on Echronedal, the Fire Planet, which undergoes a natural conflagration fueled by native plants that produce huge amounts of oxygen. The final game is timed to end when the flames engulf the castle where the event takes place, symbolically renewing the Empire by fire. However, faced with defeat, the Emperor orders his men to kill all the spectators and attempts to kill Gurgeh. Instead, the Emperor is killed by a shot from his own weapon that was deflected by Flere-Imsaho (who later refuses to tell Gurgeh if it was coincidental).

Flere-Imsaho reveals that Gurgeh's participation was part of a Culture plot to overthrow the corrupt and savage Empire from within, and that he, the player, was in fact a pawn in a much larger game. He is further told that in the aftermath of the final game, the Empire of Azad collapsed without further intervention from the Culture. Although Gurgeh never discovers the whole truth, in the final sentences of the novel the narrator is revealed to be Flere-Imsaho, who had been disguised as Mawhrin-Skel to manipulate Gurgeh into taking part in the game.

The Excession of the title is a perfect black-body sphere that appears mysteriously on the edge of Culture space, appearing to be older than the Universe itself and that resists the attempts of the Culture and technologically equivalent societies (notably the Zetetic Elench) to probe it. The Interesting Times Gang (ITG), an informal group of Minds loosely connected with Special Circumstances, try to manage the Culture's response to the Excession. The Affront, a rapidly expanding race which practises systematic sadism towards subject species and its own females and junior males, also try to exploit the Excession by infiltrating a store of mothballed Culture warships and using them to claim control of the mysterious object.

The ''Sleeper Service'', an Eccentric General Systems Vehicle (GSV) who had nominally left the Culture, is instructed to head to the location of the Excession by the ITG. As a condition the ''Sleeper Service'' demands that Genar-Hofoen, a human member of Contact, attend it to seek a resolution with his ex-lover, Dajeil, who lives in solitude on the GSV. They had had an intense love-affair and, after a series of sex changes, had each become impregnated by the other until Genar-Hofoen was unfaithful and Dajeil attacked Genar-Hofoen, killing the unborn child. Dajeil then suspended her pregnancy and withdrew from society for 40 years and the ''Sleeper Service'' hopes to effect a reconciliation between them.

As the stolen Affront fleet approaches the Excession, the ''Sleeper Service'' deploys a fleet of 80,000 remote controlled warships, in a misguided attempt to neutralize the threat. It transpires that the Affront have been manipulated into their grab for power by members of the ITG who thought it was morally imperative to curb the Affront's cruelty by any means, and intend to use the Affront's theft of Culture warships as an excuse for war. The Excession releases a wave of destructive energy towards the ''Sleeper Service''. In desperation, the ''Sleeper Service'' transmits a complete copy of its personality, its "Mindstate", into the Excession, which has the effect of halting the attack. The Excession then vanishes as mysteriously as it appeared and the brief war with the Affront is halted.

During these events, and after speaking with Genar-Hofoen, Dajeil decides to complete her pregnancy and remain on the ''Sleeper Service'', which sets course for a satellite galaxy. Genar-Hofoen returns to the Affront, having been rewarded by being physically transformed into a member of the Affront species (whose company he finds more stimulating than that of the Culture's people).

The book's epilogue reveals that the Excession is a sentient entity that was acting as a bridge for a procession of beings that travel between universes. It also assesses whether the species and societies it encounters are suitable to be enlightened about some unknown further existence beyond the universe; as a result of events in the story the Excession concludes that the civilisations it has encountered in this universe are not yet ready. It also takes the name given to it by the Culture – ''The Excession'' – as its own – in an oblique reference to the aforementioned Affront species, who had been named by another species in an attempt to label them as a lost cause of hyper-sadistic freaks.

The Chelgrians are a race of centaur-like cat aliens with three hind-limbs and a humanoid catlike torso. Major Quilan, a Chelgrian, has lost the will to live after the death of his wife, killed during the Chelgrian civil war that resulted from the Culture's interference. A high-ranked Chelgrian priest offers Quilan the chance to avenge the Chelgrians who died by taking part in a suicide mission to strike back at the Culture. His "Soulkeeper" (a device normally used to store its owner's personality upon their death) is equipped with both the mind of a long-dead Chelgrian admiral and a device given to the Chelgrians by a mysterious group of Involved aliens that can transport wormholes through which weapons can be delivered. Quilan is then sent to the Culture's Masaq' Orbital, ostensibly to persuade the renowned composer Mahrai Ziller to return to his native planet Chel, but in reality on a mission to destroy the Orbital's Hub Mind. To protect him from detection at Masaq', Quilan's memory is selectively blanked until he reaches his target, thus preventing the Mind from reading his thoughts.

Ziller lives in self-imposed exile on Masaq', having renounced his privileged position in Chel's caste system. He has been commissioned to compose music to mark a climactic event in the Idiran-Culture War. Upon hearing of Quilan's visit, and suspicious of his reason for travel, Ziller scrupulously avoids him.

Quilan succeeds in placing the wormholes in the Orbital's Hub, but the Mind was already aware of the plot because Quilan's operator, the long dead admiral housed in his Soulkeeper, is actually a turncoat spy for the Culture. Although unable to track the locations on the other ends of the wormholes, the Mind suggests that the Involved "aliens" assisting Quilan's mission may have been a group of bellicose Culture minds seeking to keep the Culture from being too complacent. Having struggled with painful memories of the Idiran-Culture war, when it was the General Systems Vehicle ''Lasting Damage'', the Mind reveals to Quilan that it intends to destroy its own higher functions, essentially committing suicide, and offers to take Quilan with it. Quilan, who had become unsure of his own mission after experiencing dreams of his dead wife wearing the silvery skin of the Mind's avatar, agrees. They both commit suicide simultaneously during the climax of Ziller's concert, leading to much shock and outrage.

At the end of the novel, a nightmarishly efficient E-Dust Assassin is unleashed by the Culture in 'retribution' against the Chelgrian priest who acted as a pawn for the bellicose Culture Minds, as well as his immediate co-conspirators. The assassin kills the priest gruesomely by transforming into a swarm of insects that eat him from the inside out. Throughout the book there is a subplot about a Culture ethologist named Uagen Zlepe spending his time on a distant alien air sphere and discovering hints about the Chelgrian plot to destroy the Masaq' Orbital's Hub Mind. He attempts to warn the Culture, and the reader is led to believe that his intervention is the reason why the Mind knew about Quilan's sabotage, but ultimately he fails to get his message out and dies. His dead body is resurrected using alien technology an entire galactic grand cycle later, long after all the events of the story have ended. Back in the present, the Chelgrian admiral Huyler's personality, kept alive from Quilan's Soulkeeper, and the real source of the Mind's foreknowledge regarding the attack, is given a new body and becomes an ambassador to the Culture, enjoying a very high standard of living. He says he is close to convincing Ziller to return to Chel, fulfilling Quilan's cover mission.

The T.S. Eliot poem which the novel takes its name from is, in full:

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell And the profit and loss. A current under sea Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell He passed the stages of his age and youth Entering the whirlpool. Gentile or Jew O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you. |author=T.S. Eliot|title=The Waste Land|source=IV. Death by Water

The fate of Phlebas in the poem is similar to that of Uagen Zlepe in the novel. The title may also refer to the state of mind of the Masaq' Orbital Hub Mind and Major Quilan, both already having died in spirit during their respective wars.

The book is made up of two narrative streams, interwoven in alternating chapters. The numbers of the chapters indicate which stream they belong to: one stream is numbered forward in words (One, Two ...), while the other is numbered in reverse with Roman numerals (XIII, XII ...). The story told by the former moves forward chronologically (as the numbers suggest) and tells a self-contained story, while the latter is written in reverse chronology with each chapter successively earlier in Zakalwe's life. Further complicating this structure is a prologue and epilogue set shortly after the events of the main narrative, and many flashbacks within the chapters.

The forward-moving narrative stream deals with the attempts of Diziet Sma and a drone named Skaffen-Amtiskaw (of Special Circumstances, a division of Contact Section) to re-enlist Zakalwe for another job. He must make contact with Beychae, an old colleague, who lives in a politically unstable star cluster, to further the aims of the Culture in the region. The payment that Zakalwe demands is the location of a woman, named Livueta. The backward-moving narrative stream describes earlier jobs that Zakalwe has performed for the Culture, ultimately returning to his pre-Culture childhood with his two sisters (Livueta and Darckense) and a boy his age named Elethiomel whose father has been imprisoned for treason.

As the two streams of the narrative conclude, it emerges that Elethiomel and Zakalwe commanded two opposing armies in a bloody civil war. Elethiomel took Darckense hostage before finally having her killed and her bones and skin made into a chair, to be sent to Zakalwe, who attempted suicide upon receiving it.

After the successful extraction of Beychae, a severely wounded Zakalwe is taken back to his homeworld to see Livueta. She rejects him and reveals that "Cheradenine Zakalwe" is in fact Elethiomel who had stolen the real Zakalwe's identity after Zakalwe had successfully killed himself during the civil war. Elethiomel suffers an aneurysm and Skaffen-Amtiskaw performs surgery in an attempt to save him; it is left unspecified whether Elethiomel survives.

The epilogue is a continuation of the prologue. Whether the story told by these "bookends" takes place prior to, or after, Zakalwe/Elethiomel suffers an aneurysm, is not immediately obvious. The clue that it takes place not long after is "Zakalwe pushing his hand through long hair that isn't there any more …"

While hitchhiking through the galaxy, Arthur Dent is dropped off on a planet in a rainstorm. He appears to be in England on Earth, even though he had seen the planet destroyed by the Vogons. He has been gone for several years, but only a few months have passed on Earth. He hitches a lift with a man named Russell and his sister Fenchurch (nicknamed "Fenny"). Russell explains that Fenny, who is sitting in a drugged state in the back seat of the car, became delusional after worldwide mass hysteria, in which everyone hallucinated "big yellow spaceships" (the Vogon destructor ships that "demolished" the Earth). Arthur becomes curious about Fenchurch, but he is dropped off before he can ask more questions. Inside his inexplicably undamaged home, Arthur finds a gift-wrapped bowl inscribed with the words "So long and thanks for all the fish", into which he puts his Babel Fish. Arthur thinks that Fenchurch is somehow connected to him and to the Earth's destruction. He still has the ability to fly whenever he lets his thoughts wander.

Arthur puts his life in order, and then tries to find out more about Fenchurch. He happens to find her hitchhiking and picks her up. He obtains her phone number, but shortly thereafter loses it. He discovers her home by accident when he searches for the cave in which he had lived on prehistoric Earth; Fenchurch's flat is built on the same spot. Arthur and Fenchurch find more circumstances connecting them. Fenchurch reveals that, moments before her "hallucinations", she had an epiphany about how to make everything right, but then blacked out. She has not been able to recall the substance of the epiphany. Eventually discovering that Fenchurch's feet do not touch the ground, Arthur teaches her how to fly. They have sex in the skies over London.

In her conversation with Arthur, Fenchurch learns about his adventures hitchhiking across the galaxy, and Arthur learns that all the dolphins disappeared shortly after the world hallucinations. Arthur and Fenchurch travel to California to see John Watson, an enigmatic scientist who claims to know why the dolphins disappeared. Watson has abandoned his original name in favour of "Wonko the Sane", because he believes that the rest of the world's population has gone mad. Watson shows them another bowl with the words "So long and thanks for all the fish" inscribed on it, and encourages them to listen to it. The bowl explains audibly that the dolphins, aware of the planet's coming destruction, left Earth for an alternate dimension. Before leaving, they pulled the Earth from a parallel universe into this one and transported everyone and everything onto it from the one about to be destroyed. After the meeting, Fenchurch tells Arthur that, while he lost something and later found it, she found something and later lost it. She desires that they travel to space together, and that they reach the site where God's Final Message to His Creation is written.

Ford Prefect discovers that the ''Hitchhiker's Guide'' entry for Earth has been updated to include the volumes of text that he originally wrote, instead of the previous truncated entry, "Mostly harmless". Curious, Ford hitchhikes across the galaxy to reach Earth. Eventually he uses the ship of a giant robot to land in the centre of London, causing a panic. In the chaos, Ford reunites with Arthur and the two of them and Fenchurch commandeer the robot's ship. Arthur takes Fenchurch to the planet where God's Final Message to His Creation is written, where they discover Marvin. Due to previous events, Marvin is now approximately 37 times older than the known age of the universe and is barely functional. With Arthur's and Fenchurch's help, Marvin reads the Message ("We apologise for the inconvenience"), utters the final words "I think... I feel good about it", and dies happily.

Eric Thorgrimursson, nicknamed "Brighteyes" for his most notable trait, strives to win the hand of his beloved, Gudruda the Fair. Her father Asmund, a priest of the old Norse gods, opposes the match, believing Eric to be a man without prospects. Deadlier by far are the intrigues of Swanhild, Gudruda's half-sister and a sorceress, who desires Eric for herself. She persuades the chieftain Ospakar Blacktooth to woo Gudruda, making the two men enemies. Battles, intrigues, and treachery follow.

''Choke'' follows Victor Mancini and his friend Denny through a few months of their lives with frequent flashbacks to the days when Victor was a child. Victor had grown up moving from one foster home to another, as his mother was found to be unfit to raise him. Several times throughout his childhood, his mother would kidnap him from his various foster parents, though every time they would eventually be caught, and he would again be remanded over to the child welfare agency.

In the present-day setting of the book, Victor has left medical school to support his feeble mother, who is now in a nursing home. In order to pay for elder care for his mother, he resorts to being a con artist. Victor goes to various restaurants and purposely causes himself to choke midway through his meal, luring a "good Samaritan" into saving his life. He keeps a detailed list of everyone who saves him and sends them frequent letters about fictional bills he is unable to pay, causing them to send him money out of sympathy.

Victor works at a re-enactment museum set in colonial times, where most of the employees are drug addicts or, in Denny's case, a fellow recovering sex addict. He spends most of his time on the job guarding Denny (who is constantly being caught with "contraband" items that do not correspond with the time period of the museum) in the stocks. The two met at a sex addiction support group and later applied together to the same job. Denny is later fired from the museum, and begins collecting stones from around the city to build his "dream home".

While growing up, Victor's mother taught him numerous conspiracy theories and obscure medical facts which both confused and frightened him. This and his constant moves from one home to another have left Victor unable to form lasting and stable relationships with women. As a result, Victor finds himself getting sexual gratification from women on a solely superficial level. Later on, he starts talking to his mother again for the first time in years.

Mrs Wilberforce is a sweet and eccentric old widow who lives alone with her raucous parrots in a gradually subsiding lopsided house, built over the entrance to a railway tunnel in Kings Cross, London. With nothing to occupy her time and an active imagination, she is a frequent visitor to the local police station where she reports fanciful suspicions regarding neighbourhood activities. Having led wild-goose chases in the past, she is humoured by the officers there who give her reports no credence whatsoever.

She is approached by an archly sinister character, "Professor" Marcus, who wants to rent rooms in her house. She is not aware that he has assembled a gang of hardened criminals for a sophisticated security van robbery at London King's Cross railway station: the gentlemanly and easily fooled con-man Major Claude Courtney; the comedic Cockney spiv Harry Robinson; the slow-witted and punch drunk ex-boxer 'One-Round' Lawson; and the murderous, cruel and vicious continental gangster Louis Harvey. As a cover, the "Professor" convinces the naive Mrs. Wilberforce that the group is an amateur string quintet using the rooms for rehearsal space. To maintain the deception, the gang members carry musical instruments and play recordings of Boccherini's Minuet (3rd movement) from String Quintet in E, Op. 11 No. 5 and Haydn's Serenade for Strings Op. 3 No. 5 (the "Serenade" was actually composed by Roman Hoffstetter) during their planning sessions.

After the heist, "Mrs. W" is deceived into retrieving the disguised money from the railway station herself. This she successfully manages to do, but not without serious complications owing to her tendency to righteous meddling. As the gang departs her house with the loot, 'One-Round' accidentally gets his cello case full of banknotes trapped in the front door. As he pulls the case free, banknotes spill forth while Mrs. Wilberforce looks on. Finally, smelling a rat, she informs Marcus that she is going to the police.

Stalling, the gangsters half convince Mrs. W that she will surely be considered an accomplice for holding the cash. In any case, they assert, it is a victimless crime as insurance will cover all the losses and the police will probably not even accept the money back. She wavers, but when she rallies, the criminals finally decide they must kill her. No one wants to do it, so they draw lots using matchsticks. The Major loses but tries to make a run for it with the cash. As the oblivious Mrs. W dozes, the criminals cross, double-cross and manage to kill one another in rapid succession. The Major falls off the roof of the house after being chased by Louis; Harry is killed by One-Round who, after having had a change of heart about the killing of Mrs. W, wrongly thinks that Harry has killed her; One-Round tries to shoot Louis and Marcus when he overhears a plan to double-cross him, but leaves the gun's safety catch on and is himself killed by Louis; Marcus kills Louis by dislodging his ladder under the tunnel behind the house, causing Louis to fall into a passing railway wagon. Before falling into the carriage, Louis fires a last shot at Marcus which nearly hits him. Finally, with no one else left, Marcus himself is struck on the head by a changing railway signal, and his body drops into another wagon. All the other bodies have been dumped into railway wagons passing behind the house and are now far away.

Mrs. Wilberforce is now left alone with the plunder. She goes to the police to return it, but they do not believe her story. They humour her, telling her to keep the money. She is puzzled but finally relents and returns home. Along the way, she leaves a banknote of large denomination with a startled starving artist.

''A Friend of the Earth'' is the story of Tyrone O'Shaughnessy Tierwater, a U.S. citizen born in 1950, half Irish Catholic and half Jewish ("I'm a mess and I know it. Jewish guilt, Catholic guilt, enviro-eco-capitalistico guilt: I can't even expel gas in peace."), whose personal tragedy fits in with, and adds to, the gloomy atmosphere created in the novel.

Egged on by Andrea, the woman he loves, he becomes a committed "Earth Forever!" activist (an allusion to the radical environmental group Earth First!) in the 1980s, is imprisoned for ecotage, but eventually cannot change anything. On top of that, he suffers the loss of his first wife when their daughter is only three and of his daughter when she is only 25. When the novel opens, Tierwater is a 75-year-old disillusioned ex-con living on the estate of a famous pop star in the Santa Ynez Valley, north of Santa Barbara, in California and looking after the latter's private menagerie.

Maclovio Pulchris, the singer, has had the idea of preserving some of the last surviving animals of several species in order to initiate a captive breeding programme at some later point in time, choosing to preserve the animals no one else would. Tierwater has been working for Pulchris ("Mac") for ten years when, in 2025, Andrea, his ex-wife and stepmother to his daughter Sierra, contacts him after more than 20 years. She and a friend of hers, April Wind, move in with Tierwater, officially for April Wind to write a biography, or rather hagiography, of Sierra Tierwater, his daughter, who died in 2001 as a martyr to the environmentalist cause falling off a tree in old growth woodland in which she has been living for about three years.)

In the course of the next few months the situation deteriorates even more. The rain and the wind destroy the animals' cages, and subsequently they have to be kept in Pulchris's basement. One morning one of the lions gets loose and attacks and kills the singer, as well as a number of employees. As a consequence, the other lions are shot—and thus lions as a species become extinct. (There is just one surviving lion in the San Diego Zoo left.)

Jobless and penniless, Tierwater, who has fallen in love all over again with Andrea, is evicted from the estate by Pulchris's heirs. Along with Andrea, Tyrone leaves the compound, heading for a mountain cabin owned by Earth Forever! somewhere in the forest which decades ago served as a hideout. They arrive there with only one of Pulchris's animals in tow: Petunia, the Patagonian fox, which they now keep as their domestic animal, passing it off as their dog.

In the final scene of the book, a teenaged girl comes hiking along the trail where the forest surrounding the dilapidated cabin would have been. Tierwater and Andrea, who again call themselves husband and wife now, have a glimmer of hope that life will soon be like life 30 years before, as the novel ends on an optimistic note.

The action covers a period of roughly four months—from August to November—in a year in the 1890s. Liza Kemp is an 18-year-old factory worker and the youngest of a large family, now living alone with her aging mother. Very popular with all the residents of Vere Street, Lambeth, she likes Tom, a boy her age, but not as much as he likes her, so she rejects him when he proposes. Nevertheless, she is persuaded to join a party of 32 who make a coach trip (in a horse-drawn coach, of course) to a nearby village on the August Bank Holiday Monday. Some of the other members of the party are Tom; Liza's friend Sally and her boyfriend Harry; and Jim Blakeston, a 40-year-old father of 5 who has recently moved to Vere Street with his large family, and his wife (while their eldest daughter, Polly, is taking care of her siblings). The outing is fun, and they all get drunk on beer. On their way back in the dark, Liza realises that Jim Blakeston is making a pass at her by holding her hand. Back home, Jim manages to speak to her alone and to steal a kiss from her.

Liza feels attracted to Jim. They never appear together in public because they do not want the other residents of Vere Street or their workmates to start talking about them. One of Jim Blakeston's first steps to win Liza's heart is to go to a melodramatic play with her on Saturday night. Afterwards, they have sex. When autumn arrives and the nights get chillier, Liza's secret meetings with Jim become less comfortable and more trying; they must meet in the third-class waiting-room of Waterloo station. To Liza's dismay, people do start talking about them despite their precautions. Only Liza's mother, a drunkard and a simple person, doesn't know about their affair. After Liza's friend, Sally, gets married, she soon becomes pregnant. With Sally married and stuck at home, and even Tom seemingly shunning her, Liza feels increasingly isolated, but her love for Jim keeps her going. They do talk about their love affair: about the possibility of Jim leaving his wife and children ("I dunno if I could get on without the kids"); about Liza not being able to leave her mother, who needs her help; about living somewhere else "as if we was married". Soon the situation deteriorates completely; Mrs Blakeston, who is pregnant again, opposes Jim's affair with Liza by refusing to talk to him, then goes around telling other people what she would do with Liza if she caught her, and those people inform Liza, who is frightened. One Saturday afternoon in November, Liza is on her way home from work when the angry Mrs. Blakeston confronts her, spits in her face, and physically attacks her. Quickly a crowd gathers, not to abate the fight, but to abet it. ("The audience shouted and cheered and clapped their hands.") Eventually, both Tom and Jim stop the fight, and Tom walks Liza home. Liza is now publicly stigmatised as a "wrong one", a fact she herself admits to Tom ("Oh, but I 'ave treated yer bad. I'm a regular wrong 'un, I am"). Tom wants to marry Liza, but she tells him that "it's too lite now" because she thinks she is pregnant. Tom says he wouldn't mind that, but she insists on refusing. Meanwhile, at the Blakestones', Jim beats up his wife. Other residents hear them and young Polly appeals to some for help, but they choose not to interfere in other people's domestic problems ("She'll git over it; an' p'raps she deserves it, for all you know"). When Mrs Kemp comes home and sees her daughter's injuries, all she does is offer her some alcohol (whiskey or gin). That evening they both get drunk. During the next night Liza has a miscarriage. Mr Hodges, who lives upstairs, fetches a doctor from the nearby hospital, who soon says he can do nothing for her. While her daughter is dying, Mrs Kemp has a long talk with Mrs Hodges, a midwife and sick-nurse. Liza's last visitor is Jim, but Liza is already in a coma. Mrs Kemp and Mrs Hodges are talking about the funeral arrangements when they hear Liza's death rattle and the doctor declares her dead.

The book's introduction concerns the origin of the weirdstone. Following the defeat of Nastrond steps had been taken to prepare for his eventual return. This involved bringing together a small band of warriors of pure heart, each with a horse, and gathering them inside the old dwarf caves of Fundindelve, deep inside the hill of Alderley which were sealed by powerful white magic which would both defend Fundindelve from evil as the ages passed and prevent the warriors and their horses from ageing. When the time was ripe and the world once more in mortal peril it was prophesied that this small band of warriors would ride out from the hill, trusting in their purity of heart to defeat Nastrond forever. Fundindelve had a guardian, the ancient wizard Cadellin Silverbrow, and the heart of the white magic was sealed inside a jewel, the Weirdstone of Brisingamen, also known as Firefrost.

At the beginning of the story, however, the Weirdstone has been lost, stolen centuries before by a farmer whose milk-white mare Cadellin had bought to complete the numbers in Fundindelve. The stone became a family heirloom and eventually found its way to Susan's mother, who passed it on to Susan, oblivious of its history and purpose. When the children meet Cadellin the wizard fails to notice the bracelet even when the children come to visit him in Fundindelve. However, its presence does not go unnoticed by Selina Place and the witches of the morthbrood, who send their minions to steal it. Susan finally realises the identity of the Weirdstone and, fearing its destruction, sets out to warn the wizard. The children return to Fundindelve but are waylaid by a dark presence and the Tear is taken. Once they inform Cadellin they are told to keep away, to not further involve themselves. However, whilst exploring on their bikes they notice a mysterious cloud travelling across the landscape before hovering over the home of Selina Place, St Mary's Clyffe and they go to investigate hoping to recover the stone on their own. They are successful but become lost in a labyrinth of mine-shafts and caverns. As the members of the morthbrood and Selina Place, later revealed as The Morrigan, close in on them they are rescued by a pair of dwarves, Fenodyree and Durathror, who are close companions of Cadellin. After passing through many perils the group returns to the farm where Susan and Colin are staying to spend the night, where at midnight The Morrigan menaces them through the door. They set out with the farm's owner the next day to return the Weirdstone to Cadellin before it can fall into the wrong hands. Their travels take them through gardens, lawns, fens, tangled rhododendron thickets, pine plantations, mountain peaks and snowy fields while striving to avoid the attention of the morthbrood.

At the climax of the story a great battle takes place on a hill near Alderley during which the children and their companions make a desperate last stand to protect the Weirdstone. However the enemy forces prove too strong and Durathror is mortally wounded. Grimnir takes the Weirdstone for himself and, in the ensuing chaos, Nastrond sends the great wolf Fenrir (in some editions Managarm) to destroy his enemies. As the remaining companions begin to despair, Cadellin appears and slays Grimnir, whom he reveals to be his own brother and who in the final moment accepts defeat and drops the stone into Cadellin's hand. The Morrigan flees in terror while Cadellin uses the power of the Weirdstone to subdue once again the forces of darkness.

Ten-year-old Chihiro Ogino and her parents are traveling to their new home when her father decides to take a shortcut. The family's car stops in front of a tunnel leading to what appears to be an abandoned amusement park which Chihiro's father insists on exploring, despite his daughter's protest. They find a seemingly empty restaurant still stocked with food, which Chihiro's parents immediately begin to eat. While exploring further, Chihiro reaches an enormous bathhouse and meets a boy named Haku, who warns her to return across the riverbed before sunset. However, Chihiro discovers too late that her parents have been transformed into pigs, and she is unable to cross the now-flooded river.

Haku finds Chihiro and has her ask for a job from the bathhouse's boiler-man, Kamaji, a yōkai commanding the susuwatari. Kamaji refuses to hire her and asks worker Lin to send Chihiro to Yubaba, the witch who runs the bathhouse. Yubaba tries to frighten Chihiro away, but she persists, so Yubaba gives Chihiro a contract to work for her. Yubaba takes away the second kanji of her name, renaming her . While visiting her parents' pigpen, Haku gives Sen a goodbye card she had with her, and Sen realizes that she had already forgotten her real name. Haku warns her that Yubaba controls people by taking their names, and that if she forgets hers like he has forgotten his, she will never be able to leave the spirit world.

Sen faces discrimination from the other workers; only Kamaji and Lin show sympathy for her. While working, she invites a silent creature named No-Face (''Kaonashi'' ) inside, believing him to be a customer. A "stink spirit" arrives as Sen's first customer, and she discovers he is the spirit of a polluted river. In gratitude for cleaning him, he gives Sen a magic emetic dumpling. Meanwhile, No-Face imitates the gold left behind by the stink spirit and tempts a worker with gold, then swallows him. He demands food and begins tipping extensively. He swallows two more workers when they interfere with his conversation with Sen.

Sen sees paper Shikigami attacking a dragon and recognizes the dragon as Haku metamorphosed. When a grievously injured Haku crashes into Yubaba's penthouse, Sen follows him upstairs. A shikigami that stowed away on her back shapeshifts into Zeniba, Yubaba's twin sister. She turns Yubaba's son, Boh, into a mouse, creates a decoy Boh, and mutates Yubaba's harpy into a tiny, flylike bird. Zeniba tells Sen that Haku has stolen a magic golden seal from her, and warns Sen that it carries a deadly curse. Haku strikes the shikigami, which eliminates Zeniba's hologram. He falls into the boiler room with Sen, Boh, and the harpy on his back, where Sen feeds him part of the dumpling she had intended to give her parents, causing him to vomit both the seal and a black slug, which Sen crushes with her foot.

With Haku unconscious, Sen resolves to return the seal and apologize to Zeniba. Sen confronts No-Face, who is now massive, and feeds him the rest of the dumpling. No-Face follows Sen out of the bathhouse, steadily regurgitating everything that he has eaten. Sen, No-Face, Boh, and the harpy travel to see Zeniba with train tickets given to her by Kamaji. Meanwhile, Yubaba orders that Sen's parents be slaughtered, but Haku reveals that Boh is missing and offers to retrieve him if Yubaba releases Sen and her parents. Yubaba agrees, but only if Sen can pass a final test.

Sen meets with Zeniba, who makes her a magic hairband and reveals that Sen's love for Haku broke her curse and that Yubaba used the black slug to take control over Haku. Haku appears at Zeniba's home in his dragon form and flies Sen, Boh, and the harpy to the bathhouse. No-Face decides to stay behind and become Zeniba's spinner. In mid-flight, Sen recalls falling years ago into the Kohaku River and being washed safely ashore, correctly guessing Haku's real identity as . When they arrive at the bathhouse, Yubaba forces Sen to identify her parents from among a group of pigs in order to break their curse. After she answers correctly that none of the pigs are her parents, her contract disappears and she is given back her real name. Haku takes her to the now-dry riverbed and vows to meet her again. Chihiro crosses the riverbed to her restored parents, who do not remember anything after eating at the restaurant stall. They walk back through the tunnel until they reach their car, now covered in dust and leaves. Before getting in, Chihiro looks back at the tunnel, her hair-tie from Zeniba still intact.

The novel begins with a brief foreword stating that whether the novel "is fact or fiction, my readers must decide for themselves" and implying that the events occurred.

At Appleyard College, a private boarding school for upper-class girls near Mount Macedon, Victoria, a picnic is being planned for the students under the supervision of Mrs. Appleyard, the school's headmistress. The picnic entails a day trip to Hanging Rock, on St. Valentine's Day in 1900. One of the students, Sara, who is in trouble with Mrs. Appleyard, is not allowed to go. Sara's close friend Miranda goes without her. When they arrive, the students relax, and eat lunch. Afterward, Miranda goes to climb the monolith with classmates Edith, Irma, and Marion despite being forbidden to do so. The girls' mathematics teacher, Greta McCraw, follows behind them separately. Miranda, Marion, and Irma climb still higher in a trance-like state while Edith flees in terror; she returns to the picnic in hysterics, disoriented and with no memory of what occurred. Miss McCraw is also nowhere to be accounted for except for being seen by Edith who passed her ascending the rock in her underwear. The school scours the rock in search of the three girls and their teacher, but they are not found.

The disappearances provoke much local concern and international sensation with rape, abduction, and murder being assumed as probable explanations. Several organized searches of the picnic grounds and the area surrounding the rock itself turn up nothing. Meanwhile, the students, teachers and staff of the college, as well as members of the community, grapple with the riddle-like events. Mike Fitzhubert, an Englishman who was picnicking at the grounds the same day, embarks on a private search of the rock and discovers Irma, unconscious and on the verge of death. When he fails to return from his search, he is found in an unexplained daze, sitting at the rock with Irma, by his friend and uncle's coachman, Albert Crundall.

Concerned parents begin withdrawing their daughters from the prestigious college, prompting various staff to leave; the college's handyman and maid quit their jobs, and the French instructor, Mlle. Dianne de Poitiers, announces that she will be getting married and leaving the college as well. A junior governess at the college, Dora Lumley, also leaves with her brother Reg, only for both to be killed in a hotel fire. Amidst the unrest both in and around the college, Sara vanishes, only to be found days later, having apparently committed suicide (her body was found directly beneath the school's tower, with her head "crushed beyond recognition"). Mrs. Appleyard, distraught over the events that have occurred, kills herself by jumping from a peak on Hanging Rock.

In a pseudo-historical afterword purportedly extracted from a 1913 Melbourne newspaper article, it is written that both the college and the Woodend Police Station, where records of the investigation were kept, were destroyed by a bush fire in the summer of 1901. In 1903, rabbit hunters came across a lone piece of frilled calico at the rock, believed to have been part of the dress of the governess, Miss Greta McCraw, but neither she nor the girls was ever found.

Excised final chapter

According to her editor Sandra Forbes, Lindsay's original draft of the novel included a final chapter in which the mystery was resolved. At her editor's suggestion, Lindsay removed it prior to publication. Chapter Eighteen, as it is known, was published posthumously as a standalone book in 1987 as '''''The Secret of Hanging Rock''''' by Angus & Robertson Publishing.

The chapter opens with Edith fleeing back to the picnic area while Miranda, Irma, and Marion push on. Each girl begins to experience dizziness and feel as if she is "being pulled from the inside out." A woman suddenly appears climbing the rock in her underwear, shouting "Through!", and then faints. This woman is not referenced by name and is apparently a stranger to the girls, yet the narration suggests she is Miss McCraw. Miranda loosens the woman's corset to help revive her. Afterwards, the girls remove their own corsets and throw them off the cliff. The recovered woman points out that the corsets appear to hover in mid-air as if stuck in time, and that they cast no shadows. She and the girls continue together. The girls then encounter what is described as "a hole in space", by which they physically enter a crack in the rock following a lizard; the unnamed woman transforms into a crab and disappears into the rock. Marion follows her, then Miranda, but when Irma's turn comes, a balanced boulder (the hanging rock) slowly tilts and blocks the way. The chapter ends with Irma "tearing and beating at the gritty face on the boulder with her bare hands."

