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In Los Angeles, Lt. Parker Barnes and John Donovan are tracking down a serial killer named SID 6.7 at a restaurant in virtual reality. SID (short for Sadistic, Intelligent, Dangerous - a VR amalgam of the most violent serial killers throughout history) causes Donovan to go into shock, killing him. The director overseeing the project, before Commissioner Elizabeth Deane and her associate, William Wallace, orders the programmer in charge of creating SID, Dr. Darrel Lindenmeyer, to shut down the project. Barnes is a former police officer imprisoned for killing political terrorist Matthew Grimes, who killed Parker's wife and daughter. Barnes killed Grimes and innocent bystanders. This caused him to become a convicted killer and serve 17 years to life. Barnes meets with criminal psychologist Dr. Madison Carter following a fight that Barnes and another prisoner, Big Red, got into. Meanwhile, Lindenmeyer tells SID that he is about to be shut down because of the fail-safe being tampered with. At SID's suggestion, Lindenmeyer convinces another employee, Clyde Reilly that a virtual reality prostitute, Shelia 3.2, another project created by Lindenmeyer, can be brought to life. Lindenmeyer replaces the Shelia 3.2 module with the SID 6.7 module. SID 6.7, now processed into the real world, kills Reilly. Once word of SID being in the real world gets out, Deane and Los Angeles Police Department Chief William Cochran offer Barnes a deal: if he catches SID and brings him back to virtual reality, he will be released. Barnes agrees, and with help from Carter, they discover that Matthew Grimes, the terrorist that killed Barnes's wife and daughter, is a part of SID 6.7's personality profile. After killing a group of security guards, SID heads over to the Media Zone, a local nightclub, where he takes hostages. Barnes and Carter go to the nightclub to stop him, but SID escapes. The next day, SID begins a killing spree at the Los Angeles Olympic Auditorium. Barnes arrives at the Stadium to capture SID, and finds him on a train, where another hostage is being held by SID. However, Barnes seemingly kills the hostage in front of a bunch of horrified witnesses. Carter having caught up with Barnes after the incident, tries to prove Barnes's innocence, but Barnes is sent back to prison. Barnes is freed from his prisoner transport by SID, who once again escapes. Wallace and Deane are about to have Barnes terminated via a fail-safe transmitter implanted in him but Cochran destroys the transmitter after being told by Carter that Barnes didn't kill the hostage on the train. However, SID kidnaps Carter's daughter Karin and takes over a television studio. Lindenmeyer, having come out of hiding, sees what SID is doing and is impressed, but later held hostage by Carter. Barnes ultimately destroys SID, but is unable to learn where he hid Karin. They place SID back in VR to trick the location out of him. When SID discovers that he is back in virtual reality he goes into a rage. Cochran lets Carter out of VR, but Lindenmeyer kills Cochran before he can release Barnes. Barnes starts to go into the same shock that Donovan suffered, but Carter kills Lindenmeyer, and saves Barnes. Barnes and Carter return to the building that SID took over in the real world, and save Karin from a booby trap set up by SID. After Karin is saved, Barnes destroys the SID 6.7 module.

The beginning of the movie shows icemen harvesting ice. A young boy named Kristoff and his pet reindeer, Sven, is among them ("Frozen Heart"). Elsa, Princess of Arendelle, possesses cryokinetic powers, with which she is able to produce or manipulate ice, frost and snow at will. One night while playing, she accidentally injures her younger sister, Anna. Their shocked parents, the king and queen, seek help from the troll king, who heals Anna and removes her memories of Elsa's magic. The royal couple isolate the sisters in the castle until Elsa learns to control her magical powers. Afraid of hurting Anna again, and with her ability to control her powers deteriorating, Elsa spends most of her time alone in her room, refusing even to speak to Anna and a rift develops between the sisters as they grow up; when the girls are teenagers, their parents die at sea during a storm ("Do You Want to Build a Snowman?"). When Elsa comes of age, the kingdom prepares for her coronation ("For the First Time in Forever"). Among the guests is the Duke of Weselton, who seeks to exploit Arendelle for profit. Excited to be allowed out of the castle again, Princess Anna explores the town and meets Prince Hans of the Southern Isles; the two quickly develop a mutual attraction. Despite Elsa's fears, her coronation takes place without incident. During the reception, Hans proposes to Anna, who hastily accepts ("Love Is An Open Door"). However, Elsa refuses to grant her blessing and forbids their sudden marriage. The sisters argue, culminating in the exposure of Elsa's abilities in an emotional outburst. Declared a monster by the Duke, a panicking Elsa flees the castle, while inadvertently unleashing an eternal winter on the kingdom. High in the nearby mountains, she abandons her restraint, vowing to never return and building herself a solitary ice palace ("Let It Go"). Meanwhile, Anna leaves Hans in charge of Arendelle and sets out in search of her sister, determined to return her to Arendelle, end the winter and mend their relationship. While obtaining supplies from 'Wandering Oaken's Trading Post and Sauna', Anna meets Kristoff and Sven ("Reindeers Are Better Than People"). She convinces Kristoff to guide her up the North Mountain. On their journey, the group encounters Olaf, Anna and Elsa's childhood snowman whom the latter recreated and unknowingly brought to life. Olaf dreams of seeing and experiencing summer for the first time ("In Summer"). He then leads them to Elsa's hideaway. Anna and Elsa reunite, but Elsa still fears hurting her sister. When Anna insists that Elsa return, she becomes agitated and her powers lash out, accidentally striking Anna in the heart ("For the First Time In Forever (Reprise)"). Horrified, Elsa forces Anna, Kristoff and Olaf to leave by creating a giant snow creature named Marshmallow that chases them away from her palace. As they flee, Kristoff becomes concerned when he sees Anna's hair turning white. He seeks help from the trolls, his adoptive family, who explain that Anna's heart has been frozen by Elsa ("Fixer Upper"), and that unless it can be thawed by an "act of true love", she will become frozen solid forever. Believing that only Hans can save her with a true love's kiss, Kristoff races back with her to Arendelle. Hans, who is himself leading a search for Anna, reaches Elsa's palace. In the ensuing battle against the duke's men, Elsa is knocked unconscious by a falling chandelier and imprisoned in Arendelle. There, Hans pleads with her to undo the winter, but Elsa confesses that she has no idea how. When Anna reunites with Hans and begs him to kiss her to break the curse, Hans refuses and reveals that his true intention in marrying her is to seize control of Arendelle's throne. Leaving Anna to die, he charges Elsa with treason for her younger sister's apparent death. Elsa escapes and heads out into the blizzard on the fjord. Olaf comes across Anna and reveals Kristoff is in love with her; they then escape onto the fjord to find him. Hans confronts Elsa, telling her Anna is dead because of her. In Elsa's despair, the storm suddenly ceases, giving Kristoff and Anna the chance to locate each other. Nevertheless, Anna, seeing that Hans is about to kill Elsa, throws herself between the two just as she freezes solid, blocking Hans' attack. As Elsa grieves for her sister, Anna begins to thaw, since her decision to sacrifice herself to save her sister constitutes an "act of true love". Realizing love is the key to controlling her powers, Elsa thaws the kingdom and gives Olaf his own personal flurry so he can survive in summer. Hans is deported to the Southern Isles to face punishment for his crimes against the royal family of Arendelle, while Elsa cuts off trade with Weselton. The two sisters reconcile and Elsa promises never to shut the castle gates again.