The missing material amounts to about 12 pages; the remainder of the publication ''The Secret at Hanging Rock'' contains discussion by other authors, including John Taylor and Yvonne Rousseau. The suspension of the corsets and description of the hole in space suggest that the girls have encountered some sort of time warp, which is compatible with Lindsay's fascination with and emphasis on clocks and time in the novel. The transformations into animals recall traditional Indigenous Australian beliefs.

The novel opens as private detective Mike Hammer is called to the apartment of insurance investigator Jack Williams, a very close friend who was crippled saving Hammer's life during shared World War II military service in the Pacific. Losing his arm rendered Jack unfit for police work, so he put his experience to use by investigating insurance fraud. Williams has been murdered in a particularly cruel way, deliberately shot in the stomach to make the death slow and painful. Mike vows vengeance, declaring that Jack's murderer will die the same way Jack did.

Prior to his death, Jack had fallen in love with Myrna Devlin when he stopped her from committing suicide by jumping from a bridge. Williams asked Dr. Charlotte Manning, a young, beautiful, blonde, and well-to-do psychiatrist, to admit Myrna to her clinic for psychotherapy. After Myrna became clean, she and Williams became engaged. The couple maintained a casual friendship with Manning. Over time, Williams comes to suspect that Hal Kines, one of Manning's college students who has spent some time at her clinic and who has become one of her casual acquaintances, is in fact a criminal.

In the course of his investigation, Hammer meets and begins to fall in love with Dr. Manning. In the course of the novel, they become engaged.

Taking time out from his investigation on a Saturday morning, Hammer picks up Myrna Devlin and gives her a lift to an estate in the country, owned by the lovely Bellamy twins, for a gigantic all-day party. Charlotte Manning says she has some business to attend to and will be there in time for a tennis game due to take place that evening. After an unsuccessful attempt at playing tennis himself, Hammer gets rid of his sleep deficit by spending all day in his room, fast asleep, with "old junior" — his gun — close to him. He is woken up just in time for dinner, during which Harmon Wilder, the Bellamys' lawyer, and Charles Sherman, Wilder's assistant, are pointed out to him. This is a fine — and the final — distractor in the novel: Wilder and Sherman are suddenly missing from the party after Myrna Devlin has been found shot. In fact they had illicit drugs on them and did not want to be found out. During the tennis game, Mary Bellamy asks Charlotte if she can "borrow" Hammer. She then leads him into the woods, where they have sex. They return to the party just as a maid discovers Myrna's body in an upstairs room, in front of a large mirror. Both Hammer's friend Pat Chambers and other police are called in, and the alibi of each guest is checked.

Now having another reason to seek vengeance, Hammer redoubles his efforts to discover the killer. Soon he has uncovered a wide-ranging narcotics rings, one that Jack had been on the verge of exposing.

Back home, Hammer retreats into his apartment to think. Finally, he knows the identity of the killer: Dr. Manning. Confronting her, Hammer keeps his promise and kills her in the same excruciatingly painful way she had killed his friend Jack.

When the dying murderer asks Hammer how he could act in such a cruel manner, Hammer replies "It was easy!".

'''Act I'''

The cast of a musical version of William Shakespeare's ''The Taming of the Shrew'' is rehearsing for the opening of the show that evening ("Another Op'nin', Another Show"). Egotistical Fred Graham is the director and producer and is starring as Petruchio, and his movie-star ex-wife, Lilli Vanessi, is playing Katherine. The two seem to be constantly arguing, and Lilli is particularly angry that Fred is pursuing the sexy young actress Lois Lane, who is playing Bianca. After the rehearsal, Lois's boyfriend Bill appears; he is playing Lucentio, but he missed the rehearsal because he was gambling. He tells her that he signed a $10,000 IOU in Fred's name, and Lois reprimands him ("Why Can't You Behave?").

Before the opening, Fred and Lilli meet backstage, and Lilli shows off her engagement ring from Washington insider Harrison Howell, reminding Fred that it's the anniversary of their divorce. They recall the operetta in which they met, which included "Wunderbar", a Viennese waltz; they end up fondly reminiscing and singing and dancing. Two gangsters show up to collect the $10,000 IOU, and Fred replies that he never signed it. The gangsters obligingly say they will give him time to remember it and will return later. In her dressing room, Lilli receives flowers from Fred, and she declares that she is still "So In Love" with him. Fred tries to keep Lilli from reading the card that came with the flowers, which reveals that he really intended them for Lois. However, Lilli takes the card with her onstage, saying she will read it later.

The show begins ("We Open in Venice"). Baptista, Katherine and Bianca's father, will not allow his younger daughter Bianca to marry until his older daughter Katherine is married. However, she is shrewish and ill-tempered, and no man desires to marry her. Three suitors – Lucentio, Hortensio, and Gremio – try to woo Bianca, and she says that she would marry any of them ("Tom, Dick, or Harry"). Petruchio, a friend of Lucentio, expresses a desire to marry into wealth ("I've Come to Wive it Wealthily in Padua"). The suitors hatch a plan for him to marry Kate, as Baptista is rich. Kate, however, has no intentions of getting married ("I Hate Men"). Petruchio attempts to woo her ("Were Thine That Special Face"). Offstage, Lilli has an opportunity to read the card. She walks on stage off-cue and begins hitting Fred, who, along with the other actors, tries to remain in character as Baptista gives Petruchio permission to marry Kate. Lilli continues to strike Fred, and he ends up spanking her. Offstage, Lilli furiously declares she is leaving the show. However, the gangsters have reappeared, and Fred tells them that if Lilli quits, he'll have to close the show and won't be able to pay them the $10,000. The gangsters force her to stay at gunpoint. Back onstage, Bianca and Lucentio dance while the chorus performs "We Sing of Love", covering a scene change. The curtain opens, revealing the exterior of a church; Petruchio and Kate have just been married, and they exit the church; the gangsters, dressed in Shakespearean costume, are onstage to make sure that Lilli stays. Petruchio implores for Kate to kiss him, and she refuses. He lifts her over his shoulder and carries her offstage while she pummels his shoulder with her fists ("Kiss Me Kate").

'''Act II'''

During the show's intermission, the cast and crew relax in the alley behind the theater. Paul (Fred's assistant), along with a couple other crew members, lament that it's "Too Darn Hot" to meet their lovers that night. The play continues, and Petruchio tries to 'tame' Katherine and mourns for his now-lost bachelor life ("Where Is the Life That Late I Led?"). Off-stage, Lilli's fiancé Harrison Howell is looking for Lilli. He runs into Lois, and she recognizes him as a former lover but promises not to tell Lilli. Bill is shocked to overhear this, but Lois tells him that even if she is involved with other men, she is faithful to him in her own way ("Always True to You in My Fashion"). Lilli tries to explain to Howell that she is being forced to stay at the theatre by the gangsters, but Howell doesn't believe her and wants to discuss wedding plans. Fred insidiously points out how boring Lilli's life with Howell will be compared with the theatre. Bill sings a love song he has written for Lois ("Bianca").

The gangsters discover that their boss has been killed, so the IOU is no longer valid. Lilli leaves—without Howell—as Fred unsuccessfully tries to persuade her to stay ("So in Love" (Reprise)). The gangsters get caught on stage and improvise a tribute to Shakespeare in which they explain that knowing Shakespeare is the key to romance ("Brush Up Your Shakespeare"). The company prepares for the conclusion of the play, the wedding of Bianca and Lucentio, even though they are now missing one of the main characters. However, just in time for Katherine's final speech, Lilli arrives onstage ("I Am Ashamed That Women Are So Simple"). Fred and Lilli wordlessly reconcile on stage, and the play ends ("Kiss Me Kate" (Finale)) with them, as well as Bill and Lois, kissing passionately.

Helen Reed, an English novelist in her early forties, arrives at the University of Gloucester to spend the term there as "writer-in-residence" and to teach a creative writing class. Still grieving over the death of her beloved husband, Helen thinks a change of scenery might be a good idea to get over her loss. Apart from the English Department, she is intrigued by the department of Cognitive Science and by its head, 50-year-old Ralph Messenger, to whom she is introduced at a social function very soon during her stay. Helen feels curiously attracted by Messenger but she soon learns about his reputation as a womaniser.

When a student submits some chapters from the novel she is writing, Helen recognises one of the male characters as having been modelled on her late husband Martin. Gradually it dawns upon Helen that her husband must have had a succession of young lovers, with everyone except herself knowing everything. During a fundraising event, Carrie tells Helen she knows about her husband's flings and, by taking a lover herself, tries to get back at him. Ralph Messenger, she is quite sure, does not know anything about her affair. Helen decides to get on with her life and allows herself to be drawn into an affair with Messenger. Soon, Helen ponders whether she is falling in love with him.

When he is waiting for Helen in her maisonette, Messenger cannot resist the temptation to turn on her laptop and read parts of her journal. This is how he learns about his wife's infidelity. When Helen enters her apartment, his jealousy gets the better of him so that he cannot hide the fact that he has invaded her privacy.

Ralph Messenger undergoes surgery, after which he loses his reputation as a woman-chaser. In 1999, he publishes a new book entitled ''Machine Living'' and in due course is awarded a CBE. He never confronts Carrie with her affair and remains married to her. Helen Reed returns to London and resumes writing. In the following year she publishes ''Crying is a Puzzler'', a novel about life on campus quite similar to that of the University of Gloucester.

In the 1920s, Sean "Trooper Thorn" Thornton, an Irish-born retired boxer from Pittsburgh, travels to his birthplace of Inisfree to purchase the old family farm. Shortly after arriving, he meets and falls in love with fiery, red-headed Mary Kate Danaher, the sister of bullying Squire "Red" Will Danaher. Will also wants to buy the Thornton family's old cottage and land, and is angered when the property's current owner, the wealthy Widow Tillane, accepts Sean's bid instead of his offer. Will then retaliates by refusing consent for Sean to marry his sister.

Some village residents—including Father Peter Lonergan and local matchmaker-cum-bookmaker Michaeleen Óge Flynn—trick Will Danaher into believing that Widow Tillane will marry him if Mary Kate is no longer under his roof. He gleefully allows the marriage, but he refuses to give Mary Kate her dowry when he finds he was deceived. Sean, unschooled in Irish customs, professes no interest in obtaining the dowry; but to Mary Kate, the dowry represents her personal value to the community and her freedom. She insists that the dowry must be received to validate their marriage, causing an estrangement between her and Sean. The morning after their wedding, villagers arrive at the couple's cottage with Mary Kate's furniture, having persuaded Will to release it, but they could not convince him to pay the dower-money.

Sean's refusal to fight her brother is attributed to cowardice by Mary Kate. However, Sean reveals to the local Protestant Minister, Rev. Cyril Playfair, who also is a former boxer, that he once accidentally killed an opponent in the ring. Sean had sworn to give up fighting out of fear and guilt over the manslaughter, since the other man had a wife and children and was younger than him. Mary Kate also confesses (in Irish Gaelic) her part in the quarrel to Father Lonergan, who berates her for her selfishness. She and Sean partially reconcile that night, and they share the bedroom for the first time since their marriage.

However, the next morning, Mary Kate quietly leaves their cottage to board a train for Dublin, hoping this will spur Sean to action, though she does not actually want to leave. Sean soon learns from Michaeleen where she is, races his horse to the train station, and pulls her off the train. Followed by a growing crowd of villagers, Sean forces Mary Kate to walk with him the back to the Danaher farm. There, Sean confronts Will and demands the dower-money. When Will refuses, Sean throws Mary Kate back at her brother, declaring "no fortune, no marriage" (which is their custom, not his). The ultimatum shocks both Mary Kate and Will, who finally pays the 350 pounds. Sean immediately burns it in the boiler, abetted by Mary Kate, showing that it was not the money but her husband's courage and brother's respect she wanted all along. She proudly leaves for home, but a humiliated Will takes a swing at Sean, only to be knocked down by his defensive counter-punch.

A donnybrook ensues, then evolves into a long Homeric fistfight between only Sean and Will after they agree to adhere to the Marquess of Queensberry rules – right before Will kicks Sean in the jaw. This much-anticipated brawl attracts more and more spectators as it continues for miles across countryside and village. The fighters finally pause for a drink inside Cohan's Bar, where they begrudgingly admit a mutual respect for one another. As they argue over who will pay for the drinks, Will tosses a brew into Sean's face. Sean in turn ends the fight by hitting Will so hard he falls back, crashes through the bar's front door, and ends up lying unconscious in the street. Later, the reconciled and obviously inebriated brothers-in-law sing as they stagger arm-in-arm back to Sean and Mary Kate's home for supper, much to Mary Kate's amusement and delight.

The next day, a humbled Will and the Widow Tillane begin their own courtship, and they ride out of the village side by side in a jaunting car driven by Michaeleen. Sean, Mary Kate, and the villagers wave to them as they pass, before Sean and Mary Kate playfully chase each other across the fields back to the cottage.

In a subplot, Rev. Playfair has earlier revealed to Sean that his church will probably be transferring him and Mrs Playfair, both lifelong residents, due to his shrinking congregation. Rather than seeing their friends go, Father Lonergan, hiding his priest’s collar, leads the village in a cheer for the visiting Church of Ireland bishop, too.

Laura Jesson, a respectable middle-class British woman in an affectionate but rather dull marriage, tells her story while sitting at home with her husband, imagining that she is confessing her affair to him.

Laura, like many women of her class at the time, goes to a nearby town every Thursday for shopping and to the cinema for a matinée. Returning from one such excursion to Milford, while waiting in the railway station's refreshment room, she is helped by another passenger, who solicitously removes a piece of grit from her eye. The man is Alec Harvey, an idealistic general practitioner who also works one day a week as a consultant at the local hospital. Both are in their late thirties or early forties, married, and with children (although Alec's wife Madeleine and their two sons are unseen).

The two accidentally meet again outside Boots the Chemist, and then on a third meeting share a table at lunch, then, both having free time, go to an afternoon performance at the Palladium Cinema. They are soon troubled to find their innocent and casual relationship developing into something deeper, approaching infidelity.

For a while, they meet openly, until they run into friends of Laura's, and the perceived need to deceive others arises. The second lie comes more easily. They eventually go to a flat belonging to Stephen, a friend of Alec's and a fellow doctor, but are interrupted by Stephen's unexpected and judgmental return. Laura, humiliated and ashamed, runs down the back stairs and into the streets. She walks and walks, and sits on a bench for hours, smoking, until a concerned policeman encourages her to get in out of the cold. She arrives at the station just in time to take the last train home.

The recent turn of events makes the couple realise that an affair or a future together is impossible. Understanding the temptation and not wishing to hurt their families, they agree to part. Alec has been offered a job in Johannesburg, South Africa, where his brother lives.

Their final meeting occurs in the railway station refreshment room, now seen for a second time with the poignant perspective of their story. As they await a heart-rending final parting, Dolly Messiter, a talkative acquaintance of Laura's, invites herself to join them and begins chattering away, oblivious to the couple's inner misery.

As they realise that they have been robbed of the chance for a final goodbye, Alec's train arrives. With Dolly still chattering, Alec departs without the passionate farewell for which they both long. After shaking Dolly's hand, he discreetly squeezes Laura on the shoulder and leaves. Laura waits for a moment, anxiously hoping that Alec will walk back into the refreshment room, but he does not. As the train is heard pulling away, Laura is galvanised by emotion, and hearing an approaching express train, suddenly dashes out to the platform. The lights of the train flash across her face as she conquers a suicidal impulse. She then returns home to her family.

Laura's kind and patient husband, Fred, shows that he has noticed her distance, though whether he has guessed the reason is not clear. He thanks her for coming back to him. She cries in his embrace.

In 1967, Joanna Drayton, a 23-year-old white woman, returns from her Hawaiian vacation to her parents' home in San Francisco with Dr. John Prentice, a 37-year-old black widower. The couple became engaged after a 10-day whirlwind romance. Joanna's parents are Matt Drayton, a successful newspaper editor, and his wife, Christina, who owns an art gallery. Though both of the Draytons are liberal-minded, they are initially shocked their daughter is engaged to a man of a different race. Christina gradually accepts the situation, but Matt objects because of the likely unhappiness and seemingly insurmountable problems the couple will face in American culture.

Without telling Joanna, John tells the Draytons he will withdraw from the relationship unless both Draytons give the couple their blessing. To complicate matters, John is scheduled to fly to New York later that night, and then to Geneva, Switzerland for three months in his work with the World Health Organization. His answer from the Draytons, therefore, will determine whether Joanna will follow him. Tillie, the Draytons' black housekeeper, suspicious of John's motives and protective of Joanna, privately corners John and speaks her mind. To John's surprise, Joanna invites John's parents to fly up from Los Angeles to join them for dinner that evening. John has not told them his fiancée is white. Monsignor Ryan, Matt's golf buddy, arrives after Matt cancelled their game. He tells both Matt and the couple he is supportive of the engagement. But Matt will not yield. Christina tells Matt she, too, is supportive of Joanna, even if it means fighting Matt. On the way to the airport to meet John's parents, the couple stops for a drink with an old friend of Joanna's and her husband; they are also completely supportive. While at the club, they hear a singer (Jacqueline Fontaine, uncredited) perform "The Glory of Love", a 1936 hit for Benny Goodman.

John's parents, the Prentices, arrive. They, too, are shocked when discovering Joanna is white. At the Drayton home, various private conversations occur among the two families. All agree more time is needed to absorb the situation. The two mothers meet and agree this was an unexpected event, but support their children. The two fathers meet, both expressing disapproval at this unhappy occasion. The Monsignor advises John not to withdraw, despite Matt's objections. John's mother tells him she and Christina both approve. John and his father discuss their generational differences. John's mother tells Matt that he and her husband have forgotten what it was like to fall in love, and their failure to remember true romance has clouded their thinking. John chides Matt for not having the "guts" to tell him face to face he disapproved of the marriage. Finally, Matt reveals his decision about the engagement to the entire group. In his speech, Joanna learns for the first time that John made their marriage conditional on the Draytons' approval. Matt ultimately concludes, after having listened to John's mother, that he does remember what true romance is. He says although the pair face enormous problems ahead due to their racial differences, they must find a way to overcome them, and he will approve the marriage, knowing all along he had no right to stop it. The families and the Monsignor then adjourn to the dining room for dinner.

The story begins in Tuscany, Italy. A carpenter named Master Antonio, but whom everyone calls Master Cherry, has found a block of wood that he plans to carve into a leg for his table. When he begins, however, the log shouts out. Frightened by the talking log, Master Cherry gives it to his neighbor Geppetto, an extremely poor man who plans to make a living as a puppeteer in hopes of earning "a crust of bread and a glass of wine".

Geppetto carves the block into a boy and names him "Pinocchio". As soon as Pinocchio's nose has been carved, it begins to grow with his congenital impudence. Before he is even built, Pinocchio already has a mischievous attitude; no sooner than Geppetto is finished carving Pinocchio's feet, the puppet proceeds to kick him. Once the puppet has been finished and Geppetto teaches him to walk, Pinocchio runs out the door and away into the town. He is caught by a Carabiniere, who assumes Pinocchio has been mistreated and imprisons Geppetto.

Left alone, Pinocchio heads back to Geppetto's house to get something to eat. Once he arrives at home, a talking cricket who has lived in the house for over a century warns him of the perils of disobedience and hedonism. In retaliation, Pinocchio throws a hammer at the cricket, more accurately than he intended to, and accidentally kills it.

Pinocchio gets hungry and tries to fry an egg, but what comes out of it is a little bird that flies out the window forcing Pinocchio to leave the house to ask for food. Then he knocks on an old man's door to ask for food. The man thinks that Pinocchio was one of the hooligans who ring the bells for fun, and instead of giving him a good piece of bread all he gets is a bucket of cold water on his head. Cold and wet, Pinocchio comes home and lies down on a stove, but the next day when he wakes up he falls to the ground with burned feet. Luckily, Geppetto is released from prison and makes Pinocchio a new pair of feet. In gratitude, he promises to attend school, and Geppetto sells his only coat to buy him a school book.

On his way to school the next morning, Pinocchio encounters the Great Marionette Theatre, and he sells his school book in order to buy a ticket for the show. During the performance, the puppets Harlequin, Pulcinella and Signora Rosaura on stage recognize him in the audience and call out to him, angering the puppet master Mangiafuoco. Upset, he breaks up the excitement and decides to use Pinocchio as firewood to cook his lamb dinner. After Pinocchio pleads to be saved, Mangiafuoco gives in and decides to burn Harlequin. After Pinocchio pleads for Harlequin's salvation, Mangiafuoco gives up. When he learns about Pinocchio's poor father, he ultimately releases him and gives him five gold pieces to give to Geppetto.

As Pinocchio travels home to give the coins to his father, he meets a fox and a cat. The Cat pretends to be blind, and the Fox pretends to be lame. A white blackbird tries to warn Pinocchio of their lies, but the blackbird is eaten by the Cat. The two animals convince Pinocchio that if he plants his coins in the Field of Miracles outside the city of Catchfools in the Land of Barn Owls, they will grow into a tree with gold coins.

They stop at the Red Lobster Inn, where the Fox and the Cat gorge themselves on food at Pinocchio's expense and ask to be awoken by midnight. Two hours before the set time, the pair abandon Pinocchio, leaving him to pay for the meal with one of his coins. They instruct the innkeeper to tell Pinocchio that they left after receiving a message stating that the Cat's eldest kitten had fallen ill and that they would meet Pinocchio at the Field of Miracles in the morning.

As Pinocchio sets off for Catchfools, the ghost of the Talking Cricket appears, telling him to go home and give the coins to his father. Pinocchio ignores his warnings again. As he passes through a forest, the Fox and Cat, disguised as bandits, ambush Pinocchio, robbing him. The puppet hides the coins in his mouth and escapes to a white house after biting off the Cat's paw. Upon knocking on the door, Pinocchio is greeted by a young fairy with turquoise hair who says she is dead and waiting for a hearse. Unfortunately, the bandits catch Pinocchio and hang him in a tree. After a while, the Fox and Cat get tired of waiting for the puppet to suffocate, and they leave.

The Fairy has Pinocchio rescued by summoning a falcon to get him down and having her poodle servant Medoro pick him up in her stagecoach. The Fairy calls in three famous doctors to tell her whether Pinocchio is dead or not. Two of them, an owl and a crow, are unsure of Pinocchio's status with the owl claiming that Pinocchio is alive and the crow claiming that Pinocchio is dead. The third doctor is the Ghost of the Talking Cricket who says that the puppet is fine, but has been disobedient and hurt his father. The Fairy administers medicine to Pinocchio who consents to take it after four undertaker rabbits arrive to carry away his body. Recovered, Pinocchio lies to the Fairy when she asks what has happened to the gold coins, and his nose grows until it is so long that he cannot turn around in the room. The Fairy explains that Pinocchio's lies are making his nose grow and calls in a flock of woodpeckers to chisel it down to size. The Fairy sends for Geppetto to come and live with them in the forest cottage.

When Pinocchio heads out to meet his father, he once again encounters the Fox and the Cat. When Pinocchio notices the Cat's missing paw, the Fox claims that they had to sacrifice it to feed a hungry old wolf. They remind the puppet of the Field of Miracles, and finally, he agrees to go with them and plant his gold. They finally reach the city of Catchfools, where every animal in town has done something exceedingly foolish and now suffers as a result. Upon reaching the Field of Miracles, Pinocchio buries his coins and then leaves for the twenty minutes that it will take for his gold to grow into gold coin trees. After Pinocchio leaves, the Fox and the Cat dig up the coins and run away.

Once Pinocchio returns, he learns of the Fox and the Cat's treachery from a parrot who mocks Pinocchio for falling for their tricks. Pinocchio rushes to the Catchfools courthouse where he reports the theft of the coins to a gorilla judge. Although he is moved by Pinocchio's plea, the gorilla judge sentences Pinocchio to four months in prison for the crime of foolishness as he is taken away by two mastiffs dressed as Gendarmerie. Fortunately, all criminals are released early by the jailers when the unseen young Emperor of Catchfools declares a celebration following his army's victory over the town's enemies. Upon being released by stating to the jailer that he committed a crime, Pinocchio leaves Catchfools.

As Pinocchio heads back to the forest, he finds an enormous snake with a smoking tail blocking the way. After some confusion, he asks the serpent to move, but the serpent remains completely still. Concluding that it is dead, Pinocchio begins to step over it, but the serpent suddenly rises up and hisses at the marionette, toppling him over onto his head. Struck by Pinocchio's fright and comical position, the snake laughs so hard he bursts an artery and dies.

Pinocchio then heads back to the Fairy's house in the forest, but he sneaks into a farmer's yard to steal some grapes. He is caught in a weasel trap where he encounters a glowworm. The farmer finds Pinocchio and ties him up in the doghouse of his late watch dog Melampo to guard the chicken coop. When Pinocchio foils the chicken-stealing weasels, the farmer frees the puppet as a reward. Pinocchio finally comes to where the cottage was, finds nothing but a gravestone, and believes that the Fairy has died of sorrow.

A friendly pigeon sees Pinocchio mourning the Fairy's death and offers to give him a ride to the seashore, where Geppetto is building a boat in which to search for Pinocchio (depending on the version of the story he sails in search for Pinocchio on near islands or following Mangiafuoco and his puppet theatre headed to the ''Nuovo Mondo''). Pinocchio is washed ashore when he tries to swim to his father. Geppetto is then swallowed by The Terrible Dogfish. Pinocchio accepts a ride from a dolphin to the nearest island called the Island of Busy Bees.

Upon arriving on the Island of Busy Bees, Pinocchio can only get food in return for labor. Pinocchio offers to carry a lady's jug home in return for food and water. When they get to the lady's house, Pinocchio recognizes the lady as the Fairy, now miraculously old enough to be his mother. She says she will act as his mother, and Pinocchio will begin going to school. She hints that if Pinocchio does well in school and tries his hardest to be good for one whole year, then he will become a real boy.

Pinocchio studies hard and rises to the top of his class, but this makes the other schoolboys jealous. The other boys trick Pinocchio into playing hookey by saying they saw a large sea monster at the beach, the same one that swallowed Geppetto. However, the boys were lying and a fight breaks out. One boy named Eugene is hit by Pinocchio's school book, though Pinocchio did not throw it. Pinocchio is accused of injuring Eugene by two Carabinieres, but the puppet escapes. During his escape, Pinocchio saves a drowning Mastiff named Alidoro. In exchange, Alidoro later saves Pinocchio from The Green Fisherman, who was going to eat the marionette as Pinocchio returns home. After meeting the Snail that works for the Fairy, Pinocchio is given another chance by the Fairy.

Pinocchio does excellently in school and passes with high honors. The Fairy promises that Pinocchio will be a real boy the next day and says he should invite all his friends to a party. He goes to invite everyone, but he is sidetracked when he meets his closest friend from school, a boy nicknamed Candlewick, who is about to go to a place called Toyland where everyone plays all day and never works. Pinocchio goes along with him when they are taken there by The Coachman, and they have a wonderful time for the next five months.

One morning in the fifth month, Pinocchio and Candlewick awake with donkeys' ears. A Dormouse tells Pinocchio that he has got a donkey fever: boys who do nothing but play and never study always turn into donkeys. Soon, both Pinocchio and Candlewick are fully transformed. Pinocchio is sold to a circus by The Coachman. He is trained by the ringmaster to do tricks until he falls and sprains his leg. The ringmaster then sells Pinocchio to a man who wants to skin him and make a drum. The man throws the donkey into the sea to drown him. But when the man goes to retrieve the corpse, all he finds is a living marionette. Pinocchio explains that the fish ate all the donkey skin off him and he is now a puppet again.

Pinocchio dives back into the water and swims out to sea. When the Terrible Dogfish appears, Pinocchio swims from it at the advice of the Fairy in the form of a little blue-furred goat from atop a high rock, but is swallowed by it. Inside the Dogfish, Pinocchio unexpectedly finds Geppetto, who has been living on a ship inside there. Pinocchio and Geppetto with the help of a tuna, a companion inside the Dogfish, who, following his example, managed to escape and took them on his back to the mainland. Pinocchio gives a kiss of thanks and leaves with his father in search of a place to stay.

Pinocchio and Geppetto encounter the Fox and the Cat who are now impoverished. The Cat has really become blind, and the Fox has really become lame and is also thin, almost hairless, and has chopped off his tail to sell for food. The Fox and the Cat plead for food or money, but Pinocchio rebuffs them and tells them that their misfortunes have served them right for their wickedness. Geppetto and Pinocchio arrive at a small house, which is home to the Talking Cricket. The Talking Cricket says they can stay and reveals that he got his house from a little goat with turquoise hair. Pinocchio gets a job doing work for Farmer Giangio and recognizes the farmer's dying donkey as his friend Candlewick.

After long months of working for the farmer and supporting the ailing Geppetto, Pinocchio goes to town with the forty pennies he has saved to buy himself a new suit. He discovers that the Fairy is ill and needs money. Pinocchio instantly gives the Snail he met back on the Island of Busy Bees all the money he has.

That night, he dreams that he is visited by the Fairy, who kisses him. When he wakes up, he is a real boy at last. His former puppet body lies lifeless on a chair. Furthermore, Pinocchio finds that the Fairy has left him a new suit, boots, and a bag in which he thinks are the forty pennies that he originally gave to her. Instead, the boy is shocked to find forty freshly-minted gold coins. Geppetto also returns to health.

The village of Wootton Major was well known around the countryside for its annual festivals, which were particularly famous for their culinary delights. The biggest festival of all was the Feast of Good Children. This festival was celebrated only once every twenty-four years: twenty-four children of the village were invited to a party, and the highlight of the party was the Great Cake, a career milestone by which Master Cooks were judged. In the year the story begins, the Master Cook was Nokes, who had landed the position more or less by default; he delegated much of the creative work to his apprentice Alf. Nokes crowned his Great Cake with a little doll jokingly representing the Queen of Faery. Various trinkets were hidden in the cake for the children to find; one of these was a star the Cook discovered in the old spice box.

The star was not found at the Feast, but was swallowed by a blacksmith's son. The boy did not feel its magical properties at once, but on the morning of his tenth birthday the star fixed itself on his forehead, and became his passport to Faery. The boy grew up to be a blacksmith like his father, but in his free time he roamed the Land of Faery. The star on his forehead protected him from many of the dangers threatening mortals in that land, and the Folk of Faery called him "Starbrow". The book describes his many travels in Faery, until at last he meets the true Queen of Faery. The identity of the King is also revealed.

The time came for another Feast of Good Children. Smith had possessed his gift for most of his life, and the time had come to pass it on to some other child. So he regretfully surrendered the star to Alf, and with it his adventures into Faery. Alf, who had become Master Cook long before, baked it into the festive cake once again for another child to find. After the feast, Alf retired and left the village; and Smith returned to his forge to teach his craft to his now-grown son.

The story opens with the narrator, Sanders Roscoe, defending his neighbor Edith Goodnough to a reporter trying to dig up dirt on her. She has been accused of murdering her brother Lyman. Sanders seems disappointed in the sheriff for caving in to the reporter, saying that to understand what happened you would have had to know Edith's story, which he begins to tell.

In 1896, newlyweds Roy and Ada Goodnough leave Iowa and settle down in northeastern Colorado under the Homestead Act. Roy eventually succeeds in growing wheat. Ada bears him two children: Edith, who is born in 1897, and Lyman, born two years later. Hannah Roscoe, the narrator's grandmother, helps deliver Edith and Lyman.

Very soon Ada regrets leaving Iowa. Her husband turns out to be a bully, an angry and violent man who makes her and their children work very hard on the farm. When she dies in 1914, aged only 42, Edith has to take over all of Ada's chores and duties. Then, in 1915, Roy's hands get entangled in a machine, and nine of his fingers are chopped off. He treats Edith and Lyman as his "self-sired farmhands", bossing them around and making all decisions himself.

As the two siblings grow up, they start looking for means of escape but soon realize that they are stuck on their father's farm. For the next 37 years, Edith performs the duties of farmer, housewife and nurse without ever complaining, and refusing to get involved with men except for a brief romance with the narrator's father, who Edith loves but refuses to marry. Despite her rejection, he never gets over her. Lyman finally sees his chance of escape when in 1941 the United States is attacked by Japan. In the middle of the night and with the help of the Roscoes, he leaves the farm and goes to the city to join the armed forces. At 42 he is too old to enlist and instead embarks on a 20-year tour of the United States. During those years, Edith never doubts that brother will return. He does in the early 1960s, almost ten years after their father's death at 82.

For six years Edith and Lyman, now both in their sixties, live happily together in their farm house. Then in 1967, the Goodnoughs, Sanders and his wife Mavis, now eight months pregnant, decide to go to the county fair together. They stay late into the night, drinking and having a good time, but on the way home Lyman crashes his car, causing Mavis to miscarry and giving himself a head injury from which he never truly recovers. Edith looks after her brother, who becomes more and more reclusive, eventually refusing to leave the house and his new obsession: planning trips around the country that he'll never take.

As they grow older and frailer, Edith decides to move everything downstairs and close off the second story, and enlists Sanders' help. Upstairs, he discovers only one bedroom with only one bed, a fact which Edith does not attempt to disguise, saying only that they moved the extra bed out when Lyman came home to make room for his things. In the following years, Edith draws some pleasure from spending afternoons with Rena, Sanders' daughter, who is born in 1969. But soon it becomes too dangerous for Rena to go to the Goodnoughs on her own, as Lyman, who has regressed to infancy, is prone to unprompted outbursts of violence.

Eventually, on New Year's Eve 1976, Edith, is unable to care for Lyman but unwilling to put him in a home. She has Lyman put on his best clothes, cooks a three-course dinner for him, waits for him to fall asleep and then sets fire to their house. The fire is detected too soon and the two siblings are evacuated. However, Lyman never recovers from the injuries inflicted by the fire and dies soon afterwards.

In the spring of 1977 Edith is still lying in a hospital bed with a policeman stationed outside her room and facing charges of attempted murder. The Roscoes visit every day.

''England, England'' is divided into three parts entitled "England", "England, England" and "Anglia". The first part focuses on the protagonist Martha Cochrane and her childhood memories. Growing up in the surrounding of the English countryside, her peaceful childhood is disrupted when her father leaves the land family. Martha's memories of her father are closely related to playing a Counties of England jigsaw puzzle with him.

The second part, "England, England", is set in the near future. Martha is now in her forties and is employed by the entrepreneur Sir Jack Pitman for a megalomaniacal project: Sir Jack aims to turn the Isle of Wight into a gigantic theme park which contains everything that people, especially tourists, consider to be quintessentially English, selected according to what Sir Jack himself approves of. The theme park − called "England, England" − thus becomes a replica of England's best known historical buildings, figures and sites. Popular English tourist attractions and icons of "Englishness" are crammed together to be easily accessible without having to travel the whole of "real" England.

While working on the set-up of the project, Martha starts an affair with one of her colleagues, Paul Harrison. They discover Sir Jack's adult baby fetish and blackmail him with incriminating evidence when Sir Jack wants to dismiss Martha. She thus becomes CEO of the Island project, which turns out to be a highly popular tourist attraction. As a consequence of the huge success, "England, England" becomes an independent state and part of the European Union, while the real, "Old England" suffers a severe decline and increasingly falls into international irrelevance. After a major scandal in the theme park, however, Martha is eventually expelled from the island.

The third part of the novel, "Anglia", is set decades later and depicts Martha who has returned to a village in Old England after many years of wandering abroad. The original nation has regressed into a vastly de-populated, agrarian and pre-industrial state without any international political influence, while "England, England" continues to prosper.

In the far future, the known universe is ruled by the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV. The most valuable substance in the empire is the Spice melange, which extends life and expands consciousness. The Spice also allows the Spacing Guild to fold space, allowing safe, instantaneous interstellar travel. The Guild forces Shaddam to clarify a conspiracy that could jeopardize spice production forever. Shaddam reveals that he has transferred power and control of the planet Arrakis, the only source of the spice, to House Atreides. But once the Atreides arrive, they will be attacked by their archenemies, the Harkonnens, and Shaddam's own Sardaukar troops. Shaddam fears the Atreides due to a secret army that is reportedly being amassed by them.

Duke Leto Atreides' loyal concubine, the Lady Jessica, is an acolyte of the Bene Gesserit, a female organization specializing in politics and their centuries-long breeding program. Jessica was ordered to bear a daughter, but disobeyed, giving birth to Paul Atreides. The breeding program's aim is to produce the Kwisatz Haderach, a mental "superbeing" who the Bene Gesserit would use to their advantage. Paul is tested by Reverend Mother Mohiam of the Bene Gesserit to assess his impulse control. He passes to Mohiam's surprise.

The Atreides leave their homeworld Caladan for Arrakis, a barren desert planet populated by gigantic sandworms. The native people of Arrakis, the Fremen, prophesise that a messiah will lead them to freedom. Duncan Idaho, one of Leto's loyalists, tells him that he suspects Dune holds vast numbers of Fremen who could prove to be powerful allies. Before Leto can form an alliance with the Fremen, the Harkonnens launch their attack. Leto's personal physician, Dr. Wellington Yueh, who is a Harkonnen double-agent, disables the shields, leaving the Atreides defenseless. Idaho is killed, Leto is captured, and nearly all of House Atreides is wiped out by the Harkonnens. Baron Harkonnen has Mentat Piter De Vries kill Yueh with a poisoned blade. Leto dies in a failed attempt to assassinate Baron Harkonnen using a poison gas tooth implanted by Yueh in exchange for sparing the lives of Jessica and Paul.

Paul and Jessica survive the attack and escape into the deep desert, where they are given sanctuary by a sietch of Fremen. Paul assumes the Fremen name Muad'Dib and emerges as the messiah for whom the Fremen have been waiting. He teaches them to use Weirding Modules — sonic weapons developed by House Atreides — and targets spice mining. Over the next two years, Spice production is nearly halted. The Spacing Guild informs the Emperor of the deteriorating situation on Arrakis.

Paul falls in love with young Fremen warrior Chani. Jessica becomes the Fremen's Reverend Mother by ingesting the Water of Life, a deadly poison which she renders harmless by using her Bene Gesserit abilities. As an after-effect of this ritual, Jessica's unborn child, Alia, later emerges from the womb with the full powers of an adult Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother. In a prophetic dream, Paul learns of the plot by the Emperor and the Guild to kill him. When Paul's dreams suddenly stop, he drinks the Water of Life and has a profound psychedelic trip in the desert. He gains powerful psychic powers and the ability to control the sandworms, which he realizes are the Spice's source.

The Emperor amasses a huge invasion fleet above Arrakis to wipe out the Fremen and regain control of the planet. He has Rabban beheaded and summons Baron Harkonnen to explain why spice mining has stopped. Paul launches a final attack against the Harkonnens and the Emperor's Sardaukar at Arrakeen, the capital city. Riding atop sandworms and brandishing sonic weapons, Paul's Fremen warriors easily defeat the Emperor's legions. Paul's sister Alia assassinates the Baron Harkonnen. Paul confronts the Emperor and fights Feyd-Rautha in a duel to the death. After killing Feyd, Paul demonstrates his newfound powers and fulfills the Fremen prophecy by causing rain to fall on Arrakis. Alia declares him to be the Kwisatz Haderach.

Duke Leto Atreides of House Atreides, ruler of the ocean planet Caladan, is assigned by the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV to serve as fief ruler of the planet Arrakis. Although Arrakis is a harsh and inhospitable desert planet, it is of enormous importance because it is the only planetary source of melange, or the "spice", a unique and incredibly valuable substance that extends human youth, vitality and lifespan. It is also through the consumption of spice that Spacing Guild Navigators are able to effect safe interstellar travel. Shaddam sees House Atreides as a potential future rival and threat, and conspires with House Harkonnen, the former stewards of Arrakis and the longstanding enemies of House Atreides, to destroy Leto and his family after their arrival. Leto is aware his assignment is a trap of some kind, but is compelled to obey the Emperor’s orders anyway.

Leto's concubine Lady Jessica is an acolyte of the Bene Gesserit, an exclusively female group that pursues mysterious political aims and wields seemingly superhuman physical and mental abilities. Though Jessica was instructed by the Bene Gesserit to bear a daughter as part of their breeding program, out of love for Leto she bore a son, Paul. From a young age, Paul has been trained in warfare by Leto's aides, the elite soldiers Duncan Idaho and Gurney Halleck. Thufir Hawat, the Duke's Mentat (people with superhuman intelligence), has instructed Paul in the ways of political intrigue. Jessica has also trained her son in what Bene Gesserit disciplines she can. His prophetic dreams interest Jessica's superior, the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam. She subjects Paul to the gom jabbar, a deadly test that causes blinding pain as part of an assessment of the subject's self-control. To her surprise, Paul passes despite being exposed to more pain than any others before him.

Leto, Jessica, and Paul travel with their household to occupy Arrakeen, the capital on Arrakis formerly held by House Harkonnen. Leto learns of the dangers involved in harvesting the spice, which is protected by giant sandworms, and negotiates with the planet's native Fremen people, seeing them as a valuable ally rather than foes. Soon after the Atreides' arrival, Harkonnen forces attack, joined by the Emperor's ferocious Sardaukar troops in disguise. Leto is betrayed by his personal physician, the Suk doctor Wellington Yueh, who delivers a drugged Leto to the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen and his twisted Mentat, Piter De Vries. Yueh, however, arranges for Jessica and Paul to escape into the desert, where they are presumed dead by the Harkonnens. Yueh replaces one of Leto's teeth with a poison gas capsule, hoping Leto can kill the Baron during their encounter. Yueh is murdered by De Vries upon delivering Leto, while the Baron narrowly avoids the gas due to his shield, which instead kills Leto, De Vries, and others. The Baron forces Hawat to take over De Vries' position by dosing him with a long-lasting, fatal poison and threatening to withhold the regular antidote doses unless he obeys. While he follows the Baron's orders, Hawat works secretly to undermine the Harkonnens.

After fleeing into the desert, Paul realizes he has significant powers as a result of the Bene Gesserit breeding scheme, inadvertently caused by Jessica bearing a son and his exposure to high concentrations of spice. In visions, he foresees futures in which he lives among the planet's native Fremen, and is also informed of the addictive qualities of the spice. It is revealed Jessica is the daughter of Baron Harkonnen, a secret kept from her by the Bene Gesserit. After being captured by Fremen, Paul and Jessica are accepted into the Fremen community of Sietch Tabr, and teach them the Bene Gesserit fighting technique known as the "weirding way". Paul proves his manhood by killing a Fremen named Jamis in a ritualistic crysknife fight and chooses the Fremen name Muad'Dib, while Jessica opts to undergo a ritual to become a Reverend Mother by drinking the poisonous Water of Life. Pregnant with Leto's daughter, she inadvertently causes the unborn child, Alia, to become infused with the same powers in the womb. Paul takes a Fremen lover, Chani, and has a son with her, Leto II.

Two years pass and Paul's powerful prescience manifests, which confirms for the Fremen that he is their prophesied messiah, a legend planted by the Bene Gesserit's Missionaria Protectiva. Paul embraces his father's belief that the Fremen could be a powerful fighting force to take back Arrakis, but also sees that if he does not control them, their jihad could consume the entire universe. Word of the new Fremen leader reaches both Baron Harkonnen and the Emperor as spice production falls due to their increasingly destructive raids. The Baron encourages his brutish nephew Glossu Rabban to rule with an iron fist, hoping the contrast with his shrewder nephew Feyd-Rautha will make the latter popular among the people of Arrakis when he eventually replaces Rabban. The Emperor, suspecting the Baron of trying to create troops more powerful than the Sardaukar to seize power, sends spies to monitor activity on Arrakis. Hawat uses the opportunity to sow seeds of doubt in the Baron about the Emperor's true plans, putting further strain on their alliance.

Gurney, having survived the Harkonnen coup to become a smuggler, reunites with Paul and Jessica after a Fremen raid on his harvester. Believing Jessica to be the traitor, Gurney threatens to kill her, but is stopped by Paul. Paul did not foresee Gurney's attack, and concludes he must increase his prescience by drinking the Water of Life, which is traditionally fatal to males. Paul falls into unconsciousness for several weeks after drinking the poison, but when he wakes, he has clairvoyance across time and space: he is the Kwisatz Haderach, the ultimate goal of the Bene Gesserit breeding program.

Paul senses the Emperor and Baron are amassing fleets around Arrakis to quell the Fremen rebellion, and prepares the Fremen for a major offensive against the Harkonnen troops. The Emperor arrives with the Baron on Arrakis. The Emperor’s troops seize a Fremen outpost, killing many including young Leto II, while Alia is captured and taken to the Emperor. Under cover of an electric storm, which shorts out the Emperor's troops' defensive shields, Paul and the Fremen, riding giant sandworms, assault the capital while Alia assassinates the Baron and escapes. The Fremen quickly defeat both the Harkonnen and Sardaukar troops.

Paul faces the Emperor, threatening to destroy spice production forever unless Shaddam abdicates the throne. Feyd-Rautha attempts to stop Paul by challenging him to a ritualistic knife fight, during which he attempts to cheat and kill Paul with a poison spur in his belt. Paul gains the upper hand and kills him. The Emperor reluctantly cedes the throne to Paul and promises his daughter Princess Irulan's hand in marriage. As Paul takes control of the Empire, he realizes that while he has achieved his goal, he is no longer able to stop the Fremen jihad, as their belief in him is too powerful to restrain.

Holly Martins, an American author of western fiction, arrives in post–Second World War Vienna seeking his childhood friend, Harry Lime, who has offered him a job. Martins is told that Lime was killed by a car while crossing the street. At Lime's funeral, Martins meets two British Royal Military Police: Sergeant Paine, a fan of Martins's books, and Major Calloway. Afterward, Martins is asked by Mr. Crabbin to lecture at a book club a few days later. He then meets a friend of Lime's, "Baron" Kurtz, who tells Martins that he and another friend, a Romanian called Popescu, carried Lime to the side of the street after the accident. Before he died, Lime asked them to take care of Martins as well as Lime's girlfriend, actress Anna Schmidt.

As Martins investigates Lime's death, he discovers that accounts differ on whether two or three men carried away the body. The porter at Lime's flat told Martins that he saw a third man help carry away the body. Later, the porter offers to give Martins more information, but someone kills him before Martins can talk to him. Martins confronts Major Calloway and demands that Lime's death be investigated. Calloway reveals that Lime was stealing penicillin from military hospitals, diluting it, then selling it on the black market, injuring or killing many people. Martins, once convinced by hard evidence, agrees to leave.

Martins visits Anna that evening. After leaving he walks the streets, until he sees someone watching from a darkened doorway. It is Harry. Martins calls out but Lime flees and vanishes. Martins summons Calloway, who deduces that Lime has escaped through the sewers. The British police exhume Lime's coffin and discover that the body is the orderly who stole the penicillin for Lime. Anna is to be sent to the Soviet sector, and is questioned again by Calloway.

Martins meets Lime and they ride Vienna's Ferris wheel, the Wiener Riesenrad. Lime obliquely threatens Martins before leaving quickly. Calloway then asks Martins to help capture Lime. Martins agrees to help on one condition, demanding Anna's safe conduct out of Vienna. Anna is about to leave on the train when she spots Martins, who has come to observe her departure. She forces the plan out of him but wants no part of it. Exasperated, Martins decides to leave Vienna, but on the way to the airport, Calloway stops at a hospital to show Martins children crippled or dying of meningitis who were treated with Lime's diluted penicillin. Martins agrees to help the police again.

Lime arrives at a small cafe to meet Martins, but Anna warns Lime that the police are closing in. He tries again to escape using the sewer tunnels, but the police are there. Lime shoots and kills Paine, but Calloway shoots and wounds Lime. Badly injured, Lime drags himself up a ladder to a street grating; however, he cannot lift it. Martins finds Lime at the grate, hears Calloway shouting to shoot Lime on sight, Lime and Martins exchange a look, and then Martins shoots and kills Lime using Paine's revolver. Martins attends Lime's second funeral. At the risk of missing his flight out of Vienna, he waits on the street to speak with Anna, but she walks right past him without even glancing in his direction.

The narrative switches between four main characters. Count Sessine is a high-ranking member of the court who is assassinated, ending his last life. Reborn inside the crypt he comes under repeated attack and is almost permanently killed. On his last virtual life, he makes contact with a copy of himself who assists him. He spends many subjective years wandering the wider reaches of the crypt before being contacted by its representative who requests his aid in relation to the encroachment.

Gadfium, the Chief Scientist of the ruling class, is engaged in a conspiracy with like-minded nobles who believe that the elite are not acting in the best interests of the population, and who question the real motive of the ongoing war with the rival clan of Engineers. She learns of a message apparently sent from the fast tower, the highest and previously inaccessible part of the castle, which stresses the danger of the Encroachment and tells of an attempt by the crypt to activate a long forgotten subsystem which may prevent disaster. The message also warns that this will be opposed by those in power as it will threaten their interests. She and her fellow conspirators are considering how to respond when the security forces attempt to arrest them, although Gadfium manages to escape into the depths of the castle.

Bascule the Teller is a young man who contacts the dead personalities within the crypt on behalf of their relatives or other interested parties. Whilst searching for a lost friend, he attracts the attention of the Security forces and takes refuge with various chimeric animals whose implants have taken on personalities from within the crypt. He is eventually tasked with ascending the central shaft of the highest tower in a vacuum balloon in order to reach its control room.

Asura is a young woman who awakens in a re-incarnation facility with no memory. She is compelled to travel towards the castle, rapidly gathering knowledge about the world before being captured by the security forces. She is interrogated within the crypt, but is able to resist the questioning, becoming stronger at understanding and manipulating her virtual environments. As she escapes her virtual prison, she is physically freed by Gadfium, assisted by the copy of Count Sessine who guided her to Asura's location. Asura broadcasts to the world the truth regarding the encroachment and the attempts of the monarchy to prevent the activation of the crypt sub-systems. She explains her origin, being an emissary of the crypt that was combined with the mind of Count Sessine who sacrificed himself in the process. She was created by the crypt because the relevant systems were kept separate by their designers to prevent infection by chaos. The so-called chaotic elements of the crypt are a burgeoning ecology of Artificial Intelligences. Asura states that both the humans and chaos will have to learn to live with each other. Asura and Gadfium depart, reaching an elevator which is activated for them by Bascule after reaching the control room at the summit of the tower. Asura is able to activate the "Fearsome Engine" of the title, which begins the slow process of relocating the solar system out of reach of the cloud.

The main protagonist is Lady Sharrow, a former military pilot and antiquities thief. She lives on Golter, a planet orbiting a star in an isolated planetary system with no nearby galaxies. A cult named the Huhsz is granted permission to assassinate her, believing that their messiah can not be born until the end of her family's female bloodline. She is forced to choose between going into hiding for a year or recovering the last Lazy Gun, an ancient weapon of mass destruction that was stolen from the cult by her ancestor.

Sharrow resolves to recover the Lazy Gun, rejecting an offer of help from her cousin Geis, a wealthy industrialist and businessman. In order to do this, she must first find the Universal Principles, a long lost book rumoured to contain a clue to the Gun's hiding place. She visits her half-sister Breyghun who is held prisoner in the Seahouse, a monastery run by the Sad Brothers. Breyghun tells her that their grandfather Gorko, a collector of rare artefacts, encoded information regarding the location of the Universal Principles into the DNA of his servants. Sharrow recruits the surviving members of her combat unit and sets out to make contact with the son of Gorko's butler. During these events, Sharrow is menaced by two unidentified bald-headed clones, who have the ability to inflict pain on her via a military virus embedded in her nervous system. They demand the Gun be turned over to them and not the Huhsz.

Sharrow and her team follow the trail left by Gorko and recover the Universal Principles. The book has long since turned to dust, but the case contains a quotation that is also inscribed on Gorko's tomb. Sharrow visits the storage facility where the tomb is kept and finds a device that provides them with co-ordinates deep in an embargoed zone. The team are joined by an android named Feril and set out to retrieve the Lazy Gun. After disembarking from the submarine they hired, they are attacked first by air and ground troops. During these encounters, her team are killed one by one and Sharrow is wounded. Sharrow and Feril reach a small tower which contains both the Gun and numerous other pieces of ancient technology. After leaving the tower, Sharrow is immobilised by a neural weapon and the clones appear, confiscate the Gun and take them both prisoner.

They are conveyed to a desert stronghold and are presented to a man named Molgarin, who claims to be immortal. The fortress is attacked, by both the Huhsz and another unidentified set of troops. In the chaos, Sharrow kills the clones and escapes using a monowheeled tank that was found along with the Lazy Gun. She realizes that the first force contained members of the Sad Brothers and she and Feril head for the Seahouse, taking the Lazy Gun with them. They arrive and discover that her cousin Geis has been behind events, acting out of an unrequited love for Sharrow and a desire to engineer political change within the system. Molgarin was an actor employed to try and make Sharrow feel gratitude towards Geis. After they are taken captive Sharrow and Feril cause the Lazy Gun to begin firing uncontrollably and the Seahouse is destroyed, with Feril still inside it. In the confusion, Sharrow kills first her half-sister Breyghun and then Geis, before leaving in the tank, self-identifying with the Lazy Gun and the destruction that it brings to everything it encounters.

Edek Zepler is a Holocaust survivor who was born Edek Zeleznikow in Łódź, Poland in 1915, where his father owned several apartment blocks. He got married in the Łódź ghetto to Rooshka but had to marry her again after the war in a DP Camp in Germany. That is where their daughter, Esther, was born in 1950. In 1951 the family emigrated to Melbourne, Australia. When the novel opens, Edek Zepler is an old man of 76 who certainly enjoys good food, a man living alone with his dog in the old house in Melbourne, feeling rather alone—in spite of an active Jewish community in his neighbourhood—and without any life in him since his wife's death in 1986 ("The saddest thing did already happen to me. My wife died. Nothing can be sad after that."). He regularly phones his family, who have moved to Manhattan. The only close relative still in Melbourne is his grandson, Zachary, who studies medicine there.

His life takes a decisive turn when, on a visit to New York, he meets Josl and Henia Borenstein again, a couple he last saw in the German DP camp. Now that Josl Borenstein has died of cancer, Edek and Henia gradually feel more and more attracted to each other. In spite of several (alleged) proposals of marriage from millionaires, Henia, herself a rich widow, wants to spend the rest of her life with Edek and invites him to stay with her at her Florida home. Eventually, Edek packs up all his things, sells his house and moves to the U.S.A. He is cordially taken up by Henia's friends, who belong to several associations (for example the Zionist Federation). Although mostly agnostic, he even pays an occasional visit to the synagogue.

The problem he has to face towards the end of the novel would be considered rather severe by the average person, but Edek Zepler just laughs it off: Henia's two sons want him to sign a pre-nuptial agreement so that he would not inherit anything if Henia died first (and so that he would not be able to bequeath the Borenstein fortune to Esther and his grandchildren). Such an agreement, Esther and her husband Sean warn him, might mean that he could be left even without a place to stay after her death. But Edek Zepler does not mind ("In that case, I'll come and live with you."). He signs everything and is married to Henia.

Esther Zepler is the only child of Edek and Rooshka Zepler. She was born in a German DP camp in 1950. In 1951 her parents decided to emigrate to Australia, where she spent most of her life. In 1968, aged 18, she became a rock journalist – just like Lily Brett herself – and in this capacity also visited New York. As a young woman, she married a gentile and had a son, Zachary, now 21, and a daughter, Zelda, now 16, by him. However, her first marriage was characterized by a "lack of lust", and when she met Sean Ward, a painter and yet another gentile, she left her husband for him. Nobody would guess that Sean, Esther, Zachary, Zelda and Kate – Sean's 19-year-old daughter by his first wife, who died of cancer – are a patchwork family. For one thing, Sean looks Jewish although he is not; for another, they all understand each other well and there is a certain feeling of belonging amongst them. When the novel opens they have just moved to New York City, and Esther starts working as a writer of obituaries.

Although on the surface level Esther's life seems to be in perfect order – she has got a good job, she is happily married, her children are well-behaved, they all are quite wealthy, they do not suffer from any illnesses – Esther is constantly suffering in some way or other. She has always seen herself as "a person with so much to sort out", and this is why she has been in analysis for a quite a number of years. She spends a fortune on it and even has to sell her mother's diamond ring. At one point in the novel, she learns the difference between compulsive and obsessive behaviour (compulsive behaviour is to do with action, obsessive behaviour with thoughts) and promptly thinks she herself shows both types of behaviour. She suffers from agoraphobia as well as claustrophobia. When she was 15, back home in Australia, her father let her drive his car in public until they were stopped by the police. Now, as an adult, she is afraid to drive, and considers herself lucky that you do not really need a car in New York City. She is neurotic, a woman with "excessive anxieties and indecisions", and likely to panic when having to face things. She is all for drugs: beta blocker, Valium, Mylanta, and other pills. On the other hand, Esther neither smokes nor drinks.

Generally, although she likes, and is able to enjoy, sex, she is very reluctant to talk about it, especially in public. But all around her, people keep talking freely about sex in general and also about their own sex lives, whereas Esther does not even want to imagine her father sleeping with Henia Borenstein, and is slightly embarrassed when she sees them holding hands under the table.

Esther often feels "fouled by her parents' past". She is haunted by her dead mother. She is preoccupied with the Holocaust and owns more than 400 books on the subject. Her thoughts about the lives of Jews in Nazi Germany are again and again woven into the novel. She ponders about medical experiments conducted by Nazi physicians; about the gas chambers in the death camps, implicitly comparing a crowded New York subway with a cattle wagon to Auschwitz; the Nazis making soap with human fat; Pope Pius XII and Roman Catholicism; displaced Jews after World War II; anti-Semitism in general; Neo-Nazis in Germany and Austria; the world population of Jews in 1939 and today and the fact that there were "no Jews left" in Poland after World War II; business in the DP camps (i.e. bartering with cigarettes), coffee but also Nazi memorabilia; and she considers with disgust a video game on CD-ROM entitled "How to Survive the Holocaust".

She is also preoccupied with death and dying on a more general level. For example, she reads a book on suicide, which she finds invigorating rather than depressing. Fear of death seems to be her constant companion; she continuously sees death as a danger and a menace. Esther also seems to have inherited her mother's "guilt at having survived". At one point in the novel, she speaks of a Jewish "weariness gene".

But Esther is also critical of the other Jews she meets in America. There is Sonia Kaufman, who considers Esther as her best friend. Sonia is a lawyer working for the same law firm as her Jewish husband Michael. As opposed to Esther, Sonia has had affairs throughout her married life. Her current lover used a broken condom while they were making love, and now Sonia is pregnant for the first time in her life. As it turns out soon, she is expecting twins. The real problem now is that she cannot possibly say who the father is. Sonia hopes that they will look like her husband, who is looking forward to the birth of his children and has no idea that his wife has had sex with another man. The problem is solved in rather a humorous, light-hearted way at the end of the novel: The twins – two girls – look like her mother. The Kaufmans will be able to afford two nannies, so they will not have any problems combining their careers and their family life.

Then there are Joseph and Laraine Reiser. The Reisers are "arseholes". They are filthy rich Jews who live the life of the super-rich in a very pronounced way, never mingling with ordinary people, on whom they seem to look down. Joseph Reiser is an entrepreneur "doing business with Germany"—in itself a suspicious activity—and a would be-patron of the arts: Time and again he talks to Sean Ward about coming to his studio, implying that he might want to buy one of his paintings, but he never seems to get round to doing so. Sean and Esther meet them twice: first, at one of their big parties, and later when they are invited to their Long Island beach house. Esther feels guilty when one of the Reisers´ cars (a stretch Mercedes limo with a fax machine) comes to pick them up.

The story is a series of episodes in the youth of George Sherston, ranging from his first attempts to learn to ride to his experiences in winning point-to-point races. The title is somewhat misleading, as the book is mainly concerned with a series of landmark events in Sherston/Sassoon's childhood and youth, and his encounters with various comic characters. "The Flower-Show Match", an account of an annual village cricket match – an important fixture for those involved – in which young Sherston plays a significant part, was later published separately by Faber as a self-contained story. The book as a whole is a frequently humorous work, in which fox-hunting, one of Sassoon's major interests, comes to represent the young man's innocent frame of mind in the years before war broke out. The book ends with his enlistment in a local regiment, the Sussex Yeomanry, and his subsequent transfer, with a commission, to the Flintshire Fusiliers, a battalion of the Royal Welsh which was sent to France. The story is continued in two sequels: ''Memoirs of an Infantry Officer'' and ''Sherston's Progress''.

In Morocco, Frank Cotton, a sadomasochist, buys a puzzle box said to open the door to a realm of otherworldly pleasure from a dealer who asks: "What's your pleasure, sir?". In his bare attic, when Frank solves the puzzle, hooked chains emerge and tear him apart. Later, the room is filled with swinging chains and covered with the remnants of his body. A black-robed figure picks up the box and returns it to its original state, restoring the room to normal.

Some time afterward, Frank's brother Larry moves into the house to rebuild his strained relationship with his second wife, Julia, who Larry is unaware had a sexual affair with Frank shortly before their wedding. Larry's teenage daughter, Kirsty, has chosen not to live with them and moves into her own place. Larry cuts his hand carrying a mattress up the stairs, and his blood drips on the attic floor. While Julia takes Larry to the hospital, Frank is resurrected as a skinless corpse, who is soon found by Julia. Still obsessed with Frank, she agrees to bring people back for him to drain so that he can be fully restored, and they can run away together. Julia begins picking up men in bars and bringing them back to the house, where she mortally wounds them. Frank sinks his hand into the dying bodies, draining their life, regenerating his body. Frank explains to Julia that he had exhausted all sensory experiences and sought out the puzzle box, with the promise that it would open a portal to a realm of new carnal pleasures. When solved, the "Cenobites" came to subject him to the extremes of sadomasochism.

Kirsty spies Julia bringing a man to the house; she follows her to the attic, where she interrupts Frank's latest feeding. Frank attacks her, but Kirsty throws the puzzle box out the window, creating a distraction and allowing her to escape. Kirsty retrieves the box and flees, but collapses shortly thereafter. Awakening in a hospital, Kirsty solves the box, summoning the Cenobites and a monster called the Engineer, which Kirsty narrowly escapes from. The Cenobites' leader explains that although they have been perceived as both angels and demons, they are simply "explorers" from another dimension seeking carnal experiences, and they can no longer differentiate between pain and pleasure. When they attempt to force Kirsty to return to their realm with them, she informs Pinhead that Frank has escaped them. The Cenobites agree to take Frank back and, in exchange, say they will consider giving Kirsty her freedom. The catch is that Frank must confess to escaping them.

Kirsty returns home, where Frank has killed Larry and taken his identity by stealing his skin. Julia shows her what is purported to be Frank's flayed corpse in the attic, locking the door behind her. The Cenobites appear and, not fooled by the deception, demand the man who "did this". Kirsty tries to escape but is held by Julia and Frank. Frank reveals his true identity to Kirsty and, when his sexual advances are rejected, he decides to kill her to complete his rejuvenation. He accidentally stabs Julia instead and drains her without remorse. Frank chases Kirsty to the attic and, when he is about to kill her, the Cenobites appear after hearing him confess to killing her father. Now certain he is the one they are looking for, they ensnare him with chains and tear him to pieces. Ripping the puzzle box from Julia's dead hands, Kirsty banishes the Cenobites by reversing the motions needed to open the puzzle box. Kirsty's boyfriend Steve shows up and they both escape the collapsing house.

Afterward, Kirsty throws the puzzle box onto a burning pyre. A vagrant who has been stalking Kirsty walks into the fire and retrieves the box before transforming into a winged skeleton-like creature and flying away. The box ends up in the hands of the merchant who sold it to Frank, who then offers it to another prospective customer, asking "What's your pleasure, sir?"

The series is set in ancient, pre-eruption Pompeii, with the players bearing Latinised names suggestive of their character. Howerd is the slave Lurcio (pronounced ''Lurk-io''); his bumbling old master Ludicrus Sextus (Max Adrian, then Wallas Eaton), the promiscuous wife is Ammonia (Elizabeth Larner), their daughter Erotica (Georgina Moon) and their virginal son Nausius (Kerry Gardner). Other regulars are Senna the Soothsayer (Jeanne Mockford) who constantly warns of impending death and destruction and, in series one, Plautus (Willie Rushton) a semi-godlike figure, making pithy comments from a location somewhere between the clouds and Mount Olympus. Guest stars included several actresses from the ''Carry On'' film series, including Barbara Windsor, Wendy Richard and Valerie Leon.

The format was an exotic backdrop for an endless series of double entendres and risqué gags from Howerd, constantly breaking the fourth wall with asides to the live studio audience which go unheard by the other characters (a device harking back to classical theatre). He also bemoans the quality of his script, complaining the other players have the best lines. Each episode starts with a prologue from Howerd – which is invariably interrupted by the doom-laden warnings of Senna, or the demands of his master or mistress.

Thirteen 30-minute episodes were made, in two series (March – May and September – October 1970). In between there also was a 13 minute ''Up Pompeii'' segment in the 1970 ''Royal Television Gala Performance''.

In addition there had been a pilot episode (1969) as part of Comedy Playhouse, and two later special episodes both called ''Further Up Pompeii'', one in 1975 and the other, written by Brian Leveson and Paul Minett, in 1991. The latter sparked speculation that there could be a new series, but Howerd's death in 1992 put an end to any such prospect.

Apart from the change to the actor playing Ludicrus Sextus, there are some differences between the two series of ''Up Pompeii'', the second series using noticeably fewer sets than the previous. This may have been due to the second series being commissioned, filmed and broadcast within four months from the end of the first.

Eliza escapes with her son; Tom sold "down the river"

The book opens with a Kentucky farmer named Arthur Shelby facing the loss of his farm because of debts. Even though he and his wife Emily Shelby believe that they have a benevolent relationship with their slaves, Shelby decides to raise the needed funds by selling two of them—Uncle Tom, a middle-aged man with a wife and children, and Harry, the son of Emily Shelby's maid Eliza—to Mr. Haley, a coarse slave trader. Emily Shelby is averse to this idea because she had promised her maid that her child would never be sold; Emily's son, George Shelby, hates to see Tom go because he sees the man as his friend and mentor.

When Eliza overhears Mr. and Mrs. Shelby discussing plans to sell Tom and Harry, Eliza determines to run away with her son. The novel states that Eliza made this decision because she fears losing her only surviving child (she had already miscarried two children). Eliza departs that night, leaving a note of apology to her mistress. She later makes a dangerous crossing over the ice of the Ohio River to escape her pursuers.

As Tom is sold, Mr. Haley takes him to a riverboat on the Mississippi River and from there Tom is to be transported to a slave market. While on board, Tom meets Eva, an angelic little white girl. They quickly become friends. Eva falls into the river and Tom dives into the river to save her life. Being grateful to Tom, Eva's father Augustine St. Clare buys him from Haley and takes him with the family to their home in New Orleans. Tom and Eva begin to relate to one another because of the deep Christian faith they both share.

Eliza's family hunted; Tom's life with St. Clare

During Eliza's escape, she meets up with her husband George Harris, who had run away previously. They decide to attempt to reach Canada, but are tracked by Tom Loker, a slave hunter hired by Mr. Haley. Eventually Loker and his men trap Eliza and her family, causing George to shoot him in the side. Worried that Loker may die, Eliza convinces George to bring the slave hunter to a nearby Quaker settlement for medical treatment.

Back in New Orleans, St. Clare debates slavery with his Northern cousin Ophelia who, while opposing slavery, is prejudiced against black people. St. Clare, however, believes he is not biased, even though he is a slave owner. In an attempt to show Ophelia that her views on blacks are wrong, St. Clare purchases Topsy, a young black slave, and asks Ophelia to educate her.

After Tom has lived with the St. Clares for two years, Eva grows very ill. Before she dies she experiences a vision of heaven, which she shares with the people around her. As a result of her death and vision, the other characters resolve to change their lives, Ophelia promising to throw off her personal prejudices against blacks, Topsy saying she will better herself, and St. Clare pledging to free Tom.

Tom sold to Simon Legree

Before St. Clare can follow through on his pledge, he dies after being stabbed outside a tavern. His wife reneges on her late husband's vow and sells Tom at auction to a vicious plantation owner named Simon Legree. Tom is taken to rural Louisiana with other new slaves including Emmeline, whom Simon Legree has purchased to use as a sex slave.

Legree begins to hate Tom when Tom refuses Legree's order to whip his fellow slave. Legree beats Tom viciously and resolves to crush his new slave's faith in God. Despite Legree's cruelty, Tom refuses to stop reading his Bible and comforting the other slaves as best he can. While at the plantation, Tom meets Cassy, another slave whom Legree used as a sex slave. Cassy tells her story to Tom. She was previously separated from her son and daughter when they were sold. She became pregnant again but killed the child because she could not tolerate having another child separated from her.