Fred Neville, a lieutenant of cavalry and heir to the earldom of Scroope, woos and then seduces the beautiful Kate O’Hara. Kate lives with her mother in genteel poverty in an isolated cottage near the cliffs of Moher in western Ireland. News of the romantic entanglement quickly reaches Scroope Manor, and Fred is summoned back to Dorsetshire where the earl extracts a firm undertaking that Fred will not marry Kate O’Hara under any circumstances, despite any promises he has made to the girl. Once back in Ireland, Fred is confronted at his barracks by Mrs. O’Hara, demanding to know when he intends to marry her daughter, who is carrying his baby. He is shamed into agreeing to visit Kate, but that evening word arrives that the old Earl has died, and that Fred is now the Earl of Scroope. Fred realizes that marriage to Kate O’Hara is out of the question as her background would make her quite unacceptable in society. He resolves to confront Mrs. O’Hara and her unfortunate daughter. The climax of the novel takes place between the young earl and Mrs. O’Hara on the cliffs above the cottage. Whilst acknowledging the promises he made to Kate, Fred steadfastly refuses to make her Countess of Scroope. A frenzied Mrs. O’Hara attacks the lord, driving him backwards over the cliff edge to his death. Realizing she has killed the man her daughter loves, she instantly falls insane. Fred Neville’s brother, Jack, inherits the earldom and pays for Mrs. O’Hara’s incarceration in an English mental asylum where she endlessly repeats the words “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. Is it not the law?”

Annie "Daisy" Miller and Frederick Winterbourne first meet in Vevey, Switzerland, in a garden of the grand hotel where Winterbourne is allegedly vacationing from his studies (an attachment to an older lady is rumoured). They are introduced by Randolph Miller, Daisy's 9-year-old brother. Randolph considers their hometown of Schenectady, New York, to be absolutely superior to all of Europe. Daisy, however, is absolutely delighted with the continent, especially the high society she wishes to enter. Winterbourne is at first confused by her attitude, and though greatly impressed by her beauty, he soon determines that she is nothing more than a young flirt. He continues his pursuit of Daisy in spite of the disapproval of his aunt, Mrs. Costello, who spurns any family with so close a relationship to their courier as the Millers have with their Eugenio. She also thinks Daisy is a shameless girl for agreeing to visit the Ch창teau de Chillon with Winterbourne after they have known each other for only half an hour. The next day, the two travel to Ch창teau de Chillon and although Winterbourne had paid the janitor for privacy, Daisy is not quite impressed. Winterbourne then informs Daisy that he must go to Geneva the next day. Daisy feels disappointment and chaffs him, eventually asking him to visit her in Rome later that year. In Rome, Winterbourne and Daisy meet unexpectedly in the parlor of Mrs. Walker, an American expatriate. Her moral values have adapted to those of Italian society. Rumors about Daisy meeting with young Italian gentlemen make her socially exceptionable under these criteria. Winterbourne learns of Daisy's increasing intimacy with a young Italian of questionable society, Giovanelli, as well as the growing scandal caused by the pair's behavior. Daisy is undeterred by the open disapproval of the other Americans in Rome, and her mother seems quite unaware of the underlying tensions. Winterbourne and Mrs. Walker attempt to persuade Daisy to separate from Giovanelli, but she refuses any help that is offered. One night, Winterbourne takes a walk through the Colosseum and sees a young couple sitting at its center. He realizes that they are Giovanelli and Daisy. Winterbourne, infuriated with Giovanelli, asks him how he could dare to take Daisy to a place where she runs the risk of catching "Roman Fever". Daisy says she does not care and Winterbourne leaves them. Daisy falls ill and dies a few days later.