Tom Loker, changed after being healed by the Quakers, returns to the story. He has helped George, Eliza, and Harry enter Canada from Lake Erie and become free. In Louisiana, Uncle Tom almost succumbs to hopelessness as his faith in God is tested by the hardships of the plantation. He has two visions, one of Jesus and one of Eva, which renew his resolve to remain a faithful Christian, even unto death. He encourages Cassy to escape, which she does, taking Emmeline with her. When Tom refuses to tell Legree where Cassy and Emmeline have gone, Legree orders his overseers to kill Tom. As Tom is dying, he forgives the overseers who savagely beat him. Humbled by the character of the man they have killed, both men become Christians. George Shelby, Arthur Shelby's son, arrives to buy Tom's freedom, but Tom dies shortly after they meet.

Final section

On their boat ride to freedom, Cassy and Emmeline meet George Harris' sister Madame de Thoux and accompany her to Canada. Madame de Thoux and George Harris were separated in their childhood. Cassy discovers that Eliza is her long-lost daughter who was sold as a child. Now that their family is together again, they travel to France and eventually Liberia, the African nation created for former American slaves. George Shelby returns to the Kentucky farm, where after his father's death, he frees all his slaves. George Shelby urges them to remember Tom's sacrifice every time they look at his cabin. He decides to lead a pious Christian life just as Uncle Tom did.

Richard, a British backpacker meets a mentally disturbed Scot going by the alias of Daffy Duck at a hotel in Bangkok. Daffy tells Richard about a beautiful island with a hidden lagoon and beach, located in the Gulf of Thailand, where he settled years prior. The beach is inaccessible to tourists and can only be located by a map, which Daffy leaves for Richard. Shortly thereafter, Richard discovers that Daffy has died by suicide. Wanting company in his search, Richard befriends a travelling French couple, Étienne and Françoise, and the trio sets out to find what they hope might be an untouched paradise.

On their way to the island, Richard gives a copy of the map to Sammy and Zeph, two Americans he meets on Koh Samui. When the three finally reach the hidden beach — after bribing a local boat pilot, swimming from an adjacent island, discovering a cannabis plantation in the jungle, and avoiding its armed owners, and eventually jumping over a waterfall — they discover a group of approximately 30 backpackers who have largely shut off the outside world to live a slow-paced life of leisure under the ''de facto'' leadership of an American woman called Sal and her South African lover Bugs, who, along with Daffy, founded the community there in 1989. They reside in hand-built wooden huts and tents, located near a large, beautiful beach and lagoon that are encircled by cliffs and connected to the sea by underwater caves.

When Richard, Étienne, and Françoise arrive, it is already 1995, six years after the founders came to the beach. The founders have chosen only a small number of friends and acquaintances to come to the island, and thus newcomers are not welcome, but they are not sent away because doing so would jeopardize the secrecy of the community. The residents fear that if word gets out, the beach will become overrun with tourists and ruined, like many of Thailand's other beauty spots. They are also mindful of upsetting the Thai cannabis farmers, with whom they originally agreed to keep to separate territories but who have more recently warned them not to bring anyone new to the island, as the farmers fear discovery by the police. After initial suspicion, the group accepts the trio when they explain about Daffy's map and his death back on the mainland.

As the community aims to be self-sufficient, work is divided into rosters for gardening, fishing, cooking, and carpentry. Richard, Françoise, and Étienne become part of the fishing detail.

For several months, Richard finds life on the island idyllic, fishing in the mornings and relaxing the rest of the time. He befriends a few other members of the community: Keaty, a fellow Englishman hooked on his Game Boy; Gregorio, a Spaniard on his fishing detail; Unhygienix, the Italian head chef obsessed with soap, as he handles fish every day; Jesse and Cassie, two lovers; Ella, who works second-in-command to Unhygienix; and finally, Jed, the loner of the group whose mysterious job involves going alone into the jungle. Richard later discovers that Sal has assigned Jed to be the island's guardian: He watches the sea and shores of the neighboring islands for any signs of people attempting to discover the beach. Jed also has a sideline of stealing some cannabis from the Thai farmers' side of the island.

One day, Unhygienix informs everyone that their rice supply has been infected by a fungus, and Sal announces an emergency rice run — an occasional discreet trip to the mainland by boat to bulk-buy rice and other essentials. Due to the laborious nature of the task, no one volunteers for it except Jed, who, to the bewilderment of most others, always takes the job.

Richard also volunteers, and so the two travel back to Koh Phangan for their supplies. It is during the rice run that Jed learns that Richard gave a copy of the map to Sammy and Zeph, when Jed coincidentally wanders past and overhears the two Americans relaying the urban legend of the beach to some Germans.

The rice run goes without a hitch, but soon, accompanied by three Germans they met on the mainland, Zeph and Sammy make their way to the nearest island to the beach, which worries Richard, as he will be blamed if they successfully reach the community. Soon afterward, Sal reassigns Richard to the perimeter detail to partner with Jed and keep a close eye on the potential invaders.

With a free spot in Gregorio's fishing detail, Keaty takes Richard's place. A few days later, he mistakenly catches a dead squid that gives severe food poisoning to most of the group. The few remaining healthy members struggle to nurse the sick residents back to health.

Richard returns from his sentry duty to find that Bugs has punched Keaty in the face for his mistake. Richard, having never liked Bugs' arrogant nature, instigates a heated argument with him in front of the whole group, which leads to a division of the community into several cliques. On this day, only two of the fishing details are still in operation, and the best detail, comprising three Swedes — Christo, Sten, and Karl — who fish outside the safe lagoon area, is attacked by a shark.

The camp only finds out about the shark attack upon the return of one of the three, Karl, in the early evening. Karl carries Sten on his back to the village, where Sten is discovered to have already bled to death. While Karl was not physically harmed by the shark, he suffers severe emotional trauma from having watched his friend die. He subsequently spends his time sitting in a dug-out hole on the beach and not talking to anyone, barely accepting food and water.

Richard realizes that Christo is still missing and, at his own risk, retrieves him from partially submerged caves of the lagoon. Richard is praised for his heroic rescue of Christo, who at first seems fine but later collapses, owing to the internal bleeding from having been rammed by the shark. Due to Christo's grave wounds, he requires Jed's presence in the camp, because only Jed has the medical knowledge to tend to him. This leaves Richard to work the sentry detail alone.

A few days later, a funeral is held for Sten near the jungle waterfall, and Sal gives a decisive speech that somewhat restores social harmony. She announces that it is 11 September, so they will thus be celebrating the Tet festival in three days' time.

Spending long hours alone in the forest as he hikes between lookout spots, Richard begins to experience hallucinations in which Daffy appears: They converse and patrol together the part of the island that Richard refers to as the DMZ. Richard comes to appreciate that Daffy killed himself because he could neither endure the unravelling of his elitist vision of the beach as the group grew in size, nor bear the thought of a return to either backpacking or settled life, and notes that he is also falling prey to that way of thinking.

Richard realizes the reason why Daffy gave him the map — as well as spread rumors of the island all over Thailand — so that many travelers would come looking for the beach, inevitably leading to its becoming a tourist destination. Daffy describes this act as "euthanizing" the community, and Richard was merely a pawn in Daffy's revenge plan.

This comes to a head following the arrival of the American/German group by raft. Unlike Richard, Étienne, and Françoise, who managed to overcome all obstacles in getting to the beach, the newcomers never make it past the most dangerous hurdle: the cannabis farmers. Richard witnesses them being first beaten violently and then dragged away. The sound of gunshots implies that the farmers have murdered the intruders.

Richard returns to the community campsite to immediately inform Sal and Jed of what happened. He then goes to the beach to visit Karl, who attacks Richard, provoking Richard to attack him before he gets free and runs off into the jungle. On the day of the Tet festival, Sal obliquely asks Richard to kill Karl because of the threat he poses to the group's now-fragile social integrity, complaining that she constantly has to lift morale in the wake of the poisoning incident and Sten's death.

Richard swims out to the cave where the group's only boat is kept, only to find that Karl has used it to escape to the mainland. Étienne corners Richard thereafter, and Richard soon discovers that Étienne, along with the rest of his clique, has become frightened of Richard's "doing things" for Sal. Disillusioned with the beach, Richard convinces Étienne, Françoise, Jed, and a paranoid Keaty to leave the beach for good, and euthanizes the dying Christo. Now fully aware of what Sal is willing to do to protect the beach, they decide to spike the food for the Tet celebration and escape on the raft that the doomed backpackers used.

Night falls, and the party begins. People are in a celebratory mood, drinking fermented coconut milk. Prior to dinner, Keaty and Richard spike the stew that Unhygienix cooked with a huge quantity of cannabis to immobilize the group. Richard and his friends are about to slip away when the cannabis farmers arrive, threatening all of them with guns, as they believe that the beach dwellers invited the recent arrivals. The farmers beat up Richard and leave the bloodied corpses of the American/German backpackers as a warning. At the sight of this, the extremely intoxicated group experiences a collective mental breakdown and starts to rip the corpses apart in a frenzy.

Sal discovers that Richard has spread the secret of the beach when she picks up the map he drew for Zeph and Sammy. Upon hearing this, the now unstable community members attack Richard with sharp objects. Richard believes that he is about to die, but he is saved when Françoise, Étienne, Keaty, and Jed return from the beach armed with their fishing spears to drive the others off, seriously wounding Sal and Bugs in the process. Richard and his rescuers make their planned escape on the raft.

In the epilogue, it is revealed that the five friends got away and split up when they reached the mainland. It has been a year and one month since their departure from Thailand, and Richard has returned home to England. He hasn't heard from Françoise and Étienne, but states he is likely to bump into them eventually, because "the world is a small place, and Europe is even smaller". He still maintains contact with Keaty and Jed. By chance, Keaty and Jed end up working new jobs in the same building, although for different companies; similar to how they both happened to stay in the same guest house years before they first met at the beach.

Richard hears in a news report that Cassie has been arrested in Malaysia for smuggling a large amount of heroin and will be the first Westerner to be executed in the country in six years. He wonders whether anyone else got off the island, particularly Unhygienix, whom he liked. He believes that Bugs died and hopes that Sal died too, because he dislikes the idea of her "turning up on his doorstep".

Richard finishes by saying that he is content with his life, although he carries a lot of scars: "I like the way that sounds. I carry a of scars".

Death Bredon arrives at Pym's Publicity Ltd, an advertising agency, to take up the post of junior copywriter. He is assigned the room of his predecessor Victor Dean, who has died in a fall down the office's iron spiral staircase. The doctor states that death was caused either by a broken neck, due to his landing on his head at the bottom of the stair, or by a wound of the right temple. The death appears suspicious, as the victim apparently made no attempt to save himself as he fell. In Dean's desk Bredon discovers a part-completed letter to the firm's proprietor, Mr Pym, telling him that something 'undesirable' had been going on in the office.

Bredon befriends Pamela Dean, sister of the deceased, and takes her to a cocaine-fuelled fancy-dress party hosted by Dian de Momerie, a socialite with whom Dean had been associating. Disguised as Harlequin, Bredon attracts the attention of de Momerie and later meets her several times, always in disguise. His presence annoys de Momerie's companion Major Tod Milligan who is supplying her with drugs.

It is revealed that Death Bredon is in fact Lord Peter Wimsey who has been brought in by Pym to investigate. Various clues turn up: a catapult belonging to 'Ginger' Joe, the office boy; a carved stone scarab belonging to Dean; and £50 in banknotes found in the desk of Mr Tallboy, group manager.

After having a drink in a Covent Garden pub, newspaper reporter Hector Puncheon discovers that someone has slipped cocaine into his coat pocket. Chief Inspector Charles Parker, Wimsey's brother-in-law, suspects that Puncheon has stumbled on Milligan's drugs gang, but finds no further suspicious activity there. It appears that the cocaine is being distributed from a different pub each week.

Puncheon follows a suspiciously-behaving man from the pub, but is waylaid, and the man, Mr Mountjoy, dies from falling in front of a train. In Mountjoy's flat, the investigators discover a phone book with the names of many pubs ticked off, including the one in Covent Garden. Wimsey realises what has been happening. One of Pym's major clients runs a newspaper advertisement every Friday, the headline for which is approved a few days earlier. The first letter of the headline is being used to indicate the pub for that week, with Tallboy covertly supplying the letter to the gang in advance.

Milligan is killed in an 'accident', and Wimsey is nearly jailed for the murder of Dian de Momerie (also the gang's work). The police want to catch the ringleaders during their next weekly drug distribution. Using the phone book, all they need to find the next pub is the letter for the week – as provided by Tallboy.

Wimsey is sure that Tallboy killed Victor Dean, but he does not want to act until the gang has been rounded up. On the night of the next drug distribution, Tallboy comes to Wimsey's flat to confess. He says that he was lured into the scheme with an innocent-sounding story and the offer of money, when he was in financial difficulty, but soon became trapped. Dean had found out and was blackmailing him, so Tallboy killed Dean, using Ginger Joe's catapult and the scarab, making it look like an accidental fall on the staircase. Wanting to spare his wife and child, Tallboy proposes suicide. Wimsey, seeing a gang member watching in the street below his window, suggests Tallboy leave, on foot, without looking behind him. Both know that the gang's killers are waiting, and Tallboy is knocked down and killed as he walks home.

The setting is a feast given by the sea god Ægir. In continuity, the prose introduction says: "Ægir, also named Gymir, had made ale for the Æsir, when he had received the great kettle of which was told" (see ''Hymiskviða''). Thor did not attend, but his wife Sif came in his stead as did Bragi and his wife Iðunn. Tyr, by this time one-handed as a consequence of his sacrifice of his hand in the shackling of Loki's son, the wolf Fenrisulfr, attended, as did Niord and his wife Skaði, Freyr and Freyja, as well as Vidar, the son of Odin. Many other Vanir, Æsir, and also elves were there.

The servants of Ægir, Fimafeng and Eldir, did a thorough job of welcoming the guests; Loki was jealous of the praise being heaped upon them and slew Fimafeng. The gods were angry with Loki and drove him out of the hall, before returning to their carousing. On returning Loki encountered Eldir.

He threatened him and bade him reveal what the gods were talking about in their cups. Eldir's response was that they were discussing their might at arms, and that Loki was not welcomed.

Loki then enters the hall of Ægir after trading insults and threats with Eldir. A hush falls. Loki calls upon the rules of hospitality, demanding a seat and ale. Bragi then responds that he is unwelcome. Loki demands fulfillment of an ancient oath sworn with Odin that they should drink together. Odin asked his son Vidar to make a space for Loki.

Vidar rises and pours a drink for Loki. Before Loki drains his draught, he utters a toast to the gods but pointedly excludes Bragi from it. Bragi offers Loki a horse, a ring and a sword to placate him; Loki, however, is spoiling for a fight, and insults Bragi by questioning his courage. Bragi's response is that it would be contrary to the rules of correct behaviour to fight within his hosts' hall, but were they back in Asgard then things would be different. Iðunn, Bragi's wife, holds him back. Loki then insults Iðunn, calling her sexually loose. Gefjon is the next to speak and then Loki turns his spite on her. Odin then attempts to take a grip, as do (in turn), Freyja, Njord, Tyr, Freyr and Byggvir. The exchanges between Odin and Loki are particularly vitriolic.

Eventually Thor turns up at the party, and he is not to be placated, nor withheld. Alternating with Loki's insults to him, he says four times that he will use his hammer to knock Loki's head off if he continues. Loki replies that for Thor alone he will leave the hall, because his threats are the only ones he fears. He then leaves.

Finally there is a short piece of prose summarizing the tale of Loki's binding, which is told in fuller form in the ''Gylfaginning'' section of Snorri Sturluson's ''Prose Edda''. Loki is chased by the gods, and caught after an unsuccessful attempt at disguising himself as a salmon. The entrails of his son Nari are used to bind him to three rocks above which Skaði places a serpent to drip venom on him. Loki's wife Sigyn remains by his side with a bowl to catch the venom; however, whenever she leaves to empty the bowl, venom falls on Loki, causing him to writhe in agony; this writhing was said to be the cause of earthquakes. The text says that Loki's other son, Narfi, was turned into a wolf, but does not make clear that he tears his brother apart; also in the ''Gylfaginning'' version it is a son of Loki named Váli whom the Æsir transform into a wolf and who kills Narfi."Nari and/or Narfi", John Lindow, ''Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs'', Oxford/New York: Oxford University, 2001, , pp. 236–37, [https://books.google.com/books?id=jME8hD2UO4QC&printsec=frontcover&dq=John+Lindow,+Norse+Mythology&source=bl&ots=oIcz5mjURR&sig=bEsIPKRrECt-SJaBNd5rDeIEBFU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2wErUOXtH6eciAKo2oGYBQ&ved=0CDkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Narfi%27s%20metamorphosis%20is%20not%20explained&f=false p. 237]. Some editors have therefore chosen to read the names ''Nari'' and ''Narvi'' as a mistake in the manuscript, and transcribe ''Nari'' as ''Váli''. ''Nari'' and ''Narfi'' are otherwise considered to be variations of the same name.

A geology expedition in the Amazon uncovers fossilized evidence (a skeletal hand with webbed fingers) from the Devonian period that provides a direct link between land and sea animals. Expedition leader Dr. Carl Maia orders his two assistants to stay in camp while he visits the marine biology institute.

Carl reunites with his friend and former student, ichthyologist Dr. David Reed. David works at an aquarium in California, but more recently, he has been a guest at Carl's institute in Brazil to study lungfish. David persuades his boss, the financially minded Dr. Mark Williams, to fund a return expedition to the Amazon to look for the remainder of the skeleton.

Soon after Carl leaves camp, a piscine amphibious humanoid, a living member of the same species from which the fossil originated, becomes curious about the expedition's camp. When its sudden appearance frightens the assistants, they panic and attack, and in response, the enraged Creature kills them both.

The group goes aboard the tramp steamer ''Rita'', captained by crusty Lucas. The expedition consists of David; Carl; Mark; David's girlfriend and colleague Kay Lawrence; and another scientist, Dr. Edwin Thompson. When they arrive at the camp, they discover Carl's assistants have been killed while he was away. Lucas suggests it was likely done by a jaguar, but the others are unsure.

A further excavation of the area where Carl found the fossil turns up nothing. Mark is ready to give up the search, but David suggests that perhaps thousands of years ago, the part of the embankment containing the rest of the skeleton fell into the water and was washed downriver, broken up by the current. Carl says the tributary empties into a lagoon. Lucas calls it the "Black Lagoon", a paradise from which no one has ever returned. The scientists decide to risk it, unaware that the amphibious "Gill-man" that killed Carl's assistants has been watching them.

Taking notice of the beautiful Kay, the creature follows the ''Rita'' all the way downriver to the Black Lagoon. Once the expedition arrives, David and Mark go diving to collect rock samples from the lagoon floor. After they return, Kay goes swimming and is stalked underwater by the Gill-man, who then gets briefly caught in one of the ship's drag lines. Although it escapes, the Creature leaves a claw behind in the net, revealing its existence.

Subsequent encounters with the Gill-man claim the lives of Lucas's crew members, before the Creature is captured and locked in a cage aboard the ''Rita''. It escapes during the night, attacking Edwin, who was guarding it. Kay smashes the Creature with a lantern, driving it off, but Edwin is severely injured. Following this incident, David decides they should return to civilization. Mark, who is obsessed with capturing (or killing) the Creature, objects. As the ''Rita'' tries to leave, they find the Gill-man has blocked the lagoon's entrance with fallen logs. While the others attempt to remove the logs, Mark is mauled to death while trying to capture the Creature single-handed underwater. The Gill-man then abducts Kay and takes her to its cavern lair. David, Lucas, and Carl chase after the Creature, and Kay is ultimately rescued. The Creature is riddled with bullets before retreating to the lagoon, where its body sinks into the watery depths.

The year is 1898, and Mina Murray is recruited by Campion Bond on behalf of British Intelligence and asked to assemble a league of other extraordinary individuals to protect the interests of the Empire: Captain Nemo, Allan Quatermain, Dr. Jekyll, and Hawley Griffin the Invisible Man. They help stop a gang war between Fu Manchu and Professor Moriarty, nemesis of Sherlock Holmes. Following this they take part in the events of H. G. Wells's ''The War of the Worlds''. Two members of the League (Mina Murray and Allan Quatermain) achieve immortality, and are next seen in an adventure in 1958. This follows events that take place after the fall of the Big Brother government from ''Nineteen Eighty Four''.

Following this Mina and Allan team up with fellow immortal Orlando and are shown in an adventure which spans a century, from 1910 to 2009, concerning a plot by evil magicians to create a Moonchild that might well turn out to be the Antichrist. During this adventure Captain Nemo's daughter, Janni Dakkar, is introduced, and some of her adventures are chronicled subsequently. The final volume of the series ends with an immortal Mina escaping an earth dominated by magical entities and various alien invasions to live out her immortal life on a space station with Orlando, Jack Nemo (great-grandson of Captain Nemo) and a clone of Mr. Hyde.

Former Episcopal priest Graham Hess lives on a rural farm in Doylestown, Pennsylvania with his asthmatic preteen son Morgan and young daughter Bo. Graham's younger brother Merrill, a failed minor league baseball player, has been helping the family since Graham's wife Colleen died in a traffic accident six months earlier. Graham abandoned the church in the aftermath of the incident.

When large crop circles appear in the Hess' cornfield, they are initially attributed to vandals. However, other crop circles begin to appear globally, and lights from invisible objects hover over many of Earth's cities. One night, Graham and Merrill chase a figure into the field, and Graham glimpses another among the corn stalks, followed by strange clicking noises broadcast through Bo's old baby monitor. To the family's continued terror, news footage emerges of what appears to be an alien creature.

After receiving a phone call from Ray Reddy, the man responsible for his wife's death, Graham travels to Reddy’s home and finds him sitting in his car outside of the house. Reddy expresses remorse for Colleen's death and warns Graham that a creature is locked inside his pantry. Believing that the aliens avoid water, he leaves for a lakeside. Graham enters the house and uses a kitchen knife to peer under the pantry door. A clawed hand emerges and swipes at Graham; he cuts off the fingers in a panic.

As the worldwide alien invasion begins, the family barricades themselves inside their house. When the aliens break in, the family takes shelter in the basement. Morgan has an asthma attack but survives the night. The family emerges the next morning after the radio reports that the aliens have abruptly abandoned Earth after it was discovered that liquid water is deadly to them.

The alien previously trapped inside Reddy's pantry enters the house and takes Morgan hostage. Recalling Colleen's dying words, Graham tells Merrill to "swing away" using his baseball bat. The alien sprays Morgan with toxic gas from its wrist. Graham recovers his stricken son as Merrill bashes the creature and smashes glasses of water at it; eventually killing it. Outside, Graham administers Morgan's medication, realizing that his son's constricted lungs prevented him from inhaling the toxins; an act that Graham attributes to the intervention from a higher power.

Months later, the Hess family has recovered from the ordeal and Graham returns to the church.

A merchant shows the viewers a lamp that is up for sale, and begins to tell a story.

Jafar, the Royal Vizier of the fictional Middle Eastern city of Agrabah, seeks a lamp hidden within the Cave of Wonders. He is told that only one person is worthy to enter: "the diamond in the rough," whom Jafar later identifies as a young street urchin named Aladdin. Meanwhile, Princess Jasmine becomes upset that the law requires her to marry a prince instead of marrying for love. She escapes the palace, and meets Aladdin and his pet monkey, Abu, who save her from an angry merchant. The palace guards then capture Aladdin on Jafar's orders. Jasmine confronts Jafar to demand Aladdin's release, but he lies and says Aladdin has been executed.

Disguised as an aging man, Jafar frees Aladdin and Abu and brings them to the cave, ordering them to retrieve the lamp. After being told to touch nothing but the lamp, Aladdin finds a magic carpet inside, and obtains the lamp. Forgetting the cave's rule, Abu grabs a jewel. Aladdin, Abu, and the carpet rush to escape the cave as it collapses. Aladdin gives the lamp to Jafar, who throws him and Abu back into the cave, though not before Abu steals the lamp back. Trapped, Aladdin rubs the lamp and meets the Genie who lives inside it. The Genie grants Aladdin three wishes. Aladdin tricks the Genie into freeing them all from the cave without using a wish, then uses his first wish to become a prince to woo Jasmine, and promises to use his third wish to free the Genie from servitude.

Jafar's parrot Iago suggests that he plots to become Sultan by marrying Jasmine. Aladdin, as "Prince Ali Ababwa," arrives in Agrabah with a large host, but Jasmine becomes angry when he discusses her fate with her father, the Sultan, and Jafar without her. As a means of apologizing, Aladdin takes Jasmine on a ride on the magic carpet. When she deduces his true identity by mentioning Abu, he lies to her, saying that he only dresses as a commoner to escape the stresses of royal life. After Aladdin brings Jasmine home, the palace guards capture Aladdin on Jafar's behest and throw him into the sea. The Genie appears and saves Aladdin, at the cost of his second wish. Aladdin returns to the palace and exposes Jafar's evil plot. Jafar flees after spotting the lamp and thus discovering Aladdin's true identity.

Fearing that he will lose Jasmine if the truth is revealed, Aladdin breaks his promise and refuses to free the Genie. Iago steals the lamp, and Jafar becomes the Genie's new master. He uses his first two wishes to become Sultan and the world's most powerful sorcerer. He then exposes Aladdin, exiling him, Abu, and the carpet to a frozen wasteland, though they escape. Jasmine tries to help Aladdin steal the lamp back, but Jafar notices and overpowers her, Abu, and the carpet with his magic. Aladdin taunts Jafar for being less powerful than the Genie, tricking Jafar into using his last wish to become an all-powerful genie himself. Now bound to his new lamp, Jafar ends up trapped inside it, taking Iago with him. The Genie then throws Jafar's lamp far into the desert, banishing Jafar and Iago to the Cave of Wonders for 10,000 years.

With Agrabah returned to normal, the Genie advises Aladdin to use his third wish to regain his royal title, so the law will allow him to stay with Jasmine. Aladdin instead decides to keep his promise, and frees the Genie. Realizing Aladdin's nobility, the Sultan changes the law to allow Jasmine to marry whom she chooses. The Genie bids the group a fond farewell and leaves to explore the world, while Aladdin and Jasmine start their new life together.

The novel chronicles the life of Amelia, the only daughter of newspaper tycoon Max de Monde who, after having spoiled Amelia beyond hope while she was still young, abandons her when she becomes pregnant. Amelia decides to marry Mark Crawley, the father of her child, an ambitious young critic intent on shaking off his humble background. Suddenly, the young couple find themselves in desperate need of money and, at first, accommodations. While she stays at home raising their daughter Rose, Amelia metamorphoses from spoiled brat to mature and responsible mother, whereas her husband loses all interest in the housewife he now realizes he has married. Amelia is encouraged to stay on her chosen path by Grace, her cleaning woman—who is also her niece (without either of the women being aware of this), and by Tom Viner, a young doctor who becomes their lodger.

''A Vicious Circle'' also follows the life of Mary Quinn. An Irish girl lacking a university education, Mary has a natural writing talent and rises to become a prominent reviewer of new fiction after having been left by her lover of many years, Mark Crawley. Mary makes friends with Adam Sands, a yet unpublished author who keeps his homosexuality a secret from almost everyone including his own mother. When he is dying of an AIDS-related disease, Mary is the only person who remembers and eventually takes care of him.

When the recession of the 1990s hits the country everyone seems to be affected by it. Max de Monde, who has even plundered his daughter's trust fund, spectacularly commits suicide by crashing his helicopter against the ground. Amelia leaves Mark and is planning to raise her daughter as a single parent.

Category:1996 British novels Category:Novels about HIV/AIDS Category:Fourth Estate books

''The Dark Knight Returns'' is set in a dystopian version of Gotham City in 1986. Bruce Wayne, aged 55, has given up the mantle of Batman after the death of Jason Todd ten years prior. Crime is running rampant throughout the city and a gang calling themselves "The Mutants" has begun terrorizing the people of Gotham. After watching news reports about the Mutants' crimes, Wayne decides to return to his role as a vigilante. On his first night as Batman, he stops multiple assaults – including one on two young girls, Carrie Kelley and her friend Michelle – and targets the Mutants.

While foiling an armed robbery, Batman learns that the criminals are working for Harvey Dent. Previously known as Two-Face, Dent underwent extensive therapy and plastic surgery to reenter society before disappearing. Batman informs nearly-retired Commissioner Gordon that Dent may be planning a larger scheme. Soon after, Dent announces his intention to hold Gotham ransom with a bomb. After Batman defeats Dent and his goons, he discovers that Dent's mind has completely warped into his Two-Face persona.

Inspired by Batman, Kelley buys an imitation Robin costume and searches for him. Batman attacks the Mutants at the city dump with the Batmobile, but the Mutant Leader goads him into a hand-to-hand fight. Batman, due to his age and a decade of physical inactivity, is beaten and almost killed. Kelley creates a diversion which allows her and Batman to return to the Batcave, where Wayne's butler Alfred Pennyworth tends to his wounds. Impressed with her bravery, Wayne decides to make Kelley his new protegee. Batman strategically defeats the Mutant Leader in a fight surrounded by the Mutants. Seeing Batman defeat their leader, some of the Mutants disband into smaller gangs. One of these gangs renames themselves the "Sons of the Batman", using excessive violence against criminals.

At the White House, Superman and president Ronald Reagan discuss the events in Gotham, with the latter suggesting that Batman may have to be arrested. Clark Kent talks with Wayne, and is then deployed by Washington to the Latin American country of Corto Maltese, where he fights Soviet combat forces in a conflict that may escalate into World War III.

Gordon's successor as commissioner, Captain Ellen Yindel, declares Batman a wanted criminal for his vigilante activities. Batman's return stimulates his archenemy, Joker, to awaken from catatonia at Arkham Asylum. Joker manipulates his caretakers to allow him onto a television talk show, where he murders everyone with Joker venom and escapes. Batman and Robin (Kelley) track him to a county fair while evading a police pursuit. Batman fights Joker, vowing to stop him permanently, feeling responsible for every murder the villain has committed. Batman paralyzes the Joker, but is unable to take his life. Disappointed with Batman's refusal to kill him, Joker breaks his own neck and dies. Batman and Robin escape from Gotham police.

A citywide manhunt on Batman begins. Elsewhere, Superman diverts a Soviet nuclear warhead which detonates in a desert, nearly killing him in the process, and survives only by absorbing the sun's energy. The United States is hit by an electromagnetic pulse as a result and descends into chaos during the following blackout. In Gotham, Batman and Robin turn the remaining Mutants and Sons of the Batman into a non-lethal vigilante gang, making Gotham the safest city in the country. The U.S. government orders Superman to take Batman into custody. Superman demands to meet Batman, and Wayne chooses Crime Alley.

Superman tries to reason with Batman, but Batman uses his technological inventions to fight him on equal ground. During the battle, Superman compromises Batman's exoframe. However, an aging Oliver Queen manages to shoot Superman with a kryptonite-tipped arrow to weaken him. Before he can fully defeat Superman, Batman has a sudden heart attack, apparently dying. Alfred destroys the Batcave and Wayne Manor before suffering a fatal stroke, exposing Batman as Bruce Wayne, whose fortune has disappeared. After Wayne's funeral, it is revealed that his death was staged using a chemical that suspended his vital life signs. Clark attends the funeral and winks at the disguised Carrie after hearing Wayne's heartbeat. Some time afterwards, Bruce Wayne leads Robin, Queen, and the rest of his followers into the caverns beyond the Batcave and prepares to continue his war on crime.

Season One

Book 1 (issues #1–7)

thumb Fresh from the academy, Robyn "Toybox" Slinger is headed for her first day on the job at Precinct 10, home of Neopolis' finest. Despite a cold reception from her new partner Jeff Smax, Robyn quickly helps with investigating the scene of a homicide in the robot ghetto, Tin Town. The dead man, Stefan "Saddles" Graczik, leads the police to a known drug factory, headed by none other than Professor Gromolko, an original architect of the city. When a telepath is brought in to interrogate the evil scientist, the drug peddler shoots himself with Dust Devil's pistol.

The next day, Shock-headed Pete and Dust Devil discover the body of a local prostitute with her head severed, indicating the horrific "Libra" killer is back. Elsewhere, Detective Synaesthesia gets the idea to use zen taxi driver Blindshot to track down Marta "Boots" Wesson, girlfriend and associate of Saddles. Boots reveals that Gromolko had a special delivery for a unique client. At the museum hideout where Boots and Saddles had been staying, a metal canister is found containing some unknown, radioactive drug.

Back at the station, Hyperdog and Peregrine interview Annette "Neural 'Nette" Duvalle, a prostitute who was able to survive an encounter with Libra. She leads Hyperdog and Peregrine, along with Dust Devil, Shock-headed Pete and Jack Phantom, to the sewers near where she encountered her attacker. The police are able to arrest Libra, who is revealed to be former "science hero" M'rrgla Qualtz, an alien shapeshifter who assumed her natural form to feed during her metamorphic period.

Book 2 (issues #8–12)

thumb After Qualtz's arrest, several of her former Seven Sentinels teammates come to give her their support, as well as political and legal aid. Even as she professes her innocence, Qualtz continues to use her telepathic powers to try and trick officers into freeing her from captivity. Meanwhile, King Peacock travels to Grand Central, a parallel dimension where the Roman Empire never fell and is filled with countless Roman myth-based creatures. It was here that Saddles was to deliver the drug, but before Peacock can investigate anything, he is drafted into an inter-precinct gladiatorial contest due to a seeming bureaucratic oversight. Though he is victorious, King Peacock despairs that he had to assault and even kill fellow law officers.

Smax and Toybox are called to the scene of an apparent suicide, only to discover the victim, a sidekick boy band star, was murdered. Back at headquarters, the precinct welcomes Commissioner Ultima, visiting from Grand Central for an inspection. Detective Synaesthesia's special senses reveal that Ultima was involved in the drug dealings, likely having King Peacock placed in the competition to keep him from investigating. Ultima goes berserk in resisting arrest, killing Girl One, M'rrgla Qualtz and injuring Toybox before she can be brought down by forcibly giving her the drug and causing her to overdose.