McTeague is a dentist of limited intellect from a poor miner's family, who has opened a dentist shop on Polk Street in San Francisco. (His first name is never revealed; other characters in the novel call him simply "Mac".) His best friend, Marcus Schouler, brings his cousin, Trina Sieppe, whom he is courting, to McTeague's parlor for dental work. McTeague becomes infatuated with her while working on her teeth, and Marcus graciously steps aside. McTeague successfully woos Trina. Shortly after McTeague and Trina have kissed and declared their love for each other, Trina discovers that she has won $15,000 from a lottery ticket. In the ensuing celebration Trina's mother, Mrs Sieppe, announces that McTeague and Trina are to marry. Marcus becomes jealous of McTeague, and claims that he has been cheated out of money that would have been rightfully his if he had married Trina. The marriage takes place, and Mrs Sieppe, along with the rest of Trina's family, move away from San Francisco, leaving her alone with McTeague. Trina proves to be a parsimonious wife; she refuses to touch the principal of her $15,000, which she invests with her uncle. She insists that she and McTeague must live on the earnings from McTeague's dental practice, the small income from the $15,000 investment, and the bit of money she earns from carving small wooden figures of Noah's animals and his Ark for sale in her uncle's shop. Secretly, she accumulates penny-pinched savings in a locked trunk. Though the couple are happy, the friendship between Marcus and Mac deteriorates. More than once the two men come to grips; each time McTeague's immense physical strength prevails, and eventually he breaks Marcus' arm in a fight. When Marcus recovers, he goes south, intending to become a rancher; before he leaves, he visits the McTeagues, and he and Mac part apparently as friends. Catastrophe strikes when McTeague is debarred from practising dentistry by the authorities; it becomes clear that before leaving, Marcus has taken revenge on Mac by informing city hall that he has no license or degree. McTeague loses his practice and the couple are forced to move into successively poorer quarters as Trina becomes more and more miserly. Their life together deteriorates until McTeague takes all Trina's domestic savings (amounting to $400 or roughly $10,000 in 2010 values) and abandons her. Meanwhile, Trina falls completely under the spell of money and withdraws the principal of her prior winnings in gold from her uncle's firm so she can admire and handle the coins in her room, at one point spreading them over her bed and rolling around in them. When McTeague returns, destitute once more, she refuses to give him money even for food. Aggravated and made violent by whisky, McTeague beats her to death. He takes the entire hoard of gold and heads out to a mining community that he had left years before. Sensing pursuit, he makes his way south towards Mexico; meanwhile, Marcus hears of the murder and joins the hunt for McTeague, finally catching him in Death Valley. In the middle of the desert Marcus and McTeague fight over McTeague's remaining water and, when that is lost and they are already doomed, over Trina's $15,000. McTeague kills Marcus, but as he dies, Marcus handcuffs himself to McTeague. The final, dramatic image of the novel is one of McTeague stranded, alone and helpless. He is left with only the company of Marcus's corpse, to whom he is handcuffed, in the desolate, arid waste of Death Valley.

The play is set in Dijon in Burgundy in the later part of the fifteenth century, in the aftermath of the battles of Grandson, Morat (both 1476) and Nancy (1477), all mentioned in Act I, scene ii. The protagonist's father, the elder Charalois, was a general who had gone into debt to pay the expenses of his troops; unable to repay those charges, he died in debtor's prison, and his rapacious creditors refuse to release his body for a proper burial. The general's son has taken his cause to court, but his suit is rejected by the judges, led by the hostile Novall Senior, president of the Dijon parlement. The younger Charalois amazes everyone by offering to assume his father's debts and take his place in prison, thus freeing his father's corpse. A retiring judge named Rochmont is impressed by Charalois' courage, virtue, and self-sacrifice, and decides to pay the general's debts himself. Rochmont has an only daughter named Beaumelle; she is the centre of a set of fashionable and foppish young people, featuring the aristocratic Novall Junior and his hangers-on. Beaumelle's waiting-woman, Bellapert, is a cynical sensualist who tempts her mistress with the idea of marrying to enjoy sexual indulgence with many illicit lovers. Beaumelle's father is so taken with Charalois that he arranges a marriage between the young man and his daughter. Novall Junior is irate about the marriage, since he has lost his chance of taking Beaumelle's virginity; but Bellapert assures him that the marriage will work to his advantage. Others, including Charalois' friend Romont, perceive the growing intimacy of Novall Junior and Beaumelle, and try to warn the parties involved—without success. Eventually, Beaumelle consummates her incipient affair with Novall Junior—and Charalois walks in upon them, catching them in the act. Charalois challenges his wife's lover; Novall Junior attempts to avoid the duel, but in the end he fights with Charalois, and is killed. Charalois stages a mock trial, with his father-in-law Rochmont as the judge. Rochmont, even in his emotional turmoil, hears Charalois' accusation and Beaumelle's confession, and sentences her to death. Charalois stabs her; Beaumelle dies. Novall Senior discovers his son's death, and has Charalois arrested and prosecuted. Charalois defends himself before the court, and wins an acquittal. One of Novall Junior's followers, however, is an ex-soldier named Pontalier who was redeemed from debtor's prison by the judge's son; repaying that favour, Pontalier stabs and kills Charalois in the court, and in turn is stabbed and killed by Romont.

In 1988, following a 400% increase in crime, the United States Government has turned Manhattan into a giant maximum-security prison. A 50-foot (15 m) containment wall surrounds the island and routes out of Manhattan have been dismantled or mined, while armed helicopters patrol the rivers. In 1997, while travelling to a peace summit between the United States, China and the Soviet Union, Air Force One is hijacked by a terrorist. The President is given a security bracelet, and has a briefcase (containing an audiotape describing a powerful new bomb) handcuffed to his wrist. He makes it to an escape pod, and lands in Manhattan just before Air Force One crashes, killing everyone else aboard. Police officers are dispatched to rescue the President. However, Romero, the right-hand man of the Duke of New York, the top crime boss in the prison, warns them that the Duke has taken the President hostage, and that he will be killed if the police mount any further rescue attempts. Police Commissioner Bob Hauk offers a deal to "Snake" Plissken, a former Special Forces soldier convicted of attempting to rob the Federal Reserve in Denver, Colorado: if Snake rescues the President and retrieves the cassette tape, Hauk will arrange a presidential pardon. To ensure his compliance, Hauk has him injected with explosives that will rupture Snake's carotid arteries within 22 hours; if Snake returns with the President and the tape in time, Hauk will neutralize the explosives. Snake is sent into Manhattan in a stealth glider, landing atop the World Trade Center. He tracks the President's life-monitor bracelet to a vaudeville theatre, only to find it on the wrist of an old man. He meets "Cabbie," who takes Snake in his armored taxi cab to Harold "Brain" Hellman, an advisor to the Duke based in the New York Public Library. Brain tells Snake that the Duke plans to unify the gangs in a mass exodus across the heavily-guarded Queensboro Bridge, using the President as a human shield and a map Brain has created to avoid the mines. Snake forces Brain and his girlfriend Maggie to lead him to the Duke's compound at Grand Central Station. He finds the President and tries to free him, but is captured by the Duke's men. While Snake is forced to fight to the death with Slag, a prisoner, Brain and Maggie trick Romero into letting them see the President, killing him and fleeing with the President. As Snake kills Slag, the Duke learns of Brain's treachery and rallies his gang to chase them down. Snake, Brain, Maggie, and the President attempt to use Snake's glider to escape from New York. After a group of crazies destroy it, the group returns to the street and encounters Cabbie, who offers to take them across the bridge. When Cabbie reveals that he has the secret tape (having traded it to Romero earlier for his hat), the President demands it, but Snake keeps it. With the Duke chasing in another car, the cab is blown in half by a mine and Cabbie is killed. As they flee on foot, Brain is killed when he steps on another mine. Maggie refuses to leave him, and shoots repeatedly at the Duke; he runs her over. Snake and the President reach the wall and the guards raise the President on a rope. The Duke kills the guards and attacks Snake, but the President, now armed atop the wall, gleefully shoots the Duke dead. Snake is lifted to safety and the implanted explosives are deactivated with seconds to spare. As the President prepares for a televised speech to the leaders at the summit meeting, he thanks Snake for saving him. Snake asks how he feels about the people who died saving his life, but the President only offers halfhearted regret. Hauk offers Snake a job, but Snake walks away. The President's speech commences, and he offers the contents of the cassette; to his embarrassment, the tape is Cabbie's cassette of the swing song "Bandstand Boogie". As Snake walks away, he tears the magnetic tape out of the real cassette.

A tornado sweeps through the plains of Kansas, lifting Dorothy and Toto. The two tumble into Oz, landing on the Scarecrow. After freeing him from his pole, the trio stroll together, soon finding a Tin Woodman and oiling him. After the four watch mating rituals of various animals set to strains of Camille Saint-SaĂŤns's "The Swan", they are welcomed into the Emerald City. Suits of armor sing to them, "Hail to the Wizard of Oz! To the Wizard of Oz we lead the way!" A creature resembling the A-B-Sea Serpent of The Royal Book of Oz extends itself as stairsteps for Dorothy to enter the coach. The Wizard is a cackling white-bearded man in a starry black robe and conical hat who produces custom seats for each of the four nervous travelers, including one for Toto (the Toto chair is mostly cut out of the frame in most video versions, but is later shown in a full shot of Toto sitting). He proceeds to perform magic with a hen and eggs. These are variations on simple sleight of hand tricks involving making objects appear, but the hen is able to take the eggs back into her body. Finally, the hen releases an egg that will not stop growing. The five try to fight it, with the Tin Woodman breaking his axe. Soon, though, the egg hatches, the hen takes the chick, and clucks out "Rock-a-bye Baby" as a chorus joins her. The five laugh, and the film ends on an iris-in of mother and child.