In the aftermath of the commissioner's attack, Joe Pi from Precinct 9 is transferred to replace Girl One. Despite the antagonism against Pi, both for the place he occupies and his "Ferro-American" heritage, he quickly establishes himself as a capable policeman. After some digging, Peregrine and Jack Phantom discover that Glenn "Bluejay" Garland, the murdered pop star, was connected to the Seven Sentinels. He was about to sell his life story just before being killed, and investigation into his and M'rrgla's past with the Seven Sentinels reveals the dark secret behind the group: the Seven Sentinels are not a superhero group, but a pedophile ring, having faked all of their famous battles and used the Young Sentinels (sidekicks) as sexual slaves. M'rrgla's old newsreels even contain clips of Sentinels being "serviced".

The precinct moves to swiftly arrest all the Sentinels, but their leader, Atoman, is tipped off. Locking himself in his Impregnium shielded lair, Atoman seems to be out of the reach of the law, and Irma Geddon laments that even if he were to be convicted, Atoman's long lifespan would allow him to walk free, even with consecutive murder charges. Joe Pi then talks to Atoman through an intercom and subtly convinces him to kill himself, rather than face trial, be stripped of his powers, and go to prison with revenge-seeking supervillains. As the events of the past few weeks wind down, Smax visits Toybox in the hospital, asking her to accompany him to his home dimension in order to attend a funeral; Hyperdog starts a relationship with Neural 'Nette; and Captain Traynor returns home to his loving partner, former Skyshark pilot, Wulf.

''Beyond the Farthest Precinct''

Five years after the events of the ''Smax'' mini-series, Precinct 10 is celebrating another year of hard work at their annual labor day picnic. The festivities are broken up by the appearance of a large avatar in the sky, nicknamed the Hell Ditch Pilgrim (after the supernatural crevice it appeared above). The next day, as new officers are paired with veterans, Toybox goes looking for the Rumor, anxious to thank him for rescuing her from Ultima years ago. She however cannot find him, but new officer Hoodoo Priest informs he knows of the Rumor and alludes to his divine role.

Officer Joe Pi is reconfigured as a lesser form to investigate a new strain of robot drug that seems connected to the Hell Ditch Pilgrim. After giving Joe Pi his new assignment, Captain Traynor is called to the mayor's office, where he is summarily fired and replaced with the more hawkish Sean Cindercott. Cindercott soon initiates a number of sweeping reforms, instituting radio check-ins every quarter-hour, less focus on street-level crime in favor of "rooting out subversive elements", no non-essential visitors at the station (meaning loved ones), mandatory overtime with base pay, no contact with the media, and ceasing of routine maintenance of officer's personal equipment. Finally, all officers are asked to sign a ten-page "loyalty oath". The officers are polarized by these decisions, with a large number signing a letter of resignation, until Hyperdog convinces them all to stay.

Joe Pi reports back, after accidentally having experienced the effects of the dark energy capsules firsthand. The "darkshots" create a direct mental connection between any cybernetic intelligence and an extra-dimensional entity. The drugs are being created in a federal lab called Project JOOTS, where Irmageddon's husband works. Irma's husband, Ron, explains the basic goal: the scientists are investigating "superspace", the underlying region that seems to bind all timelines in the multiverse. In superspace, dark energy is the force that holds the multiverse together, as well as having other properties. A robot worker, named Rikby-2001, has been using dark energy to create and distribute the drug, but he purposefully overdoses and transcends this plane rather than talk.

After the precinct thwarts a minor attack by a group of anarchic "derridadaists", they have to deal with the Hell Ditch Pilgrim spreading his influence and destructive insanity through all the entities in Neopolis, including fellow officers. While Cindercott wishes to make a beeline for city hall to protect the mayor, the officers know they have to attack the problem at its source: superspace. But without any means to breach superspace, they cannot fight the Hell Ditch Pilgrim, until the Rumor shows up. He informs Top 10 that Andy "Airbag" Soames, who five years ago contracted S.T.O.R.M.S. (Sexually Transmitted Organic Rapid Mutation Syndrome), was so radically altered by the disease as to become a creature capable of entering and controlling superspace. The Rumor says that Toybox is the only one that can harm Soames, because she carries her mother's gift: Pandora's Box. The Rumor helps the officers bridge the gap left by Project JOOTS technology and send Toybox into superspace. When Toybox faces Andy alone, she unleashes all of her toys to protect herself, and then reveals the final thing left in Pandora's Box that can heal Andy Soames desperate mind: Hope. Smax rushes through the makeshift portal to grab his partner, escaping just before the effects backlash throughout superspace.

A few months after the events of the Hell Ditch Pilgrim case, Hyperdog is Traynor's replacement as Captain of Precinct 10, Robyn Slinger is no longer Toybox, and the fascist Mayor Famaille and Major Cindercott are out of power, casualties of the reality warping by Andy Soames, who now peacefully overlooks Top 10 as they once again celebrate survival and hopeful perseverance in a crazy and confusing beautiful world.

Season Two

A new officer, Slipstream Phoenix, joins as well as Girl Two, who replaces Girl One. The new commissioner, David Moon Gilbert, enforces stricter regulations to the dismay of some officers. Irma Wornow is suspended for breaking the new regulations. Shock-headed Pete is dismissed after he destroys Joe Pi's body while attacking Slipstream Phoenix.

This season was originally intended to include eight issues and two specials. It was canceled in 2009 after four issues and one special, leaving the continuing plotlines unresolved.

Book 1: Europe After the Reign

On Guy Fawkes Night in London in 1997, a financially desperate 16-year-old, Evey Hammond, sexually solicits men who are actually members of the state secret police, called "The Finger". Preparing to rape and kill her, the Fingermen are dispatched by V, a cloaked anarchist wearing a mask, who later remotely detonates explosives at the Palace of Westminster before bringing Evey to his contraband-filled underground lair, the "Shadow Gallery." Evey tells V her life story, which reveals her own past and England's recent history. During a dispute over Poland in the late 1980s, the Soviet Union and the United States, under the presidency of Ted Kennedy, entered a global nuclear war which left continental Europe and Africa uninhabitable. Although Britain itself was not bombed due to the Labour government's decision to remove American nuclear missiles, it faced environmental devastation and famine due to the nuclear winter. After a period of lawlessness in which Evey's mother died, the remaining corporations and fascist groups took over England and formed a new totalitarian government, Norsefire. Evey's father, a former socialist, was arrested by the regime.

Meanwhile, Eric Finch, a veteran detective in charge of the regular police force ("The Nose"), begins investigating V's terrorist activities. Finch often communicates with the other top government officials, collectively known as "The Head." These individuals include Derek Almond, who supervises the Finger, and priest, whom V forces to commit suicide by eating a poisoned communion wafer. He prepares to murder Dr. Delia Surridge, a medical researcher who once had a romance with Finch. Finch suddenly discovers the connection among V's three targets: they all used to work at Larkhill. That night, V kills both Almond and Surridge. Surridge leaves a diary revealing that V—a former inmate and victim of Surridge's cruel medical experiments—destroyed and fled the camp and is now eliminating the camp's former officers for what they did. Finch reports these findings to Susan, and suspects that this vendetta may actually be a cover for V, who, he worries, may be plotting an even bigger terrorist attack.

Book 2: This Vicious Cabaret

Four months later, V breaks into Jordan Tower, the home of Norsefire's propaganda department, "the Mouth"—led by Roger Dascombe—to broadcast a speech that calls on the people to resist the government. V escapes using an elaborate diversion that results in Dascombe's death. Finch is soon introduced to Peter Creedy, the Finger's new head, who provokes Finch to strike him and thus get sent on a forced vacation. Evey had taken shelter at the house of a man named Gordon, and had a romantic relationship with him. He eventually took advantage of her. Evey and Gordon unknowingly cross paths with Rose Almond, the widow of the recently killed Derek. After Derek's death, Rose had reluctantly begun a relationship with Dascombe. With both of her lovers murdered, she is forced to perform demoralizing burlesque work, increasing her hatred of the unsupportive government.

When a Scottish gangster named Ally Harper murders Gordon, a vengeful Evey interrupts a meeting between Harper and Creedy, the latter of whom is buying the support of Harper's thugs in preparation for a coup d'état. Evey attempts to shoot Harper but is suddenly abducted and then imprisoned. Amidst interrogation and torture, Evey finds an old letter hidden in her cell by an inmate named Valerie Page, a film actress who was imprisoned and executed for being a lesbian and documented her experiences in the letter.

Evey's interrogator finally gives her a choice of collaboration or death; inspired by Valerie's letter, Evey refuses to collaborate and, expecting to be executed, is instead told that she is free. Stunned, Evey learns that her supposed imprisonment is a hoax constructed by V so that she could experience an ordeal similar to the one that shaped him at Larkhill. He reveals that Valerie was a real Larkhill prisoner who died in the cell next to his and that the letter is not a fake. Evey forgives V, who has hacked into the government's ''Fate'' computer system and started emotionally manipulating Adam Susan with mind games. Consequently, Susan, who has formed a bizarre romantic attachment to the computer, begins to descend into madness.

Book 3: The Land of Do-As-You-Please

The following 5 November (1998), V blows up the Post Office Tower and Jordan Tower, killing "the Ear" leader Brian Etheridge, in addition to effectively shutting down three government agencies: the Eye, the Ear, and the Mouth. Creedy's men and Harper's associated street gangs violently suppress the subsequent wave of revolutionary fervor from the public. V notes to Evey that he has not yet achieved what he calls the "Land of Do-as-You-Please," meaning a functional anarchistic society, and considers the current chaotic situation an interim period of "Land of Take-What-You-Want." Finch has been mysteriously absent, and his young assistant, Dominic Stone, one day realises that V has been influencing the ''Fate'' computer all along, which explained V's consistent foresight. All the while, Finch has been traveling to the abandoned site of Larkhill, where he takes LSD to conjure up memories of his own devastating past and to put his mind in the role of a prisoner of Larkhill, like V, to help give him an intuitive understanding of V's experiences. Returning to London, Finch suddenly deduces that V's lair is inside the abandoned Victoria Station, which he enters.

V takes Finch by surprise, resulting in a scuffle that sees Finch shoot V, and V wounds Finch with a knife. V claims that he cannot be killed since he is only an idea and that "ideas are bulletproof"; regardless, V is indeed mortally wounded and returns to the Shadow Gallery deeper within, dying in Evey's arms. Evey considers unmasking V but decides not to, realizing that V is not an identity but a symbol. She then assumes V's identity, donning one of his spare costumes. Finch sees the large amount of blood that V has left in his wake and deduces that he has mortally wounded V. Occurring concurrently to this, Creedy has been pressuring Susan to appear in public, hoping to leave him exposed. Sure enough, as Susan stops to shake hands with Rose during a parade, she shoots him in the head in vengeance for the death of her husband and the life she has had to lead since then. Following Rose's arrest, Creedy assumes emergency leadership of the country, and Finch emerges from the subway proclaiming V's death.

Due to his LSD-induced epiphany, Finch leaves his position within "the Nose." The power struggle between the remaining leaders results in all of their deaths: Harper betrays and kills Creedy at the behest of Helen Heyer (wife of "the Eye" leader Conrad Heyer, who had outbid Creedy for Harper's loyalty), and Harper and Conrad Heyer kill each other during a fight precipitated by Heyer's discovery that his wife Helen had had an affair with Harper.

With the fate of the top government officials unknown to the public, Stone acts as leader of the police forces deployed to ensure that the riots are contained should V remain alive and make his promised public announcement. Evey appears to a crowd, dressed as V, announcing the destruction of 10 Downing Street the following day and telling the crowd they must ''"...choose what comes next. Lives of your own, or a return to chains"'', whereupon a general insurrection begins. Evey destroys 10 Downing Street by blowing up an Underground train containing V's body, in the style of an explosive Viking funeral. She abducts Stone, apparently to train him as her successor to make sure people like Susan will never hold power ever again. The book ends with Finch quietly observing the chaos raging in the city and walking down an abandoned motorway whose lights have all gone out.

Norsefire government

The highest-level officials in the Norsefire government form a council known as "The Head." The five individual departments are named after sensory organs or appendages that reference their functions.

;Notes

Tony Hunter, once a famous star of musical comedies on stage and later on screen, is largely forgotten after three years without a movie. He returns from Hollywood to New York. At Grand Central Station, he is recognized but almost ignored by reporters who are there by chance as Ava Gardner is on the same train. However, he is greeted enthusiastically by his good friends Lester and Lily Marton, and they tell him they have written a stage show, a light musical comedy, that will be a perfect comeback for Tony. They will also act in it, and they already have caught the interest of Jeffrey Cordova, who they say can do anything: Currently he is starring in, as well as directing, a new adaptation of ''Oedipus Rex'' that he wrote based on the original Greek story.

As soon as Jeffrey hears Lily outline the play, he declares it to be a brilliant reinterpretation of the ''Faust'' legend, which should star Tony and himself as the characters corresponding to Faust and the Devil. The Martons are delighted that he will be acting as well as directing, but Tony is dubious about the ''Faust'' idea. Jeffrey declares that the boundaries between genres in the theater are artificial, and "Bill Shakespeare" and Bill Robinson are all parts of the same whole—to prove his point, he leads the four in singing "That's Entertainment!" Tony agrees, and Jeffrey has the Martons rewrite the play as a dark, pretentious musical drama (when Lester also becomes dubious, Lily insists that one person must be in charge and Jeffrey can succeed at anything).

Jeffrey does succeed in arranging for the beautiful and talented ballerina Gabrielle "Gaby" Gerard to join the production, along with Paul Byrd, who is her boyfriend, choreographer, and manager—even though he always insisted that a musical play would be beneath her. When Tony and Gaby meet, they become sarcastic and hostile to each other, but this is actually because they are insecure: Each of them feels much less talented than the other.

Eventually, it all proves too much for Tony, and he walks out. Gaby follows to meet him privately. In his hotel room, she comments that the paintings by famous artists on the wall are better reproductions than usual in a hotel; he says they are his own property, and are originals. She recognizes a painting of ballerinas as an early Degas. Tony and Gaby put their troubles aside, go for a horse-drawn carriage ride, dance together, and realize they can work together after all. They also begin to fall in love.

When the first out-of-town tryout in New Haven proves disastrous, Tony demands that Jeffrey convert the production back into the light comedy that the Martons had envisioned. Jeffrey says that while they will have to find new backers because the original ones have walked out, he will be happy to appear in that show—if Tony is in charge of it. Tony accepts, using his art collection to finance the production. Paul says the show is no longer suitable for Gaby and walks out, expecting her to follow, but she is pleased to stay and work with Tony.

After some weeks on tour to perfect the new lighthearted musical numbers, the revised show proves to be a hit on its Broadway opening. Afterwards, Gaby and Tony kiss in front of the entire cast and crew, and the finale is a reprise of "That's Entertainment!"

In the United States in 1917, James "Jim" Apperson's (John Gilbert) idleness (in contrast to his hardworking brother) incurs the great displeasure of his wealthy businessman father. Then America enters World War I. Jim informs his worried mother that he has no intention of enlisting, and his father threatens to kick him out of the house if he does not join. However, when he runs into his patriotic friends at a send-off parade, he is persuaded to enlist, making his father very proud.

During training, Jim makes friendships with Southern construction worker Slim (Karl Dane) and Bronx bartender Bull (Tom O'Brien). Their unit ships out to France, where they are billeted at a farm in the village of Champillon in the Marne.

All three men are attracted to Melisande (Renée Adorée), whose mother owns the farm. She repulses all their advances, but gradually warms to Jim, bonding at first over chewing gum. They eventually fall in love, despite not being able to speak each other's language. One day, however, Jim receives a letter and a photograph from Justyn (Claire Adams), which reveals that they are engaged. When Melisande sees the picture, she realizes the situation and runs off in tears. Before Jim can decide what to do, his unit is ordered to the front. Melisande hears the commotion and races back, just in time for the lovers to embrace and kiss.

The Americans march towards the front and are strafed by an enemy fighter before it is shot down. The unit is sent to the attack immediately, advancing against snipers and machine guns in the woods, then more machine guns, artillery, and poison gas in the open. They settle down in a makeshift line. Jim shelters in a shellhole with Slim and Bull.

That night, orders come down for one man to go out and eliminate a troublesome mortar crew; Slim wins a spitting contest for the opportunity. He succeeds, but is spotted and wounded on the way back. After listening to Slim's pleas for help, Jim cannot stand it any longer and goes to his rescue against orders. Bull follows, but is shot and killed. By the time Jim reaches Slim, he is already dead. Jim is then shot in the leg. When a German (George Beranger) comes to finish him off, Jim shoots and wounds him. The German starts crawling back to his line. Jim catches up to him in another shellhole, but, face to face, cannot bring himself to finish him off with his bayonet. Instead, he gives his erstwhile enemy a cigarette. Soon after, the German dies. However, Jim is not stuck in no man's land for long; the Americans attack, and he is taken away to a hospital.

From another patient, he learns that Champillon has changed hands four times. Worried about Melisande, Jim sneaks out of the hospital and hitches a ride. When he gets to the farmhouse, he finds it damaged and empty. Melisande and her mother have joined a stream of refugees. Jim collapses and is carried off in an ambulance by retreating soldiers.

After the war ends, Jim goes home to America. Before he arrives, his mother overhears Justyn and Jim's brother Harry (Robert Ober) discussing what to do; in Jim's absence, they have fallen in love. When Jim appears, it is revealed that he has had his leg amputated. Later, Jim tells his mother about Melisande; she tells him to go back and find her. When he returns to the farm, Melisande rushes into his arms.

The film begins with the looting of a ship already captured and badly mauled, by the pirates. After relieving the ship and crew of valuables, the pirates fire the ship, blowing up the gunpowder on board, sinking her. While the pirates celebrate, two survivors wash up on an island, an old man and his son. Before dying, the older man gives his signet ring to his son (Douglas Fairbanks). His son buries him, vowing vengeance.

The Pirate Captain and Lieutenant bring some crew to the other side of the same island to bury some of their plunder. They then plan to murder the other pirates: "Dead men tell no tales." But first, the son appears as the "Black Pirate", who offers to join their company and fight their best man to prove his worth. After much fighting, the Black Pirate kills the Pirate Captain. The Pirate Lieutenant sneers, and says there is more to being a pirate than sword tricks. To further prove his worth, the Black Pirate says he will capture the next ship of prey single-handed, which he does. He then uses his wits to prevent the pirates from blowing up the ship along with the crew and passengers, suggesting that they hold the ship for ransom.

When a woman is discovered on board, the Pirate Lieutenant claims her. Being in love at first sight for her, the Black Pirate finds a way to temporarily save her from this fate by presenting her as a "princess" and urging the crew to use her as a hostage to ensure their ransom will be paid, as long as she remains "spotless and unharmed".

The pirates cheer the Black Pirate, and want to name him captain. The Pirate Lieutenant jeers but consents to wait to see if the ransom is paid by noon the next day. However, he secretly has a confederate destroy the ransom ship later that night to ensure it will not return. Then, when the Black Pirate is caught trying to release the woman, the Pirate Lieutenant exposes him as a traitor and the pirates force him to walk the plank.

At noon the next day, with the ransom ship having failed to show, the Pirate Lieutenant goes to the woman to claim his prize. But just then, the Black Pirate, who with the help of the sympathetic one-armed pirate MacTavish, who had survived being sent overboard, returns leading troops to stop the pirates. After a long fight, the pirates are routed. In the end, the Black Pirate is revealed to be a Duke, and the "Princess" he loves a noble Lady. Even MacTavish is moved to tears of joy by the happy ending.

On a stormy night, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron praise Mary Shelley for her story of Frankenstein and his Monster. She reminds them that her intention for writing the novel was to impart a moral lesson, the consequences of a mortal man who tries to play God. Mary says she has more of the story to tell. The scene shifts to the end of the 1931 ''Frankenstein'', in 1899.

Villagers gathered around the burning windmill cheer the apparent death of the Monster. Hans, the father of the girl the creature drowned in the previous film, wants to see the Monster's bones. He falls into a flooded pit underneath the mill, where the Monster—having survived the fire—strangles him. Hauling himself from the pit, the Monster casts Hans' wife to her death. He next encounters Minnie, who flees in terror.

The body of Henry Frankenstein, who is thought to have died at the windmill, is returned to his fiancée Elizabeth at his ancestral castle home. Minnie arrives to sound the alarm about the Monster, but her warning goes unheeded. Elizabeth, seeing Henry move, realizes he is still alive. Nursed back to health by Elizabeth, Henry has renounced his creation, but still believes he may be destined to unlock the secret of life and immortality. A hysterical Elizabeth cries that she foresees death.

Henry visits the lab of his former mentor Doctor Septimus Pretorius, where Pretorius shows Henry several homunculi he has created. Pretorius wishes to work with Henry to create a mate for the Monster, with the proposed venture involving Pretorius growing an artificial brain while Henry gathers parts for the mate.

The Monster saves a young shepherdess from drowning. Her screams upon seeing him alert two hunters, who shoot and injure the Monster. The hunters raise a mob that sets out in pursuit. Captured and trussed to a pole, the Monster is hauled to a dungeon and chained. Left alone, he breaks his chains, overpowers the guards, and escapes into the woods.

That night, following the sound of a violin playing "Ave Maria", the Monster encounters an old blind hermit who thanks God for sending him a friend. He teaches the monster words like "friend" and "good" and shares a meal with him. Two lost hunters stumble upon the cottage and recognize the Monster. He attacks them and accidentally burns down the cottage as the hunters lead the hermit away.

Taking refuge from another angry mob in a crypt, the Monster spies Pretorius and his cronies Karl and Ludwig breaking open a grave. The henchmen depart as Pretorius stays to enjoy a light supper. The Monster approaches Pretorius and learns that Pretorius plans to create a mate for him.

Henry and Elizabeth, now married, are visited by Pretorius. When Henry expresses his refusal to assist with Pretorius' plans, Pretorius calls in the Monster, who demands Henry's help. Henry again refuses, and Pretorius orders the Monster out, secretly signaling him to kidnap Elizabeth. Pretorius guarantees her safe return upon Henry's participation. Henry returns to his tower laboratory where, despite himself, he grows excited over his work. After being assured of Elizabeth's safety, Henry completes the Bride's body.

A storm rages as final preparations are made to bring the Bride to life. Her bandage-wrapped body is raised through the roof, where electricity is harnessed from lightning to animate her. Henry and Pretorius lower her and, after realizing their success in bringing her to life, remove her bandages and help her to stand.

The Monster comes down the steps after killing Karl on the rooftop and sees his mate. The excited Monster reaches out to her and asks: "Friend?" The Bride, screaming, rejects him. The dejected Monster observes: "She hate me! Like others". As Elizabeth races to Henry's side, the Monster rampages through the laboratory. When Pretorius warns that the Monster's actions are about to destroy them all, the Monster pauses and tells Henry and Elizabeth: "Go! You live! Go!" To Pretorius and the Bride, he says: "You stay. We belong dead". While Henry and Elizabeth flee, the Monster looks at the Bride who hisses at him. Shedding a tear, he pulls a lever to trigger the laboratory and tower's destruction.

David Huxley (Cary Grant) is a mild-mannered paleontologist. For the past four years, he has been trying to assemble the skeleton of a ''Brontosaurus'' but is missing one bone: the "intercostal clavicle." Adding to his stress is his impending marriage to the dour Alice Swallow (Virginia Walker) and the need to impress Elizabeth Random (May Robson), who is considering a million-dollar donation to his museum.

The day before his wedding, David meets Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) by chance on a golf course when she plays his ball. She is a free-spirited, somewhat scatterbrained, young lady, unfettered by logic. These qualities soon embroil David in several frustrating incidents.

Susan's brother Mark has sent her a tame leopard named Baby (Nissa) from Brazil. Its tameness is helped by hearing the song "I Can't Give You Anything But Love". Susan thinks David is a zoologist, and manipulates him into accompanying her in taking Baby to her farm in Connecticut. Complications arise when Susan falls in love with him, and she tries to keep him at her house as long as possible, even hiding his clothes, to prevent his imminent marriage.

David's prized intercostal clavicle is delivered, but Susan's aunt's dog George (Skippy) takes it and buries it somewhere. When Susan's aunt arrives, she discovers David in a negligee. To David's dismay, she turns out to be potential donor Elizabeth Random. A second message from Mark makes clear the leopard is for Elizabeth, as she always wanted one. Baby and George run off. The zoo is called to help capture Baby. Susan and David race to find Baby before the zoo and, mistaking a dangerous leopard (also portrayed by Nissa) from a nearby circus for Baby, they let it out of its cage.

David and Susan are jailed by a befuddled town policeman, Constable Slocum (Walter Catlett), for acting strangely at the house of Dr. Fritz Lehman (Fritz Feld), where they had cornered the circus leopard, thinking it was Baby. When Slocum does not believe their story, Susan tells him they are members of the "Leopard Gang"; she calls herself "Swingin' Door Susie," and David "Jerry the Nipper." Eventually, Alexander Peabody (George Irving) shows up to verify everyone's identity. Susan, who escaped out of a window during a police interview, unwittingly drags the highly irritated circus leopard into the jail. David saves her, using a chair to shoo the big cat into a cell.

Some time later, Susan finds David, who has been jilted by Alice because of her, on a high platform working on his brontosaurus reconstruction at the museum. After showing him the missing bone which she found by trailing George for three days, Susan, against his warnings, climbs a tall ladder next to the dinosaur to be closer to him. She tells David that her aunt has given her the million dollars, and she wants to donate it to the museum, but David is more interested in telling her that the day spent with her was the best day of his life. They profess their love for each other as Susan unconsciously swings the ladder from side to side, and as it sways more and more with each swing Susan and David finally notice the ladder moving and that Susan is in danger. Frightened, she climbs onto the skeleton, causing it to collapse, and David grabs her hand just as she falls. After she dangles for a few seconds, David lifts her onto the platform. After she talks him into forgiving her without him saying a word about anything but halfheartedly complaining about the loss of his years of work putting together the Brontosaurus skeleton, David, resigning himself to a future of chaos, embraces Susan.

Cheng Huan leaves his native China because he "dreams to spread the gentle message of Buddha to the Anglo-Saxon lands." His idealism fades as he is faced with the brutal reality of London's gritty inner-city. However, his mission is finally realized in his devotion to the "broken blossom" Lucy Burrows, the beautiful but unwanted and abused daughter of boxer Battling Burrows.

After being beaten and discarded one evening by her raging father, Lucy finds sanctuary in Cheng's home, the beautiful and exotic room above his shop. As Cheng nurses Lucy back to health, the two form a bond as two unwanted outcasts of society. All goes astray for them when Lucy's father gets wind of his daughter's whereabouts and in a drunken rage drags her back to their home to punish her. Fearing for her life, Lucy locks herself inside a closet to escape her contemptuous father.

By the time Cheng arrives to rescue Lucy, whom he so innocently adores, it is too late. Lucy's lifeless body lies on her modest bed as Battling has a drink in the other room. As Cheng gazes at Lucy's youthful face which, in spite of the circumstances, beams with innocence and even the slightest hint of a smile, Battling enters the room to make his escape. The two stand for a long while, exchanging spiteful glances, until Battling lunges for Cheng with a hatchet, and Cheng retaliates by shooting Burrows repeatedly with his handgun. After returning to his home with Lucy's body, Cheng builds a shrine to Buddha and takes his own life with a knife to the chest.

Parachute maker Carmen Jones makes a play for a "fly boy" Air Force man, Joe, who is in love with sweet Cindy Lou and about to marry her on a day pass when Carmen gets into a fight with another woman.

Joe's pass is cancelled in order for him to drive her to the next town to be handed over to the non-military police. Instead, Carmen charms him and escapes, and he is put in the stockade for not delivering her to the authorities.

While Carmen waits for Joe to be released from military prison, she hangs around Billy Pastor's jive cafe where she encounters boxer Husky Miller, who is instantly besotted with Carmen, calling her "heatwave".

Carmen is initially uninterested. But her friends Frankie and Mert know that their invitation from Husky's manager to see him fight in Chicago depends on Carmen's being there, too.

Joe, having been released from the stockade, turns up at the cafe the same evening. At first, his prospects seem to be looking up, as his connections have put Joe back on track for aviator school. Carmen lays down a guilt trip, however, protesting that a long-distance relationship, with Joe away at school, just isn't what she had in mind. He immediately gets into a fight with his sergeant, who is making a move on Carmen, as well as laying down some heavy shade on Joe. Starting the fight alone would have been enough to put Joe back in military prison for years, but the fight goes badly, and the sergeant ends up apparently dead. Carmen makes Joe hide the body, since desertion sounds better than a lengthy sentence.

The train ticket to Chicago originally given to Carmen offers them a way of avoiding the MPs. After a few days hiding out in a seedy hotel with no money and no future with Joe, Carmen pays a visit to her two friends, now covered in diamonds and furs, at Husky's training camp. She is only looking for a loan, but they try to draw her to give up Joe and "go with the money" by staying with Husky.

Later, at Husky's apartment, Frankie reads Carmen's "cards", and reveals the Nine of Spades - the card of Death. In the belief that her days are numbered, Carmen gives in to Husky's advances, abandoning Joe for the luxurious life Husky can offer her.

Cindy Lou comes to look for Joe, but he is still in love with Carmen and spurns Cindy Lou. The night of Husky's title fight, Joe turns up to try to convince Carmen to come back to him, but when she rejects him, he kills her, thus making the card's prophecy a reality.

Jo is a taxi driver in Chinatown, San Francisco who, with his nephew Steve, is seeking to purchase a cab license. Jo's friend Chan Hung was the go-between for the transaction but has disappeared, taking Jo's money. The two men search for Chan by speaking with various Chinatown locals, each of whom has a different impression of Chan's personality and motivations. The portrait that is created is incomplete and, at times, contradictory.

As the mystery behind Chan's disappearance deepens, Jo becomes paranoid that Chan may be involved in the death of a man killed during a "flag-waving incident" between opposing supporters of the People's Republic of China (mainland China) and the Republic of China (Taiwan). In the end, Chan remains missing but, through his daughter, returns Jo and Steve's money. Jo, holding a photo of Chan where his face is completely obscured, eventually accepts that Chan is an enigma, saying in a voiceover, "here's a picture of Chan Hung but I still can't see him."

Edith Hardy is a spoiled society woman who continues to buy expensive clothes even when her husband, Richard, tells her all his money is sunk into a stock speculation and he can't pay her bills until the stock goes up. She even delays paying her maid her wages, and the embarrassed Richard must do so. Edith is also the treasurer of the local Red Cross fund drive for Belgian refugees, which holds a gala dance at the home of Hishuru Tori, a rich Japanese ivory merchant (or, in the 1918 re-release, Haka Arakau, a rich Burmese ivory merchant). He is an elegant and dangerously sexy man, to whom Edith seems somewhat drawn; he shows her his roomful of treasures, and stamps one of them with a heated brand to show that it belongs to him.

A society friend of the Hardys tells Edith that Richard's speculation will not be profitable and he knows a better one; he then offers to double her money in one day if she gives it to him to invest in the suggested enterprise. Edith, wanting to live lavishly and unwilling to wait for Richard to realize his speculation, takes the $10,000 the Red Cross has raised from her bedroom safe and gives it to the society friend.

The next day, however, her horrified friend tells her his tip was worthless and her money is completely lost. The Red Cross ladies have scheduled the handover of the money to the refugee fund for the day after that. Edith goes to Tori/Arakau to beg for a loan of the money, and he agrees to write her a check in return for her sexual favours the next day. She reluctantly agrees to this, takes his check and is able to give the money to the Red Cross. Then Richard announces elatedly that his investments have paid off and they are very rich. Edith asks him for $10,000, saying it is for a bridge debt, and he writes her a check for the amount with no reproof.

She takes it to Tori/Arakau, but he says she cannot buy her way out of their bargain. When she struggles against his advances, he takes his heated brand used to mark his possessions and brands her with it on the shoulder. In their struggle after that, she finds a gun on the floor and shoots him. She runs away just as Richard, hearing the struggle, bursts into the house. He finds the check he wrote to his wife there. Tori/Arakau is only wounded in the shoulder, not killed; when his servants call the police, Richard declares that he shot him, and Tori/Arakau does not dispute this.

Edith pleads with Tori/Arakau not to press charges, but he refuses to spare Richard. She visits Richard in his jail cell and confesses everything, and he orders her not to tell anyone else and let him take the blame. At the crowded trial, both he and Tori/Arakau, his arm in a sling, testify that he was the shooter but will not say why. The jury finds Richard guilty.

This is too much for Edith, and she rushes to the witness stand and shouts that she shot Tori/Arakau "and this is my defense". She bares her shoulder and shows everyone in the courtroom the brand on her shoulder. The male spectators are infuriated and rush to the front, clearly intending to lynch Tori/Arakau. The judge protects him and manages to hold them off. He then sets aside the verdict, and the prosecutor withdraws the charges. Richard lovingly and protectively leads the chastened Edith from the courtroom.

Citizens and dignitaries are assembled for the unveiling of a new monument to "Peace and Prosperity". After droning speeches, the veil is lifted to reveal the Little Tramp asleep in the lap of one of the sculpted figures. After several minutes of slapstick, he manages to escape the assembly's wrath to perambulate the city. He rebukes two newsboys who taunt him for his shabbiness, and while coyly admiring a nude statue has a near-fatal encounter with a sidewalk elevator.

The Tramp encounters the beautiful flower girl on a street corner and in the course of buying a flower realizes she is blind; he is instantly smitten. The girl mistakes the Tramp for a wealthy man when the door of a chauffeured automobile slams shut as he departs.

That evening the Tramp saves a drunken millionaire from suicide. The millionaire takes the Tramp his new best friend back to his mansion for champagne, then (after another abortive suicide attempt) out for a night on the town. After helping the millionaire home the next morning, he sees the flower girl en route to her street-corner. He gets some money from the millionaire and catches up to the girl; he buys all her flowers and drives her home in the millionaire's car.

After the Tramp leaves, the flower girl tells her grandmother (Florence Lee) about her kind and wealthy friend. Meanwhile, the Tramp returns to the mansion, where the millionaire now sober does not remember him and throws him out. Later that day, the millionaire is once again intoxicated and, seeing the Tramp on the street, invites him home for a lavish party. But the next morning history repeats itself: the millionaire is again sober and the Tramp is again out on his ear.