In 1936, archaeologist Indiana Jones braves an ancient booby-trapped temple in Peru and retrieves a golden idol. He is confronted by rival archaeologist RenĂŠ Belloq and the indigenous Hovito people. Surrounded and outnumbered, Indy surrenders the idol to Belloq and escapes aboard a waiting floatplane. Jones returns to his teaching position at Marshall College, where he is interviewed by two Army Intelligence agents. They inform him that the Nazis are searching for his old mentor, Abner Ravenwood, under whom Jones studied at the University of Chicago. The Nazis know that Ravenwood is the leading expert on the ancient city of Tanis in Egypt, and that he possesses the headpiece of the Staff of Ra. Jones deduces that the Nazis are searching for the Ark of the Covenant; the Nazis believe that if they acquire the Ark their armies will become invincible. The Staff of Ra is the key to finding the Well of Souls, a secret chamber in which the Ark is buried. The agents authorize Jones to recover the Ark to prevent the Nazis from obtaining it. He travels to Nepal and discovers that Abner has died, and the headpiece is in the possession of Ravenwood's daughter Marion. Jones visits Marion at her tavern, where she reveals her bitter feelings toward him from a previous romantic affair. She physically rebuffs his offer to buy the headpiece, and Jones leaves. Shortly after, a group of thugs arrive with their Nazi commander, Arnold Toht. Toht threatens Marion to get the headpiece, but when Jones returns to the bar to fight the Nazis and save Marion, her bar is accidentally set on fire; during the fight, the headpiece ends up in the fire and Toht severely burns his hand trying to take the hot headpiece, and flees the tavern screaming. Indy and Marion escape with the headpiece, and Marion decides to accompany Indy in his search for the Ark so he can repay his debt to her. The pair travels to Cairo, where they meet up with Indy's friend Sallah, a skilled excavator. Sallah informs them that Belloq and the Nazis are digging for the Well of Souls with a replica of the headpiece (created from the scar on Toht's hand). They quickly realize the Nazi headpiece is incomplete and that the Nazis are digging in the wrong place. The Nazis kidnap Marion and it appears to Jones that she is killed in an exploding truck. After a confrontation with Belloq in a local bar, Indy and Sallah infiltrate the Nazi dig site and use their staff to correctly locate the Ark. Indy discovers Marion is alive, bound and gagged in a tent, but does not release her for fear of blowing his cover. Indy, Sallah, and a small group of diggers unearth the Well of Souls and acquire the Ark. Belloq and Nazi officer Colonel Dietrich arrive, seize the Ark from Jones, throwing Marion into the Well of Souls with him before sealing it back up. Jones and Marion escape to a local airstrip, where Jones has a fistfight with a Nazi mechanic and destroys the flying wing that was to transport the Ark to Berlin. The panicked Nazis remove the Ark in a truck and set off for Cairo, but Jones catches them and retakes it. He makes arrangements to take the Ark to London aboard a tramp steamer. The next day, a Nazi U-boat appears and intercepts the ship. Belloq and Dietrich seize the Ark and Marion but cannot locate Jones, who stows away aboard the boat and travels with them to an island in the Aegean Sea. Once there, Belloq plans to test the power of the Ark before presenting it to Hitler. Jones reveals himself and threatens to destroy the Ark with a panzerfaust, but Belloq calls his bluff and Jones surrenders rather than destroy such an important historical artifact. The Nazis take Indy and Marion to an area where the Ark will be opened and tie them to a post to observe. Belloq performs a ceremonial opening of the Ark, which appears to contain nothing but sand, all that remains of the Ten Commandments. Suddenly, angelic ghost-like beings emerge from the Ark. Indy cautions Marion to keep her eyes closed and not to observe what happens next. Belloq and the others look on in astonishment as the apparitions are suddenly revealed to be angels of death. A vortex of flame forms above the Ark and shoots bolts of fiery energy into the gathered Nazi soldiers, killing them all. As Belloq, Toht and Dietrich all scream in terror, the Ark turns its fury on them: Dietrich's head shrivels up, Toht's face is melted off his skull and Belloq's head explodes. Flames then engulf the remains of the doomed assembly, save for Indy and Marion, and the pillar of fire rises into the sky. The Ark's lid is blasted high into the air before dropping back down onto the Ark and sealing it. Jones and Marion find their ropes burned off and embrace. In Washington, D.C., the Army Intelligence agents inform Jones and Marcus Brody that the Ark is someplace safe and will be studied by "top men". The Ark is shown being stored in a giant government warehouse among countless similar crates.

Tommy Stubbins, the narrator of the story, finds an squirrel injured by a hawk so the mussel man informs him to get help from Doctor Dolittle. Tommy goes to Mathew Mugg to find out where the doctor lives who tells him that the Doctor can speak the language of animals so they go to his house but find out he's gone away on a voyage and is guarded by the his dog Jip. Later the Doctor comes home to meet Tommy and takes care of his squirrel then explains when Tommy see's a strange fish creature in his house that it's a Wiff-Waff and is trying to learn shellfish language but eventually he quits it as it is too hard to study. Unexpectedly Polynesia turns up in Puddleby from Africa who imforms the Doctor that Bumpo is studying in Bullford then Tommy gets the Doctor, with the help of Poynesia, to teach him the animal languages. After Polynesia teaches Tommy the language of animals, so he can understand Jip and Dub-Dub, Chee-Chee comes from Africa disguised as a lady and tells about his voyage to Puddleby. The Doctor then gets a vessel called The Curlew and is thinking of taking Tommy, Polynesia, and Luke the Hermit. They find out from the hermit's dog, Bob, that he was sent to prison for murder but Bob is a witness so when the court is in process the Doctor proves to the judge that he can talk to animals, when this is settled he translates Bob's story to english. When the story is finished the judges conclude that the hermit is innocent. Later the Purple Bird of Paradise informs the Doctor that Long Arrow, son of Golden Arrow, who is a friend of the Doctor, is missing so after they play the game Blind Travel, which would determine where in the world they would voyage, they decide to take a trip to Spider Monkey Island to find Long Arrow. The Doctor, Tommy, Bumpo, Polynesia and Mathew start the voyage across the sea but on the way they discover some stowaways and drop them off at the coast off Puddleby. Their first stop is Spain where a bullfight is in process so the Doctor makes a deal with the bullfighters that if he can beat them in a fight they would agree to stop bullfighting ever again. The Doctor talks to the bulls and they agreed to stick to the plan to make everyone think that he outwitted them. When the fight is over and the doctor wins against the other bullfighters the people protest because of bullfighting being banned. When the doctor and his crew set off again the Doctor shows Tommy he has caught a fidgit that talks english so he consults it and finds out that to go underwater deeper to observe the ocean is to find the Pink Sea Snail. Afterwards there is a storm which wrecks the ship leaving Tommy alone without anyone in sight then the Purple Bird of Paradise tells him that his friends are on Spider Monkey Island so with the help of the porpoises Tommy reaches the island and the crew. The doctor finds out from catching a Jabizri, a rare beetle, that Long Arrow is stuck inside Hawk's Head Mountain so they try to find an opening but fail so they use the Jabizri to locate it. When the find a slab in the mountain they dig under it until it collapses and Long Arrow is free. The Doctor finds out from the people of the island that the island is going southward and is going to perish so the doctor gets some whales to push the island back to South America. After this the Doctor is told by the Popsipetels, the people of the island, that they will be attacked soon by their rivals the Bag-jagderags so the Doctor uses the birds of the island as well as the Popsipetels to battle them. The Doctor and his army win but the people then decide after so much he did for them that they would crown him king of their island. So for many months the doctor rules the island and makes good changes for the Popsipetels and everything as he stays king. One day though Polynesia spots the Pink Sea Snail so she and Tommy tell the Doctor about it which makes him interested in speaking shellfish language again. He talks to the Pink Sea Snail and learns that it is because of the island colliding with South America that it ends up on the shores of Spider Monkey Island so the Doctor asks the snail to take him in his shell with his crew back to England. The Doctor abandons Spider Monkey Island and sets off with Polynesia, Tommy, Mathew, Chee-Chee and Jip and makes his journey through the ocean in the shell of the Pink Sea Snail. When they come back to England the Doctor and his crew go back to Puddleby in the doctor's house and Dub-Dub says they are just in time for tea.