Finding that the girl is not at her usual street-corner, the Tramp goes to her apartment, where he overhears a doctor tell the grandmother that the girl is very ill: "She has a fever and needs careful attention." Determined to help, the Tramp takes a job as a street sweeper.

On his lunch break, he brings the girl groceries while her grandmother is out selling flowers. To entertain her he reads a newspaper aloud; in it is a story about a Viennese doctor's blindness cure. "Wonderful, then I'll be able to see you", says the girl and the Tramp is struck by what may happen should she gain her sight and discover that he is not the wealthy man she imagines. He also finds an eviction notice the girl's grandmother has hidden. As he leaves, he promises the girl that he will pay the rent.

The Tramp returns to work to find himself fired he has been late once too often. A boxer convinces him to fight in a fake bout; they will "go easy" on each other and split the prize money. But the boxer flees on learning he is about to be arrested and is replaced by a no-nonsense fighter who knocks the Tramp out despite the Tramp's creative and nimble efforts to keep out of reach.

The Tramp encounters the drunken millionaire a third time and is again invited to the mansion. The Tramp relates the girl's plight and the millionaire gives him money for her operation. Burglars knock the millionaire out and take the rest of his money. The police find the Tramp with the money given to him by the millionaire, who because of the knock on the head does not remember giving it. The Tramp evades the police long enough to get the money to the girl, telling her he will be going away for a time; in due course he is apprehended and imprisoned.

Months later the Tramp is released. He goes to the girl's customary street corner but she is not there. We learn that the girl her sight restored now runs a busy flower shop with her grandmother. But she has not forgotten her mysterious benefactor, whom she imagines to be rich and handsome: when an elegant young man enters the shop she wonders for a moment whether "he" has returned.

The Tramp happens by the shop, where the girl is arranging flowers in the window. He stoops to retrieve a flower discarded in the gutter. After a brief skirmish with his old nemeses, the newsboys, he turns to the shop's window through which he suddenly sees the girl, who has been watching him without (of course) knowing who he is. At the sight of her he is frozen for a few seconds, then breaks into a broad smile. The girl is flattered and giggles to her employee, "I've made a conquest!" Via pantomime through the glass she offers him a fresh flower (to replace the crushed one he took from the gutter) and a coin.

Suddenly embarrassed, the Tramp begins to shuffle away, but the girl steps to the shop door and again offers the flower, which he shyly accepts. She takes his hand and presses the coin into it, then abruptly stops and her smile turns to a look of puzzlement as she recognizes the touch of his hand. She runs her fingers along his arm, his shoulder, his lapels, then gasps, "You?" The Tramp nods and asks, "You can see now?" The girl replies, "Yes, I can see now", and presses his hand to her heart with a tearful smile. Relieved and elated, the Tramp smiles back.

John L. Sullivan is a popular young Hollywood director of profitable but shallow comedies. Dissatisfied with making such films as ''Ants in Your Plants of 1939'', he tells his studio boss, Mr. LeBrand, that he wants his next project to be a serious exploration of the plight of the downtrodden, based on the novel ''O Brother, Where Art Thou?'' LeBrand wants him to direct another lucrative comedy instead, but Sullivan refuses. He wants to "know trouble" first hand, and plans to travel as a tramp so he can make a film that truly depicts the sorrows of humanity. His British butler and valet both openly question the wisdom of his plan.

Sullivan dresses as a hobo and takes to the road, followed by staff in a bus imposed on him for his own safety by the studio. Neither party is happy with the arrangement, and Sullivan, after trying to lose the bus in a fast-paced car chase, eventually persuades his guardians to leave him alone and arranges to rendezvous with them later in Las Vegas. However, he soon returns to Los Angeles. There, in a diner, Sullivan meets a struggling young actress who has failed to make it in Hollywood and is just about to give up and go home. She believes he is a penniless tramp and buys him breakfast.

In return for her kindness, Sullivan retrieves his car from his estate and gives her a ride. He neglects to tell his servants that he has returned, however, so they report the car stolen. Sullivan and the girl are briefly apprehended by police, but let free. He and the girl return to his palatial mansion. After seeing how wealthy he is, the girl shoves him into his swimming pool for deceiving her. However, when he insists on going out again, she goes with him, over his objections, disguised as a boy.

This time Sullivan succeeds. After riding in a cattle car, eating in soup kitchens and sleeping in homeless shelters with the girl (where someone steals his shoes), Sullivan finally decides he has had enough. His experiment is publicized by the studio as a huge success. The girl wants to stay with him, but Sullivan reveals to her that he is married, lovelessly, to someone else, having entered the union solely to reduce his income taxes. Worse, the plan backfired, with Sullivan's joint returns higher than when he was single and his wife's having an affair with his business manager.

Sullivan decides to thank the homeless for the insights he's gained by handing out five-dollar bills, but is knocked unconscious, has his money stolen, and is stuffed in a boxcar leaving the city by the assailant. The thief then gets run over by another train, sending $5 bills raining everywhere. When the mangled body is found a special ID card his valet had sewn into Sullivan's shoes is discovered in the sole of the pair the man has on, identifying him as Sullivan. Great woe in Hollywood follows.

Meanwhile, Sullivan wakes up in another city, with no memory of who he is or how he got there. A yard bull finds him and accosts him for illegally entering the rail yard. In his confused state, Sullivan hits the man with a rock, badly injuring him and earning a six year sentence of hard labor in a work camp. He gradually regains his memory. In the camp, he attends a showing of Walt Disney's 1934 ''Playful Pluto'' cartoon, a rare treat for the prisoners, and is surprised to find himself laughing along with them.

Unable to convince anybody either that he is Sullivan or communicate with the outside world, he comes up with a solution: after learning of his unsolved "killing" on the front page of an old newspaper, he confesses to being the murderer. When his picture makes the front page he is recognized by friends and released. His "widow" has already married his business manager, meaning she'll have to give him a divorce or be charged with bigamy. Sullivan's boss finally tells him he can make ''O Brother, Where Art Thou?''. Sullivan says that he has changed his mind: He wants to continue making comedies, having learned the value they contribute to society, especially to those who have too little else to bring them joy.

The film opens with the outbreak of a war in the previously peaceful kingdom of Wredpryd. Count Ferdinand is the inventor of a new submarine who is assigned to command the new ship in battle. The King of Wredpryd orders the Count to sink the "ProPatria" ("for my country"), a civilian ship that is believed to be carrying munitions as well as civilian passengers. In his mind's eye, the Count sees a vision of what would happen if he sent a torpedo crashing into the liner, and he recoils. He refuses to follow his orders, saying he is "obeying orders -- from a Higher Power." Realizing his crew will carry out the orders, the Count fights with the crew and blows up his submarine, sending it to the bottom of the sea.

The Count's soul descends into purgatory, where he encounters Jesus. Jesus announces that the Count can find redemption by returning to the living world as a voice for peace. Jesus tells the Count, "Peace to thee, child, for in thy love for humanity is thy redemption. In thy earthly body will I return, and with thy voice plead for peace. Much evil is being wrought in my name."

The Count returns to life and is stoned and reviled by his countrymen. He is put on trial by the king, a modern Pontius Pilate, and is sentenced to death. Five thousand women gather at the palace singing a song of peace and pleading with the king to end the war. The mothers' plea inspires the king to visit the cell of the condemned Count. The Count is found dead in his cell, and Jesus emerges from the Count's body and takes the king on a tour of the battlefields. Jesus asks, "See here thy handiwork? Under thy reign, thy domain hath become a raging hell!" In the film's most famous scene, Jesus walks through the battlefields amid the carnage of war.

The signing of a peace treaty follows, and the closing scenes depicts the happiness in store for the returning soldiers.

The story, told by the six-year-old Jean Louise Finch, takes place during three years (1933–35) of the Great Depression in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, the seat of Maycomb County. Nicknamed Scout, she lives with her older brother Jeremy, nicknamed Jem, and their widowed father Atticus, a middle-aged lawyer. They also have a black cook, Calpurnia, who had been with the family for many years and helped Atticus raise the two children.

Jem and Scout befriend a boy named Dill, who visits Maycomb to stay with his aunt each summer. The three children are terrified, yet fascinated by their neighbor, the reclusive Arthur "Boo" Radley. The adults of Maycomb are hesitant to talk about Boo, and few of them have seen him for many years. The children feed one another's imagination with rumors about his appearance and reasons for remaining hidden, and they fantasize about how to get him out of his house. After two summers of friendship with Dill, Scout and Jem find that someone is leaving them small gifts in a tree outside the Radley place. Several times the mysterious Boo makes gestures of affection to the children, but, to their disappointment, he never appears in person.

Judge Taylor appoints Atticus to defend Tom Robinson, a black man who has been accused of raping a young white woman, Mayella Ewell. Although many of Maycomb's citizens disapprove, Atticus agrees to defend Tom to the best of his ability. Other children taunt Jem and Scout for Atticus's actions, calling him a "nigger-lover". Scout is tempted to stand up for her father's honor by fighting, even though he has told her not to. One night, Atticus faces a group of men intent on lynching Tom. This crisis is averted in an unexpected manner: Scout, Jem, and Dill show up, and Scout inadvertently breaks the mob mentality by recognizing and talking to a classmate's father, and the would-be lynchers disperse.

Atticus does not want Jem and Scout to be present at Tom Robinson's trial. No seat is available on the main floor, but the Rev. Sykes, the pastor of Calpurnia's church, invites Jem, Scout, and Dill to watch from the colored balcony. Atticus establishes that Mayella and Bob Ewell are lying. It is revealed that Mayella made sexual advances toward Tom, subsequently resulting in her being beaten by her father. The townspeople refer to the Ewells as "white trash" who are not to be trusted, but the jury convicts Tom regardless. Jem's faith in justice is badly shaken. Atticus is hopeful that he can get the verdict overturned, but Tom is shot 17 times and killed while trying to escape from prison.

Despite Tom's conviction, Bob Ewell is humiliated by the events of the trial. Atticus explained that he destroyed Ewell's last shred of credibility. Ewell vows revenge, spitting in Atticus' face, trying to break into the judge's house and menacing Tom Robinson's widow. Finally, he attacks Jem and Scout while they are walking home on a dark night after the school Halloween pageant. Jem suffers a broken arm in the struggle, but amid the confusion, someone comes to the children's rescue. The mysterious man carries Jem home, where Scout realizes that he is Boo Radley.

Sheriff Tate arrives and discovers Ewell dead from a knife wound. Atticus believes that Jem was responsible, but Tate is certain it was Boo. The sheriff decides that, to protect Boo's privacy, he will report that Ewell simply fell on his own knife during the attack. Boo asks Scout to walk him home. After she says goodbye to him at his front door, he disappears, never to be seen again by Scout. While standing on the Radley porch, Scout imagines life from Boo's perspective.

In 1958, in a New York City hotel bar, a waiter pages "George Kaplan," after a pair of thugs presumably request him to do so. As advertising executive Roger Thornhill summons the same waiter, he is mistaken for Kaplan, kidnapped by the thugs, and brought to the estate of Lester Townsend. He is interrogated by spy Phillip Vandamm, a Cold War enemy of the United States, who identifies himself as Townsend to Thornhill. Vandamm arranges Thornhill's death in a staged drunken driving accident. Thornhill survives, but fails to convince his mother and the police of what happened, even after re-visiting Townsend's estate. During the visit, Thornhill learns Townsend is a United Nations diplomat.

Thornhill and his mother go to Kaplan's empty hotel room. After Thornhill answers Kaplan's phone, the thugs (who had called the number from the lobby) begin their pursuit. Thornhill heads to the U.N. General Assembly Building to meet Townsend, who is a different man from Vandamm. One of the pursuing thugs throws a knife, killing Townsend, who collapses in Thornhill's arms. Thornhill is photographed as he grabs the knife, giving the appearance that he is the murderer; Thornhill flees, attempting to find the real Kaplan. An unnamed government intelligence agency realizes that Thornhill has been mistaken for Kaplan, but decides against rescuing him for fear of compromising their operation: Kaplan is a non-existent agent they created to confuse and distract Vandamm.

Thornhill boards the ''20th Century Limited'' train to Chicago. He meets Eve Kendall, who hides him from the police; the two establish a relationship, on Kendall's part because she is secretly working with Vandamm. She tells Thornhill she has arranged a meeting with Kaplan at an isolated rural bus stop. Thornhill waits there, but is attacked by a crop duster plane. After trying to hide in a cornfield, he steps in front of a speeding tank truck; it brakes, and the airplane crashes into it, allowing him to escape.

Thornhill reaches Kaplan's hotel in Chicago and learns Kaplan checked out before the time when Kendall claimed she talked to him. Thornhill goes to her room and confronts her, but she leaves. He tracks her to an art auction, where he finds Vandamm purchasing a Mexican Purépecha statue. Vandamm leaves his thugs to deal with Thornhill; in order to escape, Thornhill disrupts the auction until police are called to remove him. He says he is the fugitive murderer, but they release him to the government agency's chief, "The Professor", who reveals that Kaplan was invented to distract Vandamm from the real government agent: Eve Kendall. Thornhill agrees to help maintain her cover.

At the Mount Rushmore visitor center, Thornhill—now willingly playing the role of Kaplan—negotiates Vandamm's turnover of Kendall to be arrested. Kendall then shoots Thornhill, seemingly fatally, and flees. In fact, her gun was loaded with blanks. Afterwards, the Professor arranges for Thornhill and Kendall to meet. Thornhill learns Kendall must depart on a plane with Vandamm and Leonard. He tries to dissuade her from going, but is knocked unconscious and locked in a hospital room. Thornhill escapes the Professor's custody and goes to Vandamm's house to rescue Kendall.

At the house, Thornhill overhears that the sculpture holds microfilm and that Leonard has discovered the blanks remaining in Kendall's gun. Vandamm indicates that he will kill Kendall by throwing her from the plane. Thornhill manages to warn her with a surreptitious note. Vandamm, Leonard, and Kendall head for the plane. As Vandamm boards, Kendall takes the sculpture and runs to the pursuing Thornhill. They flee to the top of Mount Rushmore. As they climb down the mountain they are pursued by Vandamm's thugs, including Leonard, who is fatally shot by a park ranger. Vandamm is taken into custody by the Professor.

Meanwhile, Kendall is hanging on to the mountain by her fingertips. Thornhill reaches down to pull her up, at which point the scene cuts to him pulling her—now the new Mrs. Thornhill—into an upper berth on a train, which enters a tunnel.

The plot concerns the obsession of Duke (Hampton Clanton), a 15-year-old member of the gang Royal Pythons, to get a gun from a racketeer named Priest (Carl Lee), in order to become the president of the Pythons and a big shot in Harlem. After their friend Littleman's father was forced out of his apartment, the Pythons take over the place and install Luanne, Python president Blood's girlfriend, as resident prostitute. Discovering that Blood is a heroin addict, Duke assumes leadership of the gang and Luanne becomes his girl. During an outing at Coney Island, however, Luanne vanishes, and Duke returns to Harlem alone.

Priest, who is pursued by his enemies, seeks refugee in the Python headquarter and is allowed to stay. In an ensuing battle with the Wolves, a rival gang, Duke stabs an antagonist. Seeking refuge, he returns to Python headquarter and discovers Priest's corpse. Duke then rushes back home and is apprehended by the police.

Utilizing first-time actors and true-life ghettos for scenery, Shirley Clarke's film dramatizes the life of young gang bangers in 1960s Harlem and transcends its narrative to deliver a vivid picture of inner city life.

When a flying saucer lands in Washington, D.C., the United States Army quickly surrounds it. A humanoid emerges and announces that he comes "in peace and with good will." When he unexpectedly opens a small device, he is shot and wounded by a nervous soldier. A tall robot emerges from the saucer and quickly disintegrates the Army's weapons. The alien orders the robot, Gort, to desist. He explains that the now-broken device was a gift for the President of the United States that would have enabled him "to study life on the other planets."

The alien, Klaatu, is taken to Walter Reed Army Hospital. After surgery, he uses a salve to quickly heal his wound. Meanwhile, the Army tries but is unable to enter the saucer; Gort stands outside, silent and unmoving.

Klaatu tells the President's secretary, Mr. Harley, that he has a message that must be delivered to all the world's leaders simultaneously. Harley tells him that in the current world situation this is impossible. Klaatu proposes to spend time among ordinary humans to better understand their "unreasoning suspicions and attitudes." Harley rejects the proposal and Klaatu is kept under guard.

Klaatu is able to escape and moves into a boarding house as "Mr. Carpenter", using the name ("Maj. John Carpenter") on the dry cleaner's tag on a suit he acquired. Among the residents are young widow Helen Benson and her son Bobby. Klaatu becomes a mentor to Bobby. Helen's suitor, Tom Stevens, becomes jealous of this "Mr. Carpenter."

The boy takes Klaatu on a tour of the city, including a visit to his father's grave in Arlington National Cemetery; Klaatu learns that most of the deceased are soldiers killed in wars. They also visit the Lincoln Memorial. Klaatu asks Bobby, "Who is the greatest living person?" Bobby suggests Professor Barnhardt. They visit his home, but he is out. Klaatu enters the house. Barnhardt's blackboard is covered with equations. Klaatu adds to them and, after being discovered by the housekeeper, leaves his contact information.

That evening, a government agent escorts Klaatu to Barnhardt. Klaatu tells Barnhardt that the people of other planets are concerned about Earth's possible aggression, now that humanity has developed rockets and rudimentary atomic power. He states that if his message is ignored, Earth could be "eliminated." Barnhardt agrees to gather scientists from around the world at the saucer; he also suggests that Klaatu demonstrate his power.

Klaatu returns to his spaceship, unaware that Bobby is following him. Bobby watches as Gort knocks out two guards to help Klaatu reenter the saucer. Bobby runs home and tells Helen. She does not believe him, but Tom is suspicious.

The next day, for half an hour, starting at 12-noon (Washington time), all electrical equipment on Earth ceases to operate, except for essential services, such as hospitals and airplanes in flight.

Klaatu learns that Bobby watched him the previous night. He visits Helen at work, reveals his purpose on Earth, and asks that she not betray him. Helen asks Tom to keep Klaatu's identity secret, but, already in the process of alerting the military, he refuses to listen.

Helen and Klaatu rush to Barnhardt's home. They hope that Barnhardt can hide Klaatu until the meeting later that evening. Klaatu tells Helen that if anything should happen to him, she must go to Gort and say, "''Klaatu barada nikto''."

The Army tracks them down in their taxi. Klaatu is shot dead, and his body is taken to a nearby police station cell. Helen rushes to the saucer and speaks the phrase. Hearing Klaatu's words, Gort retrieves Klaatu's body, and revives him, though Klaatu tells Helen that his revival is only temporary.

Klaatu tells Barnhardt's assembled scientists that an interplanetary organization has created a police force of invincible robots like Gort. "In matters of aggression, we have given them absolute power over us." Klaatu concludes, "Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer." Klaatu and Gort depart in the saucer.

In late 1968, three friends in Western Pennsylvania Mike Vronsky (De Niro), Steven Pushkov (Savage) and Nick Chevotarevich (Walken) work in a steel mill and hunt for deer with their co-workers Axel and Stan, and bartender friend John. They all belong to a tight-knit Slavic AmericanGeorge Morris, "Ready, Aim... Click", ''Texas Monthly'', Vol. 7, No. 3 (March 1979), [https://books.google.com/books?id=Gy4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA142 page 142]: "The film attempts to portray the effect of Viet Nam on three Slavic American steelworkers from a small town in Pennsylvania who volunteer for the war." community, although their precise ethnic affiliation (i.e. whether they are Russian Americans,Sylvia Shin Huey Chong, [https://www.academia.edu/download/35326910/44.2chong.pdf "Restaging the War: 'The Deer Hunter' and the Primal Scene of Violence"] (PDF at Academia.edu), ''Cinema Journal'', Vol. 44, No. 2 (Winter, 2005), p. 103: "It is interesting to contrast Nguyen's narrative of failed assimilation with ''The Deer Hunter'''s consolidation of white ethnics (Russian or Ukrainian Americans) into the American body politic through their participation in the Vietnam War."Steven Biel, [https://brightlightsfilm.com/deer-hunter-debate-michael-cimino-1978-artistic-license-and-vietnam-war-remembrance/ "The Deer Hunter Debate"], ''Bright Lights Film Journal'' (ISSN 0147-4049), July 7, 2016: "The first sixty-eight minutes of the three-hour film establish their friendships within Clairton's traditional, patriotic Russian Orthodox community. (The characters' ethnicity isn't actually specified in the screenplay. Viewers have variously identified them as Russian, Slovak, Carpatho-Russian, Ukrainian, Rusyn, Polish, and Belarusian. Pittsburgh native Andy Warhol, who saw a preview of the film in New York in late November 1978, wrote in his diary that the movie's setting was "where all my cousins are from" and "was really Czechoslovakian.")" Ukrainian Americans, Rusyn Americans, etc. or any combination thereof) is left open to interpretation. Mike, Steven and Nick are preparing to leave for military service in Vietnam. Steven is engaged to Angela, who is secretly impregnated by another man. Mike and Nick are close friends who live together and both love Linda, who will be moving into their home to escape from her abusive and alcoholic father. During Steven and Angela's wedding, Nick asks for Linda's hand in marriage, and she accepts. As the newlyweds drive away, Nick asks Mike not to abandon him in Vietnam. Mike, Nick and their friends make a final deer hunt. As is his custom, Mike fires a single shot, which successfully takes a deer.

In Vietnam in early 1969, Mike is suddenly reunited with Nick and Steven, but the trio, along with other soldiers, are captured by the Viet Cong. They are imprisoned in a cage along a river and forced to rotate participating in a torturous game of Russian roulette against other prisoners while the jailers place bets. Steven yields to fear and exhaustion and fires his round at the ceiling. As punishment for breaking the rules, Steven is thrown into a separate cage (a "water dungeon") that is immersed in a river filled with rats and dead bodies. Mike convinces Nick to attempt an escape by inserting three rounds into the revolver's cylinder; after convincing their tormentors with the increased risk, they kill the captors and free Steven from the cage.

Making their escape, the three float along the river's current on a large tree trunk. When they reach a suspension bridge, they are rescued by an American helicopter, but Steven is extremely weak and falls into the water. Mike immediately jumps in to save Steven, while Nick is held back by the helicopter crew. Steven's legs are broken in the fall, and Mike carries him until they meet a caravan of South Vietnamese soldiers and refugees fleeing to Saigon. Nick is admitted to a U.S. military hospital for physical and psychological trauma. Once released, Nick ventures into Saigon. In his wandering, he hears gunshots emanating from a gambling den and attempts to leave, reminded of his previous torture experience. However, French businessman Julien Grinda persuades him to come inside and play for him. Nick rebuffs Julien and insults the participants by interrupting a game of roulette by pulling the trigger on the gun and grabbing a stack of cash. Mike happens to be present in the den as a spectator and recognizes Nick, but is unsuccessful in getting his attention as Nick and Julien hurriedly leave, with Nick throwing the cash into the streets.

In 1970, Mike returns home, but immediately has difficulty reintegrating into civilian life. He fails to appear at a welcome-home party organized by Linda and his friends, opting instead to stay alone overnight in a hotel up the highway. He visits Linda the next morning and learns that Nick has deserted. Mike then visits Angela, who is now the mother of a child, but has slipped into catatonia following the return of Steven, who has been rendered an invalid. Stan, Axel and John remained stateside and their distance with Mike is evident, as they seem to understand nothing of war or what Mike has gone through. Linda and Mike find comfort in each other's company, but only because of the friend they both think they have lost. The following days further prove Mike's disorientation; he is unable to shoot a deer during a hunting trip and is later outraged to see Stan jokingly threatening Axel with a handgun. To make Stan understand the gravity of his gesture, Mike violently grabs the gun out of Stan's hand. Leaving one round in the cylinder, Mike points the gun at Stan's forehead and pulls the trigger on an empty chamber.

Mike visits Steven at a veterans' hospital; both of Steven's legs have been amputated, and he has lost the use of an arm. Steven refuses to come home, saying he no longer fits in. He tells Mike that he has been regularly receiving large sums of money from Vietnam. Mike suspects that Nick is the source of these payments, and forces Steven to return home to Angela. Mike returns to Vietnam in search of Nick. Wandering around Saigon, which is now in a state of chaos shortly before its fall, Mike finds Julien and persuades him to take him to the gambling den. Mike finds himself facing Nick, who has become a professional in the macabre game and fails to recognize Mike. Mike attempts to bring Nick back to reason, but Nick, who is now a heroin addict, is indifferent. During a game of Russian roulette, Mike invokes memories of their hunting trips. Nick recalls Mike's "one shot" method and smiles before pulling the trigger and killing himself as Mike tearfully looks on.

Mike and his friends attend Nick's funeral, and the atmosphere at their local bar is dim and silent. Moved by emotion, John begins to sing "God Bless America" in honor of Nick, as everyone joins in.

The film opens ''in medias res'' with Al Roberts, an unemployed piano player, hitchhiking. After getting a ride, he arrives at a roadside diner in Reno, Nevada, where he sits at the counter and slowly drinks a cup of coffee. Another customer in the diner plays a song on the jukebox, one that disturbs Al, for it reminds him of his former life in New York City. He remembers a time there when he was bitter about squandering his musical talent working in a cheap nightclub. After his girlfriend Sue Harvey, the nightclub's lead singer, quits her job and leaves to seek fame in Hollywood, he becomes depressed. After some anguish, Al decides to travel to California to see Sue and marry her. With little money, though, he is forced to hitchhike his way across the country.

In Arizona, bookie Charles Haskell Jr. gives the tired and disheveled Al a ride in his convertible and tells him that he is in luck; he is driving to Los Angeles to place a bet on a horse. During the drive, he has Al pass him pills on several occasions, which he swallows as he drives. That night, Al drives while Haskell sleeps. When a rainstorm forces Al to pull over to put up the convertible's top, he is unable to rouse Haskell. Al opens the passenger-side door and Haskell tumbles out, falling to the ground and striking his head on a rock. Al then realizes the bookie is dead. It is likely that Haskell died earlier from a heart attack, but Al is certain that if he calls the police, they will arrest him for killing Haskell. Al then drags the body off the road and hides it in the brush. After considering his options, and with fear of arrest his greatest concern, he takes the dead man's money, clothes, and identification, and drives away, intent on abandoning the car near Los Angeles.

Al crosses into California after answering questions posed by the police and spends a night in a motel. The next day, as he leaves a gas station near Desert Center Airport, he picks up a hitchhiker, Vera. At first, she travels silently with Al, who has identified himself as Haskell, then suddenly challenges his identity and ownership of the car. She reveals she had been picked up by Haskell earlier in Louisiana; she got out in Arizona after he tried to force himself on her. Al tells her how Haskell died, but she blackmails him by threatening to turn him over to the police. She takes the money that Al retrieved from Haskell's wallet and wants whatever money they can get by selling the car.

In Hollywood, they rent an apartment, posing as Mr. and Mrs. Haskell, to provide an address when they sell the car. They spend a fractious time together in the apartment, Al resentful of the situation, but Vera reveling in having the upper hand. When they are about to sell the car, Vera learns from a newspaper that Haskell's wealthy father is near death and a search is under way for his long-estranged son. Vera demands that Al impersonate Haskell once the father dies, and position himself to inherit the estate. Al refuses, arguing that impersonation requires detailed knowledge he lacks.

Back at the apartment, Vera gets drunk and they begin arguing again. In a drunken rage, she threatens to call the police, running into the bedroom with the telephone and locking the door, falling on the bed with the telephone cord tangled around her neck. From the other side of door, Al pulls on the cord in an effort to break it from the phone. As Vera fails to respond as he yells her name, he breaks down the door and discovers Vera strangled by the telephone cord. Al gives up the idea of contacting Sue again and returns to hitchhiking instead. He later finds out that Haskell is wanted in connection to the murder of his wife, Vera. Back in the framing narrative in the diner in Reno where the film opened, he imagines his inevitable arrest by the police.

Twenty-five-year-old Mookie lives in Bedford–Stuyvesant with his sister Jade, has a toddler son named Hector with his girlfriend Tina, and works as a delivery man at a local pizzeria that has been owned and operated for 25 years by Sal, an Italian-American who lives in Bensonhurst. Sal's racist eldest son Pino is antagonistic towards Mookie, clashing with both his father, who refuses to move his business out of the majority African-American neighborhood, and his younger brother Vito, who is friendly with Mookie.

Many distinctive residents are introduced, including friendly drunk Da Mayor; Mother Sister, who watches the neighborhood from her brownstone; Radio Raheem, who blasts Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" on his boombox wherever he goes; and Smiley, a mentally disabled man who meanders around the neighborhood trying to sell hand-colored pictures of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

At Sal's, Mookie's friend Buggin' Out questions Sal about his "Wall of Fame", decorated with photos of famous Italian-Americans, and demands that Sal put up pictures of Black celebrities since the pizzeria is in a Black neighborhood. Sal replies that it is his business, and that he can have whoever he wants on the wall. Buggin' Out attempts to start boycotting the pizzeria.

During the day, local teenagers open a fire hydrant and douse the other neighbors to beat the heat wave before officers Mark Ponte and Gary Long intervene. After a phone call, Mookie and Pino debate race. Mookie confronts Pino about his contempt towards African-Americans, although Pino's favorite celebrities are Black. Various characters express racial insults: Mookie against Italians, Pino against African-Americans, Latino Stevie against Koreans, white officer Gary Long against Puerto Ricans, and Korean store owner Sonny against Jews. Pino expresses his hatred for African-Americans to Sal, who insists on staying in the neighborhood.

That night, Buggin' Out, Radio Raheem, and Smiley march into Sal's and demand that Sal change the Wall of Fame. Sal demands that Radio Raheem turn his boombox off, but he refuses. Buggin' Out calls Sal and sons "Guinea bastards" and threatens to shutter the pizzeria until they change the Wall of Fame. An angered Sal calls Buggin' Out a "nigger" and destroys Raheem's boombox with a bat. Raheem attacks Sal, igniting a fight that spills out into the street and attracts a crowd. While Raheem is strangling Sal, the police arrive, including Officer Long and Ponte from earlier in the movie, who break up the fight, and apprehend Raheem and Buggin' Out. As the officers attempt to restrain an enraged Raheem, suddenly Long throws Raheem in a chokehold with his nightstick. Despite the pleas of his partner Ponte and onlookers to stop, Long instead tightens his chokehold on Raheem, killing him. Realizing their error, the officers place his body in the back of a police car and drive off.

The onlookers, devastated and enraged about Radio Raheem's death, blame Sal and his sons. Da Mayor tries to convince the crowd that Sal did not cause his death but the crowd remains stationary. In a brief fit of anger and grief, Mookie grabs a trash can and throws it through the window of Sal's pizzeria, sparking the crowd to rush into and destroy the pizzeria. Smiley sets the building on fire, and Da Mayor pulls Sal and sons away from the mob, which then turns towards Sonny's store, preparing to destroy it too. However, a panicked Sonny eventually dissuades the group. The police return to the site, along with firemen and riot patrols to extinguish the fire and disperse the crowd. After they issue a warning, the firefighters turn their hoses on the rioters, leading to more fighting and arrests, while Mookie and Jade watch in shock from the curb. Smiley wanders back into the smoldering building and hangs one of his pictures on the remnants of Sal's Wall of Fame.

The next day, after arguing with Tina, Mookie returns to Sal. He feels that Mookie had betrayed him, but Mookie demands his weekly pay. The two men argue and cautiously reconcile, and Sal finally pays Mookie. Local DJ Mister Señor Love Daddy dedicates a song to Radio Raheem.

Before the credits, two quotations expressing different views about violence, one by Martin Luther King and one by Malcolm X, appear, followed by a photograph of both leaders shaking hands. Lee then dedicates the film to the families of six victims of brutality or racial violence: Eleanor Bumpurs, Michael Griffith, Arthur Miller Jr., Edmund Perry, Yvonne Smallwood, and Michael Stewart.

An American tramp steamer docks in New York harbor sometime in the early years of the 20th century before prohibition. In the bowels of the ship, coal stokers are shutting down the furnaces and anticipating a night of shore leave. The bullying third engineer, Andy (Mitchell Lewis) warns the exhausted crew that they will be punished if they return drunk when the vessel sails the following morning. The stokers gather to leer at crude pornographic graffiti scrawled on the engine room wall before debarking to carouse at the local gin-mills.

On shore, Andy enters The Sandbar, dance-hall saloon, craving a beer and female companionship. He has unexpected encounter with his estranged wife, Lou (Olga Bachonova). During his absence of three years, she has become a ''habitué'' of the saloon, where she freely enjoys male companionship. The “couple” joins one another for a drink; no love is lost between them.

The stoker Bill Roberts (George Bancroft) – a swaggering brawler when on leave – rescues a drowning prostitute named Mae (Betty Compson) who has leapt off the dock to end her sordid life. Bill, ignoring the admonishment of his sidekick “Sugar” Steve (Clyde Cook), impassively carries the semi-conscious woman to a room above The Sandbar, indifferent to the protests from the proprietor's wife, Mrs. Crimp (May Foster). Lou intercedes to provide first-aid and revives Mae, a fallen angel like herself. Bill's growing awareness of Mae's physical beauty assumes a proprietary quality. He fetches her a beverage from the bar and presents her with a pretty dress he steals from a pawn shop next door. Bill exhorts her to join him for the evening, and Mae, distraught and vulnerable, accepts his invitation. They meet downstairs in the raucous tavern.

Andy attempts to pull rank and cut in on the couple, but the powerful stoker drives him off with blows. Lou, observing her husband's boorishness, looks on with contempt. Mae and Bill mutually confess their sexual histories to one another, she with regret, he with masculine pride. So as to win Mae's favors for the night, Bill consents to marry her on the spot, and Mae wistfully obliges.

The local missionary “Hymn Book” Harry (Gustav von Seyffertitz) is summoned and sternly delivers the sacrament. Lou provides Mae with a ring: her own, now superfluous wedding ring. The couple takes their vows, each shamefacedly, and the formerly boisterous patrons observe with mock solemnity, then erupt in cheers when the newlyweds kiss.

The following morning, Bill slips quietly from the flophouse honeymoon suite, without a word to Mae. Andy, observing that the stoker is abandoning his “wife”, goes to Mae's room, where she has just discovered Bill's desertion. Andy attempts to force himself on her, but Lou arrives and guns him down. The police suspect Mae of the murder, but Lou confesses and is arrested.

Under the blandishments of “Sugar” Steve, Bill takes leave of Mae. Driven to distraction by his perfidy, she angrily drives him from her room.

Aboard the steamer, Bill has an epiphany. He bolts from the subterranean furnaces to the sunny deck, leaps overboard and swims to shore. There he inquires as to Mae's whereabouts and discovers that she is in custody at Night Court, charged with stealing the clothing he had bestowed on her. Moments after the judge sentences her to jail, Bill presents himself and confesses to the crime, exonerating Mae. He pledges to reunite with Mae after he serves his 60-day sentence, and she agrees to wait for him.

In 1938, insurance salesman Walter Neff returns to his office in downtown Los Angeles with a gunshot wound on his shoulder. He records a confession on a dictaphone for his friend and colleague, claims adjuster Barton Keyes. A flashback ensues.

Walter meets the alluring Phyllis Dietrichson during a house call to remind her husband to renew his automobile insurance policy. They flirt, until Phyllis asks about buying an accident insurance policy for her husband - without his knowledge. Walter deduces Phyllis is contemplating murder and wanting no part of it, he picks up his hat and quickly leaves. Later, Phyllis shows up at Walter's apartment and uses the excuse of the latter forgetting his hat to seduce him to murder her husband. The plan is to trick Dietrichson into signing what he thinks is a renewal. The policy has a double indemnity clause that pays double for an accidental death due to rare circumstances.

Later, Phyllis drives her husband to the train station to attend his college reunion. Walter hides in the back seat, kills him and boards the train posing as Mr. Dietrichson. After the train gets underway, Walter goes to the outdoor platform at the back, ostensibly to smoke. He jumps off at a prearranged spot to meet Phyllis and drag Dietrichson's body onto the tracks.

Norton, the company's president, believes the death was suicide, but Keyes dismisses this theory. Soon, however, he begins to have doubts about the claim's legitimacy. Keyes tells Walter his theory while Phyllis hides behind the door: that she had an accomplice murder Dietrichson for the insurance money. However, he has no proof.

The victim's daughter, Lola, tells Walter she is convinced that her stepmother Phyllis is behind her father's death. Lola's mother also died under suspicious circumstances, and Phyllis was her nurse. Realizing Phyllis has killed before, Walter begins seeing Lola to keep her from going to the police with her suspicions, and later through guilt and to protect her from her stepmother. Walter fears Phyllis will murder Lola over her suspicions and because Dietrichson had changed his will in Lola's favor, leaving Phyllis nothing.

Keyes finds a witness who says the man on the train was younger than the dead man. Walter warns Phyllis that pursuing the insurance claim in court risks exposing the murder. He tries to convince her to lie low and let him try to convince Norton to pay out the claim.

Lola tells Walter she has discovered that her boyfriend, the hotheaded Nino Zachette, has been seeing Phyllis behind her back. Walter confronts Phyllis and tells her that he knows about her and Zachette. He guesses she is planning for Zachette to kill Lola and him, but tells her that he intends to kill her and frame Zachette. Phyllis shoots Walter in the shoulder, but finds herself unable to finish him off, realizing that she cares for someone else for the first time in her life. Walter does not believe Phyllis and kills her. He waits for Zachette and advises him not to enter the house. He convinces him to call Lola.

Walter drives to the office and turns on the dictaphone, returning to the start of the film. Keyes arrives unnoticed and hears the truth. Walter tells him he is fleeing to Mexico, but collapses. Keyes lights a cigarette for Walter, while waiting for the police and an ambulance.

The cartoon's title sequence and opening scene suggest Daffy Duck is to star as a musketeer, and he appears, boldly engaging in an action scene with a fencing foil. As he thrusts the foil and advances, the background abruptly disappears, leaving a plain white screen. Confused by this, Daffy turns to the animator and asks them to complete the scenery. However, the animator fills in a new background that has nothing to do with the previous scene. Daffy returns and starts to repeat his opening scene, but quickly notices the different background and leaves, returning in a different costume and altering his performance to match the new scene. The animator substitutes several different unrelated backgrounds, each time prompting Daffy to change costumes until the background finally disappears completely again.

While Daffy tries to reason with the animator, he becomes completely erased and, upon asking where he is, he gets redrawn as a cowboy with a guitar. Daffy tries to play it, but there is only silence. Using a sign, he requests sound and is granted various non-guitar sound effects. Daffy also finds himself generating random sound effects when he tries to speak, and finally regains his voice when he becomes enraged and shouts angrily at the animator.

Regaining his composure, Daffy demands some new scenery and is given an amateurish line-art cityscape background in pencil. Daffy unpleasantly asks for color, prompting the animator to slap various colors and patterns all over him, for which he harshly scolds the animator. All but Daffy's face is erased and, upon asking where the rest of him has gone, he is redrawn as a bizarre mismatched creature. As Daffy walks off, he becomes aware of not feeling quite like himself; the animator creates a mirror and, upon seeing his hideous self, Daffy shrieks in alarm before scolding the animator again. Everything is erased and Daffy is redrawn this time in a sailor suit. Daffy seems to be pleased with this and begins to sing "The Song of the Marines" as the animator draws an ocean scene with an island in the background, but draws nothing under Daffy, resulting in him falling into the ocean and surfacing on the island. When he requests a close-up, the screen contracts around him, at which he says that is not a close-up and screams for a proper close-up; the camera zooms up uncomfortably close to his angry bloodshot eyes. He walks away muttering a sarcastic thanks to the animator.

As Daffy tries once again to negotiate with the animator to have an understanding, a black curtain falls on him. After failing to keep the curtain up with a stick, Daffy goes ballistic and rips it apart. Now at the end of his rope, Daffy demands for the cartoon to resume, only to become even more frustrated when the animator attempts to end it. Daffy suggests that he and the animator go their separate ways and, hoping, against hope, that nothing further will happen, begins a dance routine which is quickly interrupted when the film runs out of alignment, resulting in two Daffys on the screen. They argue with each other and almost start a fight, but one Daffy is quickly erased just before the other attempts to get physical.

Daffy is then drawn into an airplane, which he excitedly flies around in until a mountain is drawn in his path. The plane crashes off-screen, leaving Daffy with nothing but the plane's steering wheel and windshield. He jumps out of the plane's remains and floats downward with his parachute, which is replaced with an anvil. Crashing to the ground, a disoriented Daffy hammers the anvil while dizzily reciting "The Village Blacksmith". The animator changes the anvil into an artillery shell, which explodes after a few more hammer strikes. Daffy finally snaps and angrily demands to know who the animator is, only to have the animator draw a door and closes it on Daffy. The camera pulls back and the animator is revealed to be Bugs Bunny at a drawing table, who turns around and says to the audience: "Ain't I a stinker?"

The wealthy Mrs. Teasdale insists that Rufus T. Firefly be appointed leader of the small, financially struggling nation of Freedonia before she will continue to provide much-needed financial aid. Meanwhile, the neighboring country of Sylvania is scheming to annex Freedonia. Sylvanian ambassador Trentino tries to foment a revolution and court Mrs. Teasdale as he tries to dig up dirt on Firefly by sending in spies Chicolini and Pinky.

After failing to collect any useful information against Firefly, Chicolini and Pinky are able to infiltrate the government when Chicolini is appointed Secretary of War after Firefly notices him selling peanuts outside his window. A short time later, Firefly's secretary, Bob Roland, tells Firefly he suspects Trentino's motives and he advises him to get rid of the thin-skinned Trentino by insulting him. Firefly agrees to the plan, but after a series of personal insults exchanged between Firefly and Trentino, the plan backfires when Firefly slaps Trentino instead of being slapped by him. As a result, the two countries come to the brink of war. Adding to the international friction is the fact that Firefly is also wooing Mrs. Teasdale, and, like Trentino, hoping to get his hands on her late husband's wealth.

Trentino learns from sexy spy Vera Marcal that Freedonia's plans of war are in Mrs. Teasdale's safe and he tells her to assist Chicolini and Pinky in stealing them. Chicolini is eventually caught by Firefly and put on trial, during which war is officially declared, and everyone is overcome by war frenzy, breaking into song and dance. Chicolini and Pinky join Firefly and Bob Roland in anarchic battle, resulting in general mayhem.

After a fierce battle, the end of the film finds Trentino caught in a makeshift pillory, with the Brothers pelting him with fruit. Trentino surrenders, but Firefly tells him to wait until they run out of fruit. Mrs. Teasdale begins singing the Freedonia national anthem in her operatic voice and the Brothers begin hurling fruit at ''her'' instead.

Alien botanists secretly visit Earth at night to gather specimens in a California forest. One of them separates from the group, fascinated by the distant city lights, but U.S. government vehicles arrive and chase the startled creature. The other aliens depart, abandoning him on Earth. In a nearby neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley, ten-year-old Elliott Taylor's suspicions are roused when he pitches a baseball into a tool shed, and the ball is thrown back. Later that night, Elliott returns with a flashlight, discovering the creature among the cornstalks. He shrieks and flees the scene.

Despite his family's disbelief, Elliott leaves a trail of candy to lure the alien into his house. Before bed, he realizes the alien is imitating his movements. The next morning, Elliott feigns sickness to stay home from school and play with him. He can "feel" the alien's thoughts and emotions, shown when the alien accidentally opens an umbrella, startling him and simultaneously Elliott several rooms away.

Later that day, Elliott introduces his older brother Michael and seven-year-old sister Gertie to the alien, deciding to keep him hidden from their mother, Mary. When the children ask the alien about his origins, he shows them by levitating several balls, representing his planetary system and demonstrates his powers by reviving dead chrysanthemums. He demonstrates his healing power, through his glowing fingertip, on a minor cut on Elliott's finger.

At school the next day, Elliott begins to experience a much stronger empathic connection with the alien, including exhibiting signs of intoxication (because the alien is at Elliott's home, drinking beer and watching television) and freeing the frogs in his biology class. As the alien watches John Wayne kiss Maureen O'Hara in ''The Quiet Man'' on television, Elliott kisses a girl he likes similarly and is sent to the principal's office.

The alien dubs himself "E.T.", reading a comic strip where Buck Rogers, stranded, calls for help by building a makeshift communication device, and is inspired to try it himself. E.T. gets Elliott's help to build a device to "phone home" by using a Speak & Spell. Michael notices that E.T.'s health is declining and that Elliott is referring to himself as "we". Throughout this, the boys are unaware that E.T. is being tracked by government agents and all three of them are being spied on.

On Halloween night, Michael and Elliott dress E.T. as a ghost to sneak him out. Elliott and E.T. head through the forest, where they successfully call home. The next day, Elliott wakes up in the field, finding E.T. gone. Elliott returns home to his worried family. Michael discovers E.T. dying next to a culvert and takes him home to an also-dying Elliott. Mary becomes horrified upon discovering her son's illness and the dying alien, just as a group of government agents dressed in biohazard suits led by "Keys" invades the house.

Scientists set up a lab at the house, asking Michael, Mary and Gertie what they know about E.T. While the scientists are treating Elliott and E.T., the mental connection between Elliott and E.T. disappears. E.T. appears to die while Elliott recovers. Elliott is carried away, screaming that the doctors are killing E.T. as they try to revive him. When the doctors pronounce E.T. dead, Michael discovers that the chrysanthemums that E.T. previously revived are dying again. As Elliott recovers, the scientists first return him to his family, but then Keys leaves him alone with E.T. Elliott says a tearful goodbye, telling E.T. that he loves him before closing the case. E.T.'s heartlight begins to glow, and Elliott notices that the chrysanthemum is once again coming back to life and opens the case. E.T. reanimates and tells Elliott that his people are returning.

Elliott and Michael steal the van that E.T. had been loaded into and a chase ensues, with Michael's friends joining them on bicycles, evading the authorities. Suddenly facing a police roadblock, E.T. helps them escape by using his telekinesis to lift them into the air and towards the forest, like he had done for Elliott before.

Standing near the spaceship, E.T.'s heart glows as he prepares to return home, while Mary, Gertie, and Keys show up. E.T. says goodbye to Michael and Gertie, as she presents him with the flower he had revived. Before boarding the spaceship, he embraces Elliott and tells him "I'll be right here", pointing his glowing finger to Elliott's forehead. He picks up the chrysanthemum and boards the spaceship. As the others watch it take off, the spaceship leaves a rainbow in the sky.

Wyatt and Billy are freewheeling motorcyclists. After smuggling cocaine from Mexico to Los Angeles, they sell their haul and receive a large sum of money. With the cash stuffed into a plastic tube hidden inside the Stars & Stripes-painted fuel tank of Wyatt's California-style chopper, they ride eastward aiming to reach New Orleans, Louisiana, in time for the Mardi Gras festival.

During their trip, Wyatt and Billy stop to repair a flat tire on Wyatt's bike at a farmstead in Arizona and have a meal with the farmer and his family. Later, Wyatt picks up a hippie hitch-hiker, and he invites them to visit his commune, where they stay for the rest of the day. The notion of "free love" appears to be practiced, with two of the women, Lisa and Sarah, seemingly sharing the affections of the hitch-hiking commune member before turning their attention to Wyatt and Billy. As the bikers leave, the hitch-hiker gives Wyatt some LSD for him to share with "the right people".

Later, while riding along with a parade in New Mexico, the pair are arrested for "parading without a permit" and thrown in jail. There, they befriend lawyer George Hanson, who has spent the night in jail after overindulging in alcohol. After the mention of having done work for the ACLU along with other conversation, George helps them get out of jail and decides to travel with Wyatt and Billy to New Orleans. As they camp that night, Wyatt and Billy introduce George to marijuana. As an alcoholic and a "square", George is reluctant to try it due to his fear of becoming "hooked" and it leading to worse drugs but quickly relents.

Stopping to eat at a small-town Louisiana diner, the trio attracts the attention of the locals. The girls in the restaurant think they are exciting, but the local men and a police officer make denigrating comments and taunts. Wyatt, Billy, and George decide to leave without any fuss. They make camp outside town. In the middle of the night, a group of locals attack the sleeping trio, beating them with clubs. Billy screams and brandishes a knife, and the attackers leave. Wyatt and Billy suffer minor injuries, but George has been bludgeoned to death. Wyatt and Billy wrap George's body in his sleeping bag, gather his belongings, and vow to return the items to his family.

They continue to New Orleans and find a brothel George had told them about. Taking prostitutes Karen and Mary with them, Wyatt and Billy wander the parade-filled streets of the Mardi Gras celebration. They end up in a French Quarter cemetery, where all four ingest the LSD the hitch-hiker had given to Wyatt.

The next morning, as they are overtaken on a two-lane country road by two local men in an older pickup truck, the passenger in the truck reaches for a shotgun, saying he will scare them. As they pass Billy, the passenger fires, and Billy has a lowside crash. The truck passes Wyatt who has stopped, and Wyatt rides back to Billy, finding him lying flat on the side of the road and covered in blood. Wyatt tells Billy he's going to get help and covers Billy's wound with his own leather jacket. Wyatt then rides down the road toward the pickup as it makes a U-turn. Passing in the opposite direction, the passenger fires the shotgun again, this time through the driver's-side window. Wyatt's riderless motorcycle flies through the air and comes apart before landing and becoming engulfed in flames.

A traveller arrives at the desolate Usher mansion to find that the sibling inhabitants, Roderick and Madeline Usher, are living under a mysterious family curse: Roderick's senses have become painfully acute, while Madeline continues to get weaker with time. When Madeline apparently dies, Roderick has her buried in the family vault, not realizing she is merely in a catatonic state. Madeline awakens in her tomb, and realizing she has been buried alive, descends into madness as she escapes her coffin and seeks revenge.

Bobby Dupea works in an oil field in Kern County, California. He spends most of his time with his girlfriend Rayette, a waitress who has dreams of singing country music, or with his friend, fellow oil worker Elton, with whom he bowls, gets drunk, and philanders. While Bobby acts the part of a blue-collar laborer, he is secretly a former classical pianist who comes from an upper-class family of musicians.

When Bobby gets Rayette pregnant and Elton is arrested, Bobby quits his job and goes to Los Angeles, where his sister Partita, also a pianist, is making a recording. Partita tells him that their father, from whom Bobby is estranged, has suffered two strokes, and urges him to return to the family home in Washington.

Rayette threatens to kill herself if Bobby leaves her, so he reluctantly asks her along. Driving north, they pick up two stranded women headed for Alaska, Terry and Palm. The latter launches into a monologue about the evils of consumerism. The four are thrown out of a restaurant after Bobby gets into a sarcastic argument with an obstinate waitress who refuses to accommodate his request for toast.

Embarrassed by Rayette's lack of polish, Bobby registers her in a motel before driving alone to the family home on an island in Puget Sound. He finds Partita giving their father a haircut, and the old man seems completely oblivious to him. At dinner, Bobby meets Catherine Van Oost, a young pianist engaged to his amiable brother Carl, a violinist. Despite personality differences, Catherine and Bobby are immediately attracted to each other and later have sex in her room.

Rayette runs out of money at the motel and comes to the Dupea estate unannounced. Her presence creates an awkward situation, but when a pompous family friend, Samia Glavia, ridicules her, Bobby comes to her defense. Storming from the room in search of Catherine, he discovers his father's male nurse giving Partita a massage. He picks a fight with the very strong nurse, who easily subdues him.

Bobby tries to persuade Catherine to go away with him, but she declines, telling him he cannot ask for love when he does not love himself, or anything at all. After trying to talk to his unresponsive father, Bobby leaves with Rayette. Shortly into the trip, they stop for gas, and while Rayette goes into a diner for coffee, Bobby abandons her, hitching a ride on a truck headed north.

Chester Kent (James Cagney) replaces his failing career as a director of Broadway musicals with a new one as the creator of musical numbers called "prologues", short live stage productions presented in movie theaters before the main feature is shown. He faces pressure from his business partners to continuously create a large number of marketable prologues to service theaters throughout the country, but his job is made harder by a rival who is stealing his ideas, probably with assistance from someone working inside his own company. Kent is so overwhelmed with work that he doesn't realize that his secretary Nan (Joan Blondell) has fallen in love with him and is doing her best to protect him as well as his interests.

Kent's business partners announce that they have a big deal pending with the Apolinaris theater circuit, but getting the contract depends on Kent impressing Mr. Apolinaris (Paul Porcasi) with three spectacular prologues, presented on the same night, one after another at three different theaters. Kent locks himself and his staff in the offices to prevent espionage leaks while they choreograph and rehearse the three production numbers. Kent then stages "Honeymoon Hotel", "By a Waterfall" (featuring the famous "Human Waterfall") and "Shanghai Lil", featuring Cagney and Ruby Keeler dancing together.

Lawyer Joe Morse (Garfield) works for a powerful gangster, Tucker, who wishes to consolidate and control the numbers racket in New York City. This requires absorbing many smaller outfits, one of which is run by Morse's older brother Leo (Thomas Gomez). One relishes his life in the underworld, the other is disgusted by it and seeks to minimize its impact. Even seeking to soften things for Leo things go wrong for Joe, and tragedy befalls both.

The terse, melodramatic thriller incorporates realist location photography, almost poetic dialogue and biblical allusions to Cain and Abel and Judas's betrayal.

''Frankenstein'' begins with Edward Van Sloan stepping from behind a curtain to break the fourth wall and deliver a brief caution to the audience:

How do you do? Mr. Carl Laemmle feels it would be a little unkind to present this picture without just a word of friendly warning: We are about to unfold the story of Frankenstein, a man of science who sought to create a man after his own image without reckoning upon God. It is one of the strangest tales ever told. It deals with the two great mysteries of creation; life and death. I think it will thrill you. It may shock you. It might even'' horrify ''you. So, if any of you feel that you do not care to subject your nerves to such a strain, now's your chance to uh, well,––we ''warned'' you.

In a village of the Bavarian Alps, Henry Frankenstein and his assistant Fritz, a hunchback, piece together a human body. Some of the parts are from freshly buried bodies, and some from the bodies of recently hanged criminals. In a laboratory he's built inside a watchtower, Henry desires to create a human, giving this body life through electrical devices. He still needs a brain for his creation. At a nearby school, Henry's former teacher Dr. Waldman shows his class the brain of an average human being and the corrupted brain of a criminal for comparison. Henry sends Fritz to steal the healthy brain from Waldman's class. Fritz accidentally damages it, and so brings Henry the corrupt brain.

Henry's fiancée Elizabeth speaks with their friend Victor about the scientist's peculiar actions and his seclusion. Elizabeth and Victor ask Waldman for help understanding Henry's behavior, and Waldman reveals he is aware Henry wishes to create life. Concerned for Henry, they arrive at the lab just as he makes his final preparations, the lifeless body on an operating table. As a storm rages, Henry invites Elizabeth and the others to watch. Henry and Fritz raise the operating table toward an opening at the top of the tower. The creature and Henry's equipment are exposed to the lightning storm and empowered, bringing the creature to life.

Frankenstein's Monster, despite its grotesque form, seems to be an innocent, childlike creation. Henry welcomes it into his laboratory and asks it to sit, which it does. He opens up the roof, causing the Monster to reach out towards the sunlight. Fritz enters with a flaming torch, which frightens the Monster. Its fright is mistaken by Henry and Waldman for an attempt to attack them, and it is chained in the dungeon, where Fritz antagonizes it with a torch. Hearing Fritz shriek in the dungeon, Henry and Waldman run down, finding that the Monster has strangled and hanged Fritz. The Monster lunges at the two but they lock the Monster inside. Realizing the Monster must be destroyed, Henry prepares an injection of a powerful drug and the two conspire to release the Monster and inject it as it attacks. When the door is unlocked the Monster lunges at Henry as Waldman injects the drug into the Monster's back. The Monster falls to the floor unconscious.

Henry collapses from exhaustion, and Elizabeth and Henry's father take him home. Henry is worried about the Monster, but Waldman reassures him that he will destroy it. While Henry is at home, recovered and preparing for his wedding, Waldman examines the Monster. As he prepares to vivisect it, the Monster strangles him. It escapes from the tower and wanders through the landscape, encountering a farmer's young daughter, Maria. She asks him to play a game with her in which they toss flowers onto a lake. The Monster enjoys the game, but when they run out of flowers he throws Maria into the lake, where she disappears beneath the surface. The Monster runs away.

With preparations for the wedding completed, Henry is happy with Elizabeth. They are to marry as soon as Waldman arrives. Victor rushes in, saying that Waldman has been found strangled. Henry suspects the Monster. The Monster enters Elizabeth's room, causing her to scream. When the searchers arrive, they find Elizabeth unconscious. The Monster has escaped.

Maria's father arrives, carrying his drowned daughter's body. He says she was murdered, and the villagers form a search party to capture the Monster. During the search, Henry is attacked by the Monster. The Monster knocks Henry unconscious and carries him to an old mill. The peasants hear his cries and find the Monster has climbed to the top, dragging Henry with him. The Monster hurls the scientist to the ground. His fall is broken by the vanes of the windmill, saving his life. Some of the villagers bring him home while the rest of the mob set the windmill ablaze, with the Monster trapped inside.

At Castle Frankenstein, Henry's father celebrates the wedding of his recovered son with a toast to a future grandchild.

A beautiful and conniving trapeze artist named Cleopatra seduces a carnival sideshow little person named Hans after learning of his large inheritance, much to the chagrin of Frieda, his fiancée, also a little person. Cleopatra also conspires with circus strongman Hercules to kill Hans and inherit his wealth. Meanwhile, other romances flourish among the sideshow performers: the Bearded Lady, who is in love with the Human Skeleton, gives birth to their daughter. The news is spread among the friends by the Stork Woman. Additionally, Violet, a conjoined twin whose sister Daisy is married to Roscoe, the stuttering circus clown, becomes engaged to the circus's owner.

Hans, enamored of Cleopatra, ultimately marries her. At their wedding, Cleopatra begins poisoning Hans's wine but drunkenly kisses Hercules in front of Hans, revealing her affair. Oblivious, the other "freaks" announce that they accept Cleopatra in spite of her being a "normal" outsider; they hold an initiation ceremony in which they pass a loving cup around the table while chanting, "We accept her, we accept her. One of us, one of us. Gooble-gobble, gooble-gobble." However, Cleopatra's mean-spirited amusement at this ceremony soon turns into fear and anger after Hercules jokes that the rest of the entertainers plan to turn her into one of them. She mocks them, tosses the wine in their faces and drives them away before berating Hans and drunkenly parading him around on her shoulders like a child. The humiliated Hans realizes that he has been played for a fool and rejects Cleopatra's attempts to apologize, but then he falls ill from the poison. While bedridden, Hans pretends to apologize to Cleopatra and also pretends to take the poisoned medicine that she is giving him, but he secretly plots with the other entertainers to strike back at Cleopatra and Hercules.

In the film's climax, Hans confronts Cleopatra with three of the entertainers as backup thugs. However, Hans's circus wagon is overturned in a storm, giving Cleopatra the chance to escape into the forest, closely pursued by them. At the same time Hercules goes to kill seal-trainer Venus for knowing about the plot. Venus's boyfriend, Phroso, attempts to stop Hercules but is nearly killed before the rest of them intervene and injure Hercules, saving Phroso. They all pursue an injured Hercules.

The freaks then capture Cleopatra and sometime later, she is shown to be a grotesque, squawking "human duck" on display for carnival patrons; her tongue has been removed, one eye has been gouged out, the flesh of her hands has been melted and deformed to look like duck feet, her legs have been cut off, and what is left of her torso has been permanently tarred and feathered. In the original version of the film, it is revealed that after the freaks caught Hercules, they castrated him.

While some versions end on Cleopatra as the human duck, another ending shows Hans, now living in a mansion from his inheritance and still humiliated, visited by Phroso, Venus and Frieda. Frieda tells Hans not to blame himself for what happened and that she still loves him. The two then share a heartwarming hug.

En route to meet his fiancée Katherine Grant, gas-station owner Joe Wilson is arrested on flimsy circumstantial evidence for the kidnapping of a child. Gossip soon travels around the small town, growing more distorted through each retelling, until a mob gathers at the jail. When the resolute sheriff refuses to give up his prisoner, the enraged townspeople burn down the building, throwing dynamite into the flames as they flee the scene. Unknown to anyone else there, the blast frees Joe but kills his little dog Rainbow, who had run in to comfort him in the cell.

The district attorney brings the main perpetrators to trial for murder, but nobody is willing to identify the guilty, and several provide false alibis. The case seems hopeless, but then the prosecutor produces hard evidence: newsreel footage of 22 people caught in the act.

Katherine discovers that Joe escaped the fire and that his brothers are helping him take revenge by concealing his survival and framing the defendants for his murder. She goes to see Joe and pleads with him to stop the charade, but he is determined to make his would-be killers pay. His conscience begins to weigh on him and, just as the verdicts are being read, he walks into the courtroom and sets things straight.

In the book's prologue, Leo Colston chances upon a diary from 1900, the year of his thirteenth birthday, and gradually pieces together a memory that he has suppressed. Under its influence, and from the viewpoint of what he has become by the midpoint of "this hideous century", Leo relives the events of what had once seemed to him its hopeful beginning. The importance of his boarding school's social rules is another theme running through the book and complicates Leo's interaction with the adult world.

"Curses" of his devising had routed boys who were bullying Leo at school and had given him the reputation of a magician, something that he came to half-believe himself. As a result, he is invited as a guest to spend the summer at Brandham Hall, the country home of his school friend, Marcus Maudsley. There the socially clumsy Leo, with his regional accent, is a middle-class boy among the wealthy upper class. Though he does not fit in, his hosts do their best to make him feel welcome, treating him with kindness and indulgence, especially their daughter Marian.

When Marcus falls ill, Leo is left largely to his own devices and becomes a secret "postman" for Marian and nearby tenant farmer Ted Burgess, with whom she is having a clandestine relationship. Leo is happy to help Marian because he has a crush on her and likes Ted. Besides, Leo is initially ignorant of the significance or content of the messages that he is asked to carry between them and the well-meaning, innocent boy is easily manipulated by the lovers. Although Marian and Ted are fully aware of the social taboo that must make their relationship a matter of the utmost secrecy, Leo is too naïve to understand why they can never marry. The situation is further complicated by the fact that Marian is about to become engaged to Hugh, Viscount Trimingham, the descendant of the area's nobility who formerly lived in Brandham Hall.

As he begins to comprehend that the relationship between Marian and Ted is not to do with "business", as they have claimed, Leo naively believes that Marian's engagement ought to bring the correspondence between her and Ted to an end. Feeling increasingly uncomfortable about the general atmosphere of deception and risk, Leo tries to end his role as go-between but comes under great psychological pressure and is forced to continue. Ultimately, his unwilling involvement has disastrous consequences when Marian's mother makes him accompany her as she tracks the lovers down to their hiding place and discovers them having sex. The trauma that results leads directly to Ted's suicide and Leo's nervous collapse.

In the epilogue, the older Leo summarises how profoundly the experience has affected him. Forbidding himself to think about the scandal, he had shut down his emotions and imaginative nature, leaving room only for facts. As a result, he has never been able to establish intimate relationships. Now, looking back on the events through the eyes of a mature adult, he feels it is important to return to Brandham some 50 years later in order to tie up loose ends. There he meets Marian's grandson and finds Marian herself living in her former nanny's cottage. He also learns that Trimingham had married Marian and acknowledged Ted's son by her as his own. Trimingham had died in 1910; Marcus and his elder brother had fallen in World War I, Marian's son in World War II. In the end, the elderly Marian persuades Leo, the only other survivor from her past, to act once more as go-between and assure her estranged grandson that there was nothing to be ashamed of in her affair with Ted Burgess.

Set in Glendale, California in the 1930s, the book is the story of a middle-class housewife, Mildred Pierce, and her attempts to maintain her family's social position during the Great Depression.

Mildred separates from Bert, her unemployed husband, and sets out to support herself and her children. After a difficult search, she finds a job as a waitress, but she worries that it is beneath her middle-class station. More than that, she worries that her ambitious and increasingly pretentious elder daughter, Veda, will think her new job demeaning. Mildred encounters both success and failure as she opens three successful restaurants, operates a pie-selling business, and copes with the death of her younger daughter, Ray. Veda enjoys her mother's newfound financial success but increasingly turns ungrateful, demanding more and more from her hard-working mother while openly condemning her and anyone else who must work for a living.

When Mildred discovers her daughter's plot to blackmail a wealthy family with a fake pregnancy, she kicks her out of their house. Veda, who has been training to become an opera singer, goes on to great fame, and Mildred's increasing obsession with her daughter leads her to use her former lover, Monty (a man who, like Mildred, lost his family's wealth at the start of the Great Depression), and his social status and connection to bring Veda back into her life. Unfortunately for Mildred, this means buying Monty's family estate and using her earnings to pay for Veda's extravagances. Mildred and Monty marry, but things go sour as her lavish lifestyle and neglect of her businesses have dramatically affected the company's profits. Creditors line up, led by Wally, a former business associate of Bert's, with whom Mildred had a brief affair upon their separation. With no one to turn to, Mildred confesses to Bert that she has been embezzling money from her company in order to buy Veda's love.

Having decided that the only course of action is to ask Veda to contribute some of her now considerable earnings to balance the books and fearing that Wally might target the girl's assets if they are exposed Mildred goes to her room to confront her. She finds Veda in bed with her stepfather. Monty reproaches Mildred for using him to bring Veda back and for her attitude to him as a financial dependent of hers, while Veda affects boredom but joins in to chide Mildred for embarrassing her and taking glory in her success. Mildred snaps, brutally attacking and strangling her daughter, who now appears incapable of singing and loses her singing contract.

Weeks pass as Mildred moves to Reno, Nevada to establish residency in order to get a speedy divorce from Monty. Bert visits her. Mildred ultimately is forced to resign from her business empire, leaving it to Ida, a former company assistant. Bert and Mildred, upon the finalization of her divorce, remarry. Veda travels to Reno and apparently reconciles with Mildred, but several months later, Veda reveals that her voice has healed and announces that she is moving to New York City with Monty. The "reconciliation" (which had been accompanied by reporters and photographers) was designed to defuse the negative publicity resulting from the affair with her stepfather, and it emerges the apparent loss of her voice was a ploy so that she could renege on her existing singing contract and be free to take up a more lucrative one offered by another company. As she leaves the house, a broken Mildred, encouraged by Bert, eventually says "to hell" with the monstrous Veda, and the pair agree to get "stinko" (drunk).

Ben is a witty and charismatic but narcissistic and easily-enraged serial killer who holds forth at length about whatever comes to mind, be it the "craft" of murder, the failings of architecture, his own poetry, or classical music, which he plays with his girlfriend Valerie. A film crew joins him on his sadistic adventures, recording them for a fly on the wall documentary. Ben takes them to meet his family and friends while boasting of murdering many people at random and dumping their bodies in canals and quarries. The viewer witnesses these grisly killings in graphic detail.

Ben ventures into apartment buildings, explaining how it is more cost-effective to attack old people than young couples because the elderly have more cash at home and are easier to kill. In a following scene, he screams wildly at an elderly lady, causing her to have a heart attack. As she lies dying, he casually remarks that this method saved him a bullet. Ben continues his candid explanations and rampage, shooting, strangling, and beating to death anyone who comes his way: women, illegal immigrants and postmen (his favorite targets). He enjoys killing a postman at the start of the month because they tend to have parcels with money and other goods he can steal; enjoys killing women because they don't fight back; and enjoys killing immigrants because he's a total racist (he jokes about having murdered two Muslims and making sure to entomb their bodies in a wall that faces Mecca, and amuses himself by checking out the genitals of a black security guard after he's shot the man in the head).

The camera crew becomes more and more involved in the murders, starting out as silent accomplices but gradually assisting Ben in his killings. When Ben invades a home and kills an entire family, they help him hold down a young boy and smother him with a pillow, all the while keeping up a casual conversation. During filming, two of Ben's crew are killed; their deaths are later called "occupational hazards" by a crew member and off-handedly mourned. At the abandoned building that Ben uses for a hideout, the crew encounters two Italian criminals or gangsters also hiding out in the building. Ben kills the Italians before discovering that they were actually also being filmed by a competing documentary camera crew. Ben and his camera crew have fun taking turns as they shoot the rival crew members to death and record the whole thing.