In Democracy and Education, Dewey argues that the primary ineluctable facts of the birth and death of each one of the constituent members in a social group determine the necessity of education. On one hand, there is the contrast between the immaturity of the new-born members of the group (its future sole representatives) and the maturity of the adult members who possess the knowledge and customs of the group. On the other hand, there is the necessity that these immature members be not merely physically preserved in adequate numbers, but that they be initiated into the interests, purposes, information, skill, and practices of the mature members: otherwise the group will cease its characteristic life. Dewey observes that even in a "savage" tribe, the achievements of adults are far beyond what the immature members would be capable of if left to themselves. With the growth of civilization, the gap between the original capacities of the immature and the standards and customs of the elders increases. Mere physical growing up and mastery of the bare necessities of subsistence will not suffice to reproduce the life of the group. Deliberate effort and the taking of thoughtful pains are required. Beings who are born not only unaware of, but quite indifferent to, the aims and habits of the social group have to be rendered cognizant of them and actively interested. According to Dewey, education, and education alone, spans the gap.

In Edwardian era London, Gabriel Syme is recruited at Scotland Yard to a secret anti-anarchist police corps. Lucian Gregory, an anarchistic poet, lives in the suburb of Saffron Park. Syme meets him at a party and they debate the meaning of poetry. Gregory argues that revolt is the basis of poetry. Syme demurs, insisting the essence of poetry is not revolution but law. He antagonises Gregory by asserting that the most poetical of human creations is the timetable for the London Underground. He suggests Gregory isn't really serious about anarchism, which so irritates Gregory that he takes Syme to an underground anarchist meeting place, revealing his public endorsement of anarchy is a ruse to make him seem harmless, when in fact he is an influential member of the local chapter of the European anarchist council. The central council consists of seven men, each using the name of a day of the week as a cover name; the position of Thursday is about to be elected by Gregory's local chapter. Gregory expects to win the election but just before, Syme reveals to Gregory after an oath of secrecy, that he is a secret policeman. Fearful Syme may use his speech in evidence of a prosecution, Gregory's weakened words fail to convince the local chapter that he is sufficiently dangerous for the job. Syme makes a rousing anarchist speech and wins the vote. He is sent immediately as the chapter's delegate to the central council. In his efforts to thwart the council, Syme eventually discovers that the other five members are also undercover detectives; each was employed just as mysteriously and assigned to defeat the Council. They soon find out they were fighting each other and not real anarchists; such was the mastermind plan of their president, Sunday. In a surreal conclusion, Sunday is unmasked as only seeming to be terrible; in fact, he is a force of good like the detectives. Sunday is unable to give an answer to the question of why he caused so much trouble and pain for the detectives. Gregory, the only real anarchist, seems to challenge the good council. His accusation is that they, as rulers, have never suffered like Gregory and their other subjects and so their power is illegitimate. Syme refutes the accusation immediately, because of the terrors inflicted by Sunday on the rest of the council. The dream ends when Sunday is asked if he has ever suffered. His last words, "can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?", is the question Jesus asks St. James and St. John in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 10, vs 38–39, to challenge their commitment in becoming his disciples.

On a cold day the fictional 304th New York Regiment awaits battle beside a river. Eighteen-year-old 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. 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 joins a retreating column that is in disarray. In the ensuing 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: It rained. The procession of weary soldiers became a bedraggled train, despondent and muttering, marching with churning effort in a trough of liquid brown mud under a low, wretched sky. Yet the youth smiled, for he saw that the world was a world for him, though many discovered it to be made of oaths and walking sticks. He had rid himself of the red sickness of battle. The sultry nightmare was in the past. He had been an animal blistered and sweating in the heat and pain of war. He turned now with a lover's thirst to images of tranquil skies, fresh meadows, cool brooks, an existence of soft and eternal peace. Over the river a golden ray of sun came through the hosts of leaden rain clouds.

Mini Drogues (Nikki Reed) is a clever and adventurous high school senior who is bored with her life. Mini prizes her "unique experiences" (she calls them "firsts"). For excitement, and to add to her list of firsts, Mini decides to try being a call girl. Her first client, however, has a guilty conscience and can't carry through with the act, which disappoints Mini. Her second client is decidedly more exciting: her stepfather Martin (Alec Baldwin). Martin is initially shocked when he learns of her identity (he initially blindfolded himself during intercourse as per Mini's request), but soon a torrid love affair blossoms between the two. In order to be together, Mini and Martin concoct a plan to have Mini's mother Diane (Carrie-Anne Moss) declared insane. When their plan fails, Mini convinces Martin to murder Diane, despite his initial resistance to the idea. They attempt to make it appear that Diane committed suicide, but they soon attract the attention of a detective (Luke Wilson) who believes that Mini and Martin killed her. A nosy neighbor, Mike (Jeff Goldblum), is sexually obsessed with Mini, and when Martin learns that Mini had gone to Mike's house and had received sexual pictures from him, he and Mike get into a fight. Mini arrives to find Martin standing over the neighbor, ready to beat him into unconsciousness, and when the police arrive they arrest Martin. Mini visits Martin in jail and admits that the sexual pictures sent were actually from her in order to get Martin to think that the neighbor sent them. She also reveals that she assumed the police would eventually believe he killed Diane (since he was the more likely perpetrator). Mini, therefore, ends up getting away with murder, and inherits her mother's fortune. The film ends with Mini giving a valedictorian speech, even though she is a C student; the school gave her straight A's out of sympathy for her mother's death. She offers advice to the graduating class about how to live a good life, that perversely alludes to her crimes without making her look too suspicious. The detective is present at the speech, clearly still suspicious of Mini, but knowing that he will probably never be able to prove that she was guilty of murdering her mother.

Barbara Lang paints a barrier around her living room to protect her telekinetic daughter, Rachel, from the devil. Barbara is soon institutionalized for schizophrenia. Years later Rachel, living with foster parents, talks with her best friend Lisa, who has lost her virginity to Eric, a football player. The football players have a game where they sleep with girls and receive points, revealing Eric never cared for Lisa. After Eric rejects her, Lisa commits suicide. Rachel discovers a photo of Lisa and Eric. She tells school counselor Sue Snell and Sheriff Kelton that Lisa and Eric slept together. Kelton looks into charging Eric with statutory rape. Walter, Rachel's dog, is struck by a car, but Rachel flags down Jesse as he drives past. After taking Walter to an animal hospital, they get coffee. Learning that Rachel gave Kelton the photograph, Eric, Mark, and several other football players attempt to intimidate her into not talking. They become victims of her powers and flee when her foster parents arrive. Sue meets with Rachel. When Sue asks about moving objects with her mind, Rachel screams, and a snow globe on Sue's desk shatters; Sue realizes Rachel is telekinetic. Sue brings Rachel to the original high school where the disaster took place years before and tells Rachel that Barbara revealed to her that Rachel and Carrie White had the same father; to protect her, she did not tell Rachel. Rachel does not believe her. Jesse pursues Rachel, angering popular cheerleader Tracy. Jesse convinces Rachel he was unaware of her attack, and Rachel agrees to date him. The Senior D.A. covers up the statutory rape because of the political influence of the families of the players. Encouraged, Mark plots to humiliate Rachel for what she did to Eric. He apologizes to Jesse and offers his parents' cabin so Jesse can spend the night with Rachel. The two share a romantic evening, and Rachel loses her virginity, both unaware that a hidden video camera is filming them. After a football game, one of the players, Brad, and his girlfriend Monica invite Rachel to a party at Mark's. She leaves with Monica, while Jesse is sidetracked by Tracy, who attempts to seduce him. Rachel is with Jesse's friends when the football players reveal their sex game and claim that Rachel was added to Jesse's list, making Rachel believe Jesse never cared for her. They also play the videotape and abuse her. As it triggers Rachel's telekinesis, she closes the doors and kills most of the party-goers, including Deborah and Chuck. Sue takes Barbara from the mental hospital and goes to Mark's house. As Sue peers in the door, Rachel kills both Sue (unknowingly) and Brad. Rachel later kills Monica and Eric when they try to stop her with Spear guns. While distracted by her mother's voice, Marks, in an attempt to stop her, shoots Rachel with a flare gun as she falls into a pool, causing a sensor to extend the cover. When Mark makes the mistake of checking the pool, the injured Rachel pulls Mark into the pool, and, with the cover fully extended, uses his spear gun to free herself while he drowns. When Barbara sees Rachel's current state, she believes Rachel is possessed and flees. Rachel prays for help to die. Jesse and Tracy find the house in flames and their friends dead. When Rachel sees Tracy, she kills her without hesitation. The videotape of Rachel and Jesse is still playing; when he sees it Jesse tells her he did not know they were taped. Rachel calls him a liar as a notebook hits him, opening to the score page. Jesse says he loves her, but she does not believe him until she hears him say it on the videotape, realizing he told the truth. When the ceiling collapses over Jesse's head, Rachel pushes him out of the way and is pinned. She tells him she loves him, and they kiss. Rachel pushes him out of the house before allowing herself to be consumed by the flames. A year later, Jesse is at King's University, sharing his room with Rachel's dog, Walter, which he kept as a memory of Rachel. He is haunted by what has happened.