While fooling around with crew, when Ben takes a couple having sex hostage in their own home, he holds the man at gunpoint while he and the crew gang-rape the woman. The following morning, the camera dispassionately records the aftermath: the woman has been butchered with a knife, her entrails spilling out, while the husband had his throat cut. Later, Ben's girlfriend and family receive death threats from the brother of one of the Italian criminals who Ben had killed earlier. Ben's violence becomes more and more random until he kills an acquaintance in front of his girlfriend and friends during a birthday dinner. Spattered with blood, they act as though nothing horrible has happened, continuing to offer Ben gifts. The film crew disposes of the body for Ben.

After a victim flees before he can be killed, Ben is arrested, but he escapes. At this point, someone, presumably the brother of the dead Italian along with other members of the two dead Italians' criminal organization, starts taking revenge on Ben and his family. Ben discovers that his girlfriend Valerie has been killed: a flautist, she has been murdered in a particularly humiliating manner, with her flute inserted into her anus. He later finds that his parents met the same fate, his mother, who owns a shop and is "not a musician", being sodomized with the end of a broomstick. This prompts Ben to decide that he must leave. He meets the camera crew to say farewell, but in the middle of reciting a poem, he is abruptly shot dead by an off-camera gunman. The camera crew is then picked off one by one. After the camera falls, it keeps running, and the film ends with the death of the fleeing sound recordist.

The book is divided into five chapters, which Dickens titled "staves".

Stave one

''A Christmas Carol'' opens on a bleak, cold Christmas Eve in London, seven years after the death of Ebenezer Scrooge's business partner, Jacob Marley. Scrooge, an ageing miser, dislikes Christmas and refuses a dinner invitation from his nephew Fred—the son of Fan, Scrooge's dead sister. He turns away two men who seek a donation from him to provide food and heating for the poor and only grudgingly allows his overworked, underpaid clerk, Bob Cratchit, Christmas Day off with pay to conform to the social custom.

That night Scrooge is visited at home by Marley's ghost, who wanders the Earth entwined by heavy chains and money boxes forged during a lifetime of greed and selfishness. Marley tells Scrooge that he has a single chance to avoid the same fate: he will be visited by three spirits and must listen or be cursed to carry much heavier chains of his own.

Stave two

The first spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Past, takes Scrooge to Christmas scenes of Scrooge's boyhood, reminding him of a time when he was more innocent. The scenes reveal Scrooge's lonely childhood at boarding school, his relationship with his beloved sister Fan, and a Christmas party hosted by his first employer, Mr Fezziwig, who treated him like a son. Scrooge's neglected fiancée Belle is shown ending their relationship, as she realises that he will never love her as much as he loves money. Finally, they visit a now-married Belle with her large, happy family on the Christmas Eve that Marley died. Scrooge, upset by hearing Belle's description of the man that he has become, demands that the ghost remove him from the house.

Stave three

The second spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Present, takes Scrooge to a joyous market with people buying the makings of Christmas dinner. The Ghost then takes Scrooge to Bob Cratchit's family feast and introduces his youngest son, Tiny Tim, a happy boy who is seriously ill. The spirit informs Scrooge that Tiny Tim will die unless the course of events changes. Afterwards, the spirit and Scrooge travel to celebrations of Christmas in a miner's cottage, in a lighthouse, and on a ship at sea. Scrooge and the ghost then visit Fred's Christmas party. Before disappearing, the spirit shows Scrooge two hideous, emaciated children named Ignorance and Want. He tells Scrooge to beware them and mocks Scrooge's concern for their welfare.

Stave four

The third spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, shows Scrooge a Christmas Day in the future. The silent ghost reveals scenes involving the death of a disliked man whose funeral is attended by local businessmen only on condition that lunch is provided. His charwoman, laundress and the local undertaker steal his possessions to sell to a fence. When he asks the spirit to show a single person who feels emotion over his death, he is only given the pleasure of a poor couple who rejoice that his death gives them more time to put their finances in order. When Scrooge asks to see tenderness connected with any death, the ghost shows him Bob Cratchit and his family mourning the death of Tiny Tim. The ghost then allows Scrooge to see a neglected grave, with a tombstone bearing Scrooge's name. Sobbing, Scrooge pledges to change his ways.

Stave five

Scrooge awakens on Christmas morning a changed man. He makes a large donation to the charity he rejected the previous day, anonymously sends a large turkey to the Cratchit home for Christmas dinner and spends the afternoon with Fred's family. The following day he gives Cratchit an increase in pay, and begins to become a father figure to Tiny Tim. From then on Scrooge treats everyone with kindness, generosity and compassion, embodying the spirit of Christmas.

The film intercuts between events some time after ''The Godfather'' and the early life of Vito Corleone.

Vito

In 1901, the family of nine-year-old Vito Andolini is killed in Corleone, Sicily after his father insults local Mafia chieftain Don Ciccio. Vito escapes to New York City and is registered on arrival as "Vito Corleone". In 1917, Vito lives in New York with his wife, Carmela, and their infant son, Santino. He loses his job due to the interference of Don Fanucci, a local Black Hand extortionist. Vito disapproves of Fanucci's method of extorting fellow Italian immigrants. His neighbor Clemenza asks Vito to hide a bag of guns; as thanks, Clemenza enlists Vito's help in stealing a rug, which he gifts to Carmela.

The Corleones have three more children; sons Fredo and Michael, and daughter Constanzia. Meanwhile, Vito, Clemenza, and new partner Tessio make income by stealing goods and reselling them door-to-door. This enterprise attracts the attention of Fanucci, who extorts them. Vito convinces his skeptical partners that he will talk Fanucci into accepting a smaller payment. During a neighborhood festa, Vito pays an incredulous Fanucci a much smaller amount and is offered a job as an enforcer. Vito later kills Fanucci in his apartment. Vito becomes a formidable and well-respected community member by helping locals in exchange for "favors".

Vito and family visit Sicily. Vito and his business partner visit Don Ciccio, ostensibly to ask for Ciccio's blessing on their olive oil business. Ciccio asks for the name of Vito's father; Vito reveals his identity and fatally guts Ciccio as revenge for his family's deaths.

In 1941, the Corleones gather in their dining room to surprise Vito on his 50th birthday, and Sonny introduces Carlo to Connie for the first time. Michael announces that he has left college and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, leaving Sonny furious, Tom incredulous, and Fredo the only supportive brother. When Vito is heard at the door, all but Michael leave the room to greet him and sing.

Michael

In 1958, during his son's First Communion party at Lake Tahoe, Michael has a series of meetings in his role as the don of the Corleone crime family. Frank Pentangeli, a Corleone capo, is dismayed that Michael refuses to help defend his Bronx territory against the Rosato brothers, who work for Hyman Roth, a Jewish Mob boss and long-standing Corleone business partner. That night, a failed assassination attempt at his home prompts Michael to suddenly depart after confiding in consigliere Tom Hagen that he suspected a traitor within the family.

Michael suspects Roth planned the assassination, but falsely tells Roth he suspects Pentangeli. In New York City, under Michael's instructions, Pentangeli attempts to make peace with the Rosatos, but they garrote him while implying that Michael ordered the hit. A sickly Roth, Michael, and several of their partners travel to Havana to discuss their future Cuban business prospects under the cooperative government of Fulgencio Batista. Michael becomes reluctant to continue operating in Cuba given the ongoing Cuban Revolution. On New Year's Eve, Fredo pretends not to know Johnny Ola, Roth's right-hand man, but later inadvertently reveals they know each other and exposes himself to Michael as the inside traitor. Michael orders hits on Ola and Roth, but his enforcer is killed by Cuban soldiers as he tries to smother Roth. Batista abdicates due to rebel advances. During the ensuing chaos, Michael, Fredo, and Roth separately escape Cuba. Back home, Michael learns that his wife Kay has miscarried.

In Washington, D.C., a Senate committee on organized crime is investigating the Corleone family. Pentangeli agrees to testify against Michael, who he believes had double-crossed him, and is placed under witness protection. On returning to Nevada, Fredo tells Michael that he resented being disregarded by his family but was ignorant of the plot to kill Michael. Michael disowns Fredo but gives orders that he is not to be harmed while their mother is still alive. Michael sends for Pentangeli's brother from Sicily, and Pentangeli, after seeing his brother in the courtroom, retracts his previous statement indicting Michael in organized crime; the hearing dissolves in an uproar. Kay reveals to Michael that she actually had an abortion, not a miscarriage, and that she intends to remove their children from Michael's criminal life. Outraged, Michael strikes Kay, banishes her from the family, and takes sole custody of the children.

Family matriarch Carmela dies sometime later, and Michael hurries to wrap up loose ends. At the funeral, Michael appears to forgive Fredo at the behest of Connie. Kay visits her children; as she is saying goodbye, Michael arrives and closes the door on her. Roth is forced to return to the United States after being refused asylum and entry to Israel. On Michael's orders, Roth is assassinated during an interview at the Miami International Airport. At Pentangeli's compound, consigliere Tom Hagen visits and the two discuss how failed plotters against the Roman emperor often committed suicide in return for clemency for their families. Pentangeli is later found dead in his bathtub, having slit his wrists. Corleone enforcer Al Neri shoots Fredo in the back of the head while the two are fishing on the lake. Michael sits alone at the family compound, looking out over the lake.

''The following is the plot of the 1942 re-release:''

Big Jim, a gold prospector during the Klondike Gold Rush, in Alaska, has just found an enormous gold deposit on his parcel of land when a blizzard strikes. The Lone Prospector gets lost in the same blizzard while also prospecting for gold. He stumbles into the cabin of Black Larsen, a wanted criminal. Larsen tries to throw the Prospector out when Jim also stumbles inside. Larsen tries to scare both out using his shotgun but is overpowered by Jim, and the three agree to an uneasy truce allowing them all to stay in the cabin.

When the storm is taking so long that food is running out, the three draw lots for who will have to go out into the blizzard to obtain something to eat. Larsen loses and leaves the cabin. While outside looking for food, he encounters Jim's gold deposit and decides to ambush him there when Jim returns.

Meanwhile, the two remaining in the cabin get so desperate that they cook and eat one of the Prospector's shoes. Later, Jim gets delirious, imagines the Prospector as a giant chicken and attacks him. At that moment, a bear enters the cabin and is killed, supplying them with food.

After the storm subsides, both leave the cabin, the Prospector continuing on to the next gold boom town while Jim returns to his gold deposit. There, he is knocked out by Larsen with a shovel. While fleeing with some of the mined gold, Larsen is killed by an avalanche. Jim recovers consciousness and wanders into the snow, having lost his memory from the blow. When he returns to the town, his memory has been partly restored and he remembers that he had found a large gold deposit, that the deposit was close to a certain cabin, and that he had stayed in the cabin with the Prospector. But he knows neither the location of the deposit nor of the cabin, and so goes out looking for the Prospector, hoping that he can lead him to the cabin.

The Prospector arrives at the town and encounters Georgia, a dance hall girl. To irritate Jack, a ladies' man who is making aggressive advances toward her and is pestering her for a dance, she instead decides to dance with "the most deplorable looking tramp in the dance hall", the Prospector, who instantly falls in love with her. After encountering each other again, she accepts his invitation for a New Year's Eve dinner, but does not take it seriously and soon forgets about it. On New Year's Eve, while waiting for her to arrive to the dinner, the Prospector imagines entertaining her with a dance of bread rolls on forks. When she does not arrive until midnight, he walks alone through the streets, desperate. At that moment, she remembers his invitation and decides to visit him. Finding his home empty but seeing the meticulously prepared dinner and a present for her, she has a change of heart and prepares a note for him in which she asks to talk to him.

When the Prospector is handed the note, he goes searching for Georgia. But at the same moment, Jim finds him and drags him away to go search for the cabin, giving the Prospector only enough time to shout to Georgia that he soon will return to her as a millionaire. Jim and the Prospector find the cabin and stay for the night. Overnight, another blizzard blows the cabin half over a cliff right next to Jim's gold deposit. The next morning the cabin is rocking dangerously over the cliff edge while the two try to escape. At last Jim manages to get out and pull the Prospector to safety right when the cabin falls off the cliff.

One year later both have become wealthy, but the Prospector never was able to find Georgia. They return to the contiguous United States on a ship on which, unknown to them, Georgia is also traveling. When the Prospector agrees to don his old clothes for a photograph, he falls down the stairs, encountering Georgia once more. After she mistakenly thinks he is a stowaway and tries to save him from the ship's crew, the misunderstanding is cleared up and both are happily reunited.

Two bandits break into a railroad telegraph office, where they force the operator at gunpoint to stop a train and order its engineer to fill the locomotive's tender at the station's water tank. They then knock the operator out and tie him up. As the train stops it is boarded by the bandits now four. Two bandits enter an express car, kill a messenger, and open a box of valuables with dynamite. In a fight on the engine car, the others kill the fireman and force the engineer to halt the train and disconnect its locomotive. The bandits then force the passengers off the train and rifle them for their belongings. One passenger tries to escape but is instantly shot down. Carrying their loot, the bandits escape in the locomotive, disembarking in a valley where they left their horses.

Meanwhile, back in the telegraph office, the bound operator awakens but collapses again. His daughter arrives, bringing him his meal, and cutting him free when she discovers him bound; she restores him to consciousness by dousing him with water. There is some comic relief at a dance hall, where an Eastern stranger (a "tenderfoot") is forced to dance while the locals fire at his feet. The door suddenly opens and the telegraph operator rushes in to tell them of the robbery. The men quickly form a posse and chase the bandits through the mountains. The posse finally overtakes the bandits, and in a final shootout kills them all and recovers the stolen mail.

A standalone final scene, separate from the narrative, presents a medium close-up of the leader of the outlaws, who empties his pistol point-blank directly into the camera.

In 1908, John McTeague works in a gold mine in Placer County, California. A traveling dentist calling himself Dr. "Painless" Potter visits the town, and McTeague's mother begs Potter to take her son on as an apprentice. Potter agrees and McTeague eventually becomes a dentist, practicing on Polk Street in San Francisco.

Marcus Schouler brings Trina Sieppe, his cousin and intended fiancée, into McTeague's office for dental work. Schouler and McTeague are friends and McTeague gladly agrees to examine Trina. As they wait for an opening, she buys a lottery ticket. McTeague becomes enamored with Trina and begs Schouler for permission to court her. After seeing McTeague's conviction, Schouler agrees. Trina eventually agrees to marry McTeague and shortly afterwards her lottery ticket wins her $5,000. Schouler bitterly claims that the money should have been his, causing a rift between him and McTeague. After McTeague and Trina wed, they continue to live in their small apartment with Trina refusing to spend her $5,000.

Schouler leaves San Francisco to become a cattle rancher. Before he goes, he secretly, in order to ruin his former friend, reports McTeague for practicing dentistry without a license. McTeague is ordered to shut down his practice or face jail. Even though she has saved over $200 in addition to the original $5,000 from the lottery ticket, Trina is still unwilling to spend her money. Money becomes increasingly scarce, with the couple forced to sell their possessions. McTeague finally snaps and bites Trina's fingers in a fit of rage. Later, he goes fishing to earn money, taking Trina's savings (now totaling $450).

Trina's bitten fingers become infected and have to be amputated. To earn money she becomes a janitor at a children's school. She withdraws the $5,000 from the bank to keep it close to her, eventually spreading it on her bed so she can sleep on it. McTeague then returns, having spent the money he took, and asks Trina for more. The following day McTeague confronts Trina at the school. After a heated argument McTeague beats Trina to death and steals her $5,000.

Now an outlaw, McTeague returns to Placer County and teams up with a prospector named Cribbens. Headed towards Death Valley, they find a large quantity of quartz and plan to become millionaires. Before they can begin mining, McTeague senses danger and flees into Death Valley with a single horse, the remaining money and one water jug. Several marshals pursue him, joined by Schouler. Schouler wants to catch McTeague personally and rides into Death Valley alone.

The oppressive heat slows McTeague's progress. Schouler's progress is also beginning to wane when he spies McTeague and moves in to arrest him. After a confrontation, McTeague's horse bolts and Schouler shoots it, puncturing the water container. The water spills onto the desert floor. The pair fight one last time, with McTeague proving the victor; however, Schouler has handcuffed himself to McTeague. The film ends with McTeague left in the desert with no horse and no water, handcuffed to a corpse and unable to reach the remaining money.

Sub-plots

Von Stroheim's original edit contained two main sub-plots that were later cut. The point of these sub-plots was to contrast two possible outcomes of Trina and McTeague's life together. The first depicted the lives of the junkman Zerkow and Maria Miranda Macapa, the young Mexican woman who collects junk for Zerkow and sold Trina the lottery ticket. Maria often talks about her imaginary solid gold dining set with Zerkow, who becomes obsessed by it. Eventually, believing she has riches hidden away, Zerkow marries her. He often asks about it, but she gives a different answer each time he mentions it. Zerkow does not believe her and becomes obsessed with prying the truth from her. He murders her and, after having lost his mind, leaps into San Francisco Bay.

The second sub-plot depicts the lives of Charles W. Grannis and Miss Anastasia Baker. Grannis and Baker are two elderly boarders who share adjoining rooms in the apartment complex where Trina and McTeague live. Throughout their time at the apartment complex, they have not met. They both sit close to their adjoining wall and listen to the other for company, so they know almost everything about each other. They finally meet and cannot hide their long-time feelings for each other. When they reveal their love, Grannis admits he has $5,000, making him just as rich as Trina. But this makes little difference to them. Eventually, they marry and a door connects their rooms.

Barton "Bart" Tare, as a teenager, gets caught breaking a hardware store window and stealing a gun from the store. He is sent to reform school for four years by a sympathetic Judge Willoughby, despite the supportive testimony of his friends Dave and Clyde, his older sister Ruby and others. They claim he would never kill any living creature, even though he has had a fascination with guns even as a child. Flashbacks provide a portrait of Bart who, after he kills a young chick with a BB gun at age seven is hesitant to shoot at anything (including a threatening mountain lion with a bounty on its head) although he is a dead shot with a handgun.

After reform school and a stint in the Army teaching marksmanship, Bart returns home. He, Dave, and Clyde go to a traveling carnival in town. Bart, who has never shown any interest before in women, challenges sharpshooter Annie Laurie Starr ("Laurie") to a contest and wins. She gets him a job with the carnival and he becomes smitten with her. Their mutual attraction inflames the jealousy of their boss, Packett, who wants her for himself. As Packett tries to force himself on her Bart enters and fires a warning shot within an inch of his nose. Packet fires Laurie and Bart, who leave together. Packett reminds Laurie that she killed a man in St. Louis, Missouri. Before they marry, Laurie warns Bart that she is "bad, but will try to be good". They embark on a carefree honeymoon on Bart’s savings. When their money runs out, though, she gives Bart a stark choice: join her in a career of crime or she will leave him. They hold up stores and gas stations, but the paltry take doesn't last long.

While fleeing a police car Laurie tells Bart to shoot at the driver so they can escape, but he hesitates and becomes somewhat disoriented. Ultimately, he shoots the tire out and the car crashes. Later that day Laurie intends to shoot and kill a grocer they had just robbed, but Bart prevents her from doing so. The couple have now been identified in national newspapers as notorious robbers.

Bart says he is done with a life of crime. Laurie persuades him to take on one last big robbery so they can flee the country and live in peace and comfort. They get jobs at a meat processing plant and make detailed plans. When they hold up the payroll department the office manager, Miss Sifert, pulls the burglar alarm and Laurie shoots her dead. Fleeing the plant Laurie then shoots a security guard, who later dies. Bart does not realize at the time that both victims had died, but learns about it later from a newspaper. Laurie then discloses she shot a man dead in St. Louis when she and Packy were attempting a hold-up. She claims she only shoots people because she gets so scared she cannot think straight.

The two have separate getaway cars, and are supposed to split up for a couple of months to minimize the chances of both being caught, but neither can bear to be away from the other. The FBI is brought in, and the fugitives become the targets of an intense manhunt, yet they evade a statewide dragnet and escape to California.

Bart arranges for passage to Mexico, but the FBI tracks them to a dance hall by tracing the serial numbers of bills from the meat plant. They are forced to flee, leaving all their loot behind. With roadblocks everywhere, they jump on a train and get off near his sister Ruby's house. Clyde, then the local sheriff, notices that Ruby's house has the curtains drawn and the children are not in school. He informs Dave, then a news reporter, and the two plead with Bart to give himself and Laurie up. Instead, the couple flee into the mountains where Bart used to go camping. Pursued by police dogs, they are surrounded in reed grass the next morning. In dense fog, Dave and Clyde approach to try to reason with them. As soon as Bart sees Laurie preparing to gun them down, he shoots her and is, in turn, killed by the police.

In New York City, sometime in the 1850s, lives our titular heiress, Catherine Sloper. Catherine is a plain, sweet, and shy young woman, who is fond of needlepoint and awkward in social settings. Her father, the dismissively negligent Dr. Austin Sloper, makes his open disparagement of his bashful daughter plain. Catherine, as her father painfully and constantly reminds her, has limited talent and cannot "hold a candle" to her deceased mother, a famously charming and gorgeous socialite who died giving birth to the disappointing Catharine. Catherine's gregarious Aunt Lavinia Penniman moves into the household after becoming widowed and attempts to prod Catherine into being more social and find a husband, since her father won't see to it.

Under her aunt's guidance, the awkward Catherine begins to venture out socially and meets the excessively handsome and charming Morris Townsend at a ball. Morris lavishes the shy wallflower with focused attention, causing Catherine to blossom and soon fall madly in love with Morris. The pair plan to marry, and Catherine is ecstatic at the prospect.

Dr. Sloper believes Morris, being far more attractive and charming than Catherine, but poor and with few prospects after he wasted his own, limited inheritance, is courting Catherine only to get her sizable assets as Dr. Sloper's only child and heir. Aunt Lavinia favors the match regardless, being both romantic and pragmatic enough to view this as Catherine's one chance at a happy married life. While not sexually attracted (nor repulsed) by her, Morris is surprised to find he is genuinely fond of Catherine's honesty and kindness and intrigued and interested by her unique conversation. In spite his largely monetary motivations, Morris treats her with respect, unlike her father, though he is inappropriately proprietary towards the Sloper family possessions.

A frank discussion with Morris's sister confirms Dr. Sloper's opinion of Morris as a gold digger. The doctor takes his daughter to Europe for an extended time to separate the pair, but Catherine spends the entire trip mooning for Morris. Dr. Sloper threatens to disinherit his daughter if she marries Morris and they have a bitter argument in which Catherine fully realizes how poorly he views her: Dr. Sloper believes his plain and dowdy daughter is incapable of inspiring genuine feelings of love or passion from any man, so her money is the only thing attractive about her.

Wounded, Catherine is determined to prove her father wrong upon their return to New York City. She tells Morris she is being disowned, certain he will not care, and makes frenetic plans for Morris and herself to elope with the help of Aunt Lavinia. Morris agrees and goes to fetch a carriage. Catherine packs her bags and waits all night for Morris to come and take her away, but he never does. Catherine is heartbroken her father was right, and a broken Catherine ascends the stairs to unpack her bags.

Catherine grows cold towards her father. She resents that her father wouldn't even allow her the illusion of being loved. Soon afterward, Dr. Sloper reveals he is dying. He tells Catherine that he is proud she resisted Morris, but Catherine taunts her father that she might still waste his money chasing after Morris once he dies. Dr. Sloper does not alter the will and dies wretchedly, leaving her his entire estate while worrying she'll waste it as the gullible prey of a fortune hunter. Catherine refuses to see him on his deathbed.

Several years later, Morris returns from California having made nothing of himself and with even fewer prospects and less money than before. He has great regrets upon seeing the wealthy Catherine, realizing he misses her devoted sweetness and that he had miscalculated in abandoning her, since he could have been enjoying her current wealth as her husband, rather than suffering as an impoverished bachelor. Morris is desperate to regain Catherine's affections, attempting to convince her he abandoned her for her own good.

Aunt Lavinia arranges for Morris to visit Catherine, thinking this is the now spinster Catherine's last chance at marriage. Catherine makes Morris hopeful that a renewal of their love is possible and gives Morris a gift of ruby buttons that she had bought for him in Paris during her trip with her father. Overjoyed, Morris eagerly promises to come back for her that night and reenact their failed elopement. Catherine tells him she will start packing her bags. After Morris leaves, Catherine informs her aunt that she has no intention of offering her love to Morris and her intention of insuring he never returns. Her aunt asks her how she can be so cruel, and Catherine coldly responds "Yes, I can be very cruel. I have been taught by masters."

When Morris arrives later that night with the promised carriage, he rings the bell, and bangs on the doors, shouting Catherine's name and becoming more desperate as he can tell Catherine is on the other side of the door. Catherine callously listens and does not respond other to order the maid to bolt the doors. Catherine ascends the stairs with a faint smile of triumph as Morris continues to shout from outside.

William S. Hart as Blaze Tracy in ''Hell's Hinges'' ''Hell's Hinges'' tells the story of a weak-willed minister, Rev. Bob Henley (played by Standing), who comes to a wild and debauched frontier town with his sister, Faith (played by Williams). The owner of the saloon, Silk Miller (played by Hollingsworth), and his accomplices sense trouble and encourage the local rowdies to disrupt the attempts to evangelize the community. Hard-bitten gunman Blaze Tracy (played by Hart), the most dangerous man around, is, however, won over by the sincerity of Faith. He intervenes to expel the rowdies from the newly built church.

Silk adopts a new approach. He encourages the dance-hall girl, Dolly (played by Glaum), to seduce Rev. Henley. She gets him drunk, and he spends the night in her room. The following morning the whole town learns of his fall from grace. Blaze rides out to find a doctor for the now near-demented minister.

The disgraced minister, having rapidly descended into alcoholism, is goaded into helping the rowdy element to burn down the church. The church-goers try to defend the church, and a gunfight erupts in which the minister is killed and the church set ablaze. Blaze returns too late to stop the destruction. In revenge, Blaze kills Silk and burns down the whole town, beginning with the saloon. He and Faith leave to start a new life.

In Hadleyville, a small town in New Mexico Territory, Marshal Will Kane, newly married to Amy Fowler, prepares to retire. The happy couple will soon depart for a new life to raise a family and run a store in another town. However, word arrives that Frank Miller, a vicious outlaw whom Kane sent to prison, has been released and will arrive on the noon train. Miller's gang—his younger brother Ben, Jack Colby, and Jim Pierce—await his arrival at the train station.

For Amy, a devout Quaker and pacifist, the solution is simple—leave town before Miller arrives—but Kane's sense of duty and honor make him stay. Besides, he says, Miller and his gang will hunt him down anyway. Amy gives Kane an ultimatum: she is leaving on the noon train, with or without him.

Kane visits with a series of old friends and allies, but none can (or will) help: Judge Percy Mettrick, who sentenced Miller, flees on horseback, and urges Kane to do the same. Kane's young deputy Harvey Pell, who is bitter that Kane did not recommend him as his successor, says he will stand with Kane only if Kane goes to the city fathers and "puts the word in" for him. When Kane refuses to do so, Pell turns in his badge.

Kane's efforts to round up a posse at Ramírez’ Saloon, and then the church, are met with fear and hostility. Some townspeople, worried that a gunfight would damage the town's reputation, urge Kane to avoid the confrontation entirely. Some are Miller's friends, but others resent that Kane cleaned up the town in the first place. Some are of the opinion that their tax money goes to support local law enforcement and the fight is not a posse's responsibility. Sam Fuller hides in his house, sending his wife Mildred to the door to tell Kane he is not home. Jimmy offers to help, but is vision impaired and drunk; Kane sends him home for his own safety. The mayor continues to encourage Kane to just leave town. Kane's predecessor, Martin Howe, cannot assist Kane, as he is too old and arthritic. Herb Baker had agreed to be deputized, but backs out when he realizes he is the only volunteer. A final offer of aid comes from 14-year-old Johnny; Kane admires the boy's courage, but refuses his help.

While waiting at the hotel for the train, Amy meets Helen Ramírez, who was once Miller's lover, then Kane's, finally Pell's, and is leaving as well. Helen tells Amy that if Kane were her man, she would not abandon him in his hour of need.

At the stables, Pell saddles a horse and tries to persuade Kane to take it. Their conversation becomes an argument, and then a fist fight. Kane finally knocks his former deputy senseless. Kane returns to his office to write out his will as the clock ticks toward noon.

Kane then goes into the street to face Miller and his gang alone. Amy and Ramirez ride by on a wagon with their luggage, traveling to the train station. Kane and Amy exchange a quick glance and then Amy stares straight ahead while passing Kane. The perspective elevates and expands to show Kane standing alone on a deserted street. The gunfight begins. As the train is about to depart, Amy hears the gunfire, leaps off, and runs back to town. Kane guns down Ben Miller and Colby, but is wounded as Miller attempts to burn Kane out of a barn. Choosing her husband's life over her religious beliefs, Amy picks up the pistol hanging inside Kane's office (it was Pell's pistol; he had hung it there when he resigned as deputy in disgust at Kane's treatment of him) and shoots Pierce from behind, leaving only Frank Miller, who grabs Amy as a human shield to force Kane into the open. When Amy claws Miller's face, he makes the mistake of pushing her to the ground, and Kane shoots him dead.

Kane helps his bride to her feet and they embrace. As the townspeople emerge and cluster around him, Kane throws his marshal's star in the dirt, glares at the crowd, and departs with Amy on their wagon.

Walter Burns is a hard-boiled editor for ''The Morning Post'' who learns his ex-wife and former star reporter, Hildegard "Hildy" Johnson, is about to marry bland insurance man Bruce Baldwin and settle down to a quiet life as a wife and mother in Albany, New York. Walter, determined to sabotage these plans, entices a reluctant Hildy to cover one last story: the upcoming execution of Earl Williams, a shy bookkeeper convicted of murdering an African-American policeman. Despite Hildy insisting that she and Bruce will be taking a night train to Albany to be married the following day, Walter attempts to convince her that she is the only one who can write a story to save a wrongly convicted Williams. Hildy eventually agrees on the condition that Walter buys a $100,000 life insurance policy from Bruce in order to receive the $1,000 commission. In the meantime, Hildy bribes the jail warden to let her interview Williams in jail. Williams explains that he shot the police officer by accident. Hildy uses economic theory to explain the murder of the cop to Williams, insisting that he shot the gun because of production for use.

Walter does everything he can to keep Hildy from leaving, first accusing Bruce of stealing a watch, forcing Hildy to bail him out of jail. Exasperated, Hildy announces her retirement from her profession; however, when Williams escapes from the bumbling sheriff and practically falls into Hildy's lap, the lure of a big scoop proves too much for her. Walter frames Bruce again, and he is immediately sent back to jail. At this point, she realizes that Walter is behind the shenanigans, yet is powerless to bail him out again. Williams comes to the press room holding a gun to Hildy and accidentally shoots a pigeon in fear. Bruce calls, and she tells him to wait because Williams is in the press room. Williams's friend Mollie comes looking for him, assuring him that she knows he is innocent. When reporters knock at the door, she hides Williams in a roll-top desk. At this time, the building is surrounded by other reporters and cops looking for Williams. Hildy's stern mother-in-law-to-be enters berating Hildy for the way she is treating Bruce. Upon being harassed for Williams's whereabouts by the reporters, Mollie jumps out of the window but survives. Annoyed, Walter has his colleague "Diamond Louie" remove Mrs. Baldwin from the room temporarily. Hildy wants to try to get Bruce out of jail, but Walter convinces her to focus on her breakthrough story.

Bruce comes into the press room having wired Albany for his bail asking about the whereabouts of his mother, as Hildy is frantically typing out her story. She is so consumed with writing the story that she hardly notices as Bruce realizes his cause is hopeless and leaves to return to Albany on the 9:00PM train. A disheveled Louie returns, revealing that he had hit a police car while driving away with Mrs. Baldwin and is unsure whether or not she survived in the accident.

Meanwhile, the crooked mayor and sheriff need the publicity from the execution to keep their jobs in an upcoming election, so when a messenger brings them a reprieve from the governor, they try to bribe the man to go away and return later, when it will be too late.

Walter and Hildy find out in time to save Williams from the gallows and they use the information to blackmail the mayor and sheriff into dropping Walter's arrest for kidnapping Mrs. Baldwin. Hildy receives one last call from Bruce, again in jail because of having counterfeit money that was unknowingly transferred to him by Hildy from Walter. Hildy breaks down and admits to Walter that she was afraid that Walter was going to let her marry Bruce without a fight. Walter and Hildy send money to bail Bruce out of jail.

Afterwards, Walter asks Hildy to remarry him, and promises to take her on the honeymoon they never had in Niagara Falls. Then Walter learns that there is a newsworthy strike in Albany, which is on the way to Niagara Falls by train. Hildy agrees to honeymoon in Albany, accepting that Walter will never change.

As the film begins, a man is shown hitchhiking and being picked up by a succession of people whom he subsequently robs and kills. A suspect, Emmett Myers (Talman), is publicized in newspaper headlines.

Two friends, Roy Collins (O'Brien) and Gilbert Bowen (Lovejoy) are driving in southern California toward a planned fishing trip in the Mexican town of San Felipe on the Gulf of California. Just south of Mexicali, they pick up Myers, who pulls a gun and takes them hostage.

Myers forces them to journey over dirt roads into the Baja California Peninsula toward Santa Rosalía, where he plans to take a ferry across the Gulf of California to Guaymas.

Myers terrorizes and humiliates the two men, at one point forcing Bowen, standing a long distance away, to shoot a tin can out of Collins' hand. One night during their one attempt to escape, Collins hurts his ankle.

When the car is damaged, Myers forces them to continue on foot despite Collins' injury. Myers ridicules the two men for missing opportunities to escape for fear the other might be killed. He boasts, "You can get anything at the end of a gun."

Police in the U.S. and Mexico are hunting Myers, and authorities know that he has abducted the two men, who hear this on the radio. They understand that their lives are in danger. To mislead Myers, the police purposely alter information to suggest they think he is still in the United States.

Arriving at Santa Rosalía, Myers tries to conceal his identity by forcing Collins to wear his clothes. Discovering the regular ferry to Guaymas has burned, he hires a fishing boat. A local resident discovers his identity and contacts authorities, who are waiting at the pier. After a shootout and scuffle, Myers is arrested and Collins and Bowen are freed unharmed.