In a prologue, a Jewish man in an unnamed pre-WWII Eastern European shtetl (possibly in Poland, as suggested by the mention of Lublin and Krak贸w) tells his wife that he was helped on his way home by Reb Groshkover, whom he has invited in for soup. She says Groshkover is dead and must be a dybbuk. Groshkover (Fyvush Finkel) arrives and laughs off the accusation, but she plunges an icepick into his chest. Bleeding, he exits their home into the snowy night. In 1967, Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is a professor of physics living in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. His wife, Judith (Sari Lennick), tells him that she needs a get (a Jewish divorce document) so she can marry widower Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed). Meanwhile, their son Danny (Aaron Wolff) owes twenty dollars for marijuana to an intimidating Hebrew school classmate. He has the money, but it is hidden in a transistor radio that was confiscated by his teacher. Daughter Sarah is always washing her hair and going out. Larry's brother, Arthur (Richard Kind), sleeps on the couch and spends his free time filling a notebook with what he calls a "probability map of the universe". Larry faces an impending vote on his application for tenure, and his department head (Ari Hoptman) lets slip that anonymous letters have urged the committee to deny him. Clive Park, a student worried about losing his scholarship, meets with Larry in his office to argue he should not fail the class. After he leaves, Larry finds an envelope stuffed with cash. When Larry attempts to return it, Clive's father threatens to sue Larry either for defamation if Larry accuses Clive of bribery, or for keeping the money if he does not give him a passing grade. At the insistence of Judith and Sy, Larry and Arthur move into a nearby motel. Judith empties the couple's bank accounts, leaving Larry penniless, so he enlists the services of a divorce attorney (Adam Arkin). Larry learns Arthur faces charges of solicitation and sodomy. Larry turns to his Jewish faith for consolation. He consults two rabbis (Simon Helberg and George Wyner) but his synagogue's senior rabbi, Marshak, is never available. Larry and Sy are involved in separate, simultaneous car crashes. Larry is unharmed, but Sy dies. At Judith's insistence, Larry pays for Sy's funeral. At the funeral, Sy is eulogized as "a serious man". Larry is proud and moved by Danny's bar mitzvah, unaware that his son is under the influence of marijuana. During the service, Judith apologizes to Larry for all the recent trouble and informs him that Sy liked him so much that he even wrote letters to the tenure committee. Danny finally meets with Marshak, in a brief encounter in which Marshak only quotes Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody To Love", names the members of the band and returns the radio while counseling Danny to "be a good boy". Larry's department head compliments him on Danny's bar mitzvah and hints that he will receive tenure. The mail brings a large bill from Arthur's lawyer. Larry decides to pass Clive, whereupon Larry's doctor calls, asking to see him immediately about the results of a chest X-ray. At the same moment, Danny's teacher struggles to open the emergency shelter as a massive tornado closes in on the school.

The home of the Canterville Ghost was the ancient Canterville Chase, which has all the accoutrements of a traditional haunted house. Descriptions of the wainscoting, the library panelled in black oak, and the armour in the hallway characterise the setting. Wilde mixes the macabre with comedy, juxtaposing devices from traditional English ghost stories such as creaking floorboards, clanking chains, and ancient prophecies.The story begins when Mr Otis and family move into Canterville Chase, despite warnings from Lord Canterville that the house is haunted. Mr Otis says that he will take the furniture as well as the ghost at valuation. The Otis family includes Mr and Mrs Otis, their eldest son Washington, their daughter Virginia and the Otis twins (often referred to as "Stars and Stripes"). The other characters include the Canterville Ghost, the Duke of Cheshire (who wants to marry Virginia), Mrs Umney (the housekeeper), and Rev. Augustus Dampier. At first, none of the Otis family believe in ghosts, but shortly after they move in, none of them can deny the presence of Sir Simon de Canterville (the Canterville Ghost). The family hears clanking chains, they witness reappearing bloodstains "on the floor just by the fireplace", which are removed every time they appear in various forms (colours). But, humorously, none of these scare the Otis family in the least. In fact, upon hearing the clanking noises in the hallway, Mr Otis promptly gets out of bed and pragmatically offers the ghost Tammany Rising Sun Lubricator to oil his chains. Despite the ghost's efforts to appear in the most gruesome guises, the family refuses to be frightened, and Sir Simon feels increasingly helpless and humiliated. When Mrs Otis notices a mysterious red mark on the floor, she simply replies that she does "not at all care for blood stains in the sitting room". When Mrs Umney informs Mrs Otis that the blood stain is indeed evidence of the ghost and cannot be removed, Washington Otis, the eldest son, suggests that the stain will be removed with Pinkerton's Champion Stain Remover and Paragon Detergent: a quick fix, like the Tammany Rising Sun Lubricator, and a practical way of dealing with the problem. Wilde describes Mrs Otis as "a very handsome middle-aged woman" who has been "a celebrated New York belle". Her expression of "modern" American culture surfaces when she immediately resorts to giving the ghost "Doctor Dobell's tincture", thinking he was screaming due to indigestion, at the family's second encounter with the ghost, and when she expresses an interest in joining the Psychical Society to help her understand the ghost. Mrs Otis is given Wilde's highest praise when he says: "Indeed, in many respects, she was quite English..." The most colourful character in the story is undoubtedly the ghost himself, Sir Simon, who goes about his duties with theatrical panache and flair. He assumes a series of dramatic roles in his failed attempts to impress and terrify the Otises, making it easy to imagine him as a comical character in a stage play. The ghost has the ability to change forms, so he taps into his repertoire of tricks. He takes the role of ghostly apparitions such as a Headless Earl, a Strangled Babe, the Blood-Sucker of Bexley Moor, Suicide's Skeleton, and the Corpse-Snatcher of Chertsey Barn, all having succeeded in horrifying previous castle residents over the centuries. But none of them works with these Americans. Sir Simon schemes, but even as his costumes become increasingly gruesome, his antics do nothing to scare his house guests, and the Otises beat him every time. He falls victim to tripwires, peashooters, butter-slides, and falling buckets of water. In a particularly comical scene, he is frightened by the sight of a "ghost" rigged up by the mischievous twins. During the course of the story, as narrated from Sir Simon's viewpoint, he tells us the complexity of the ghost's emotions: he sees himself brave, frightening, distressed, scared, and finally, depressed and weak. He exposes his vulnerability during an encounter with Virginia, the Otis's fifteen-year-old daughter. Virginia is different from everyone else in the family, and Sir Simon recognizes this. He tells her that he has not slept in three hundred years and wants desperately to do so. The ghost reveals to Virginia the tragic tale of his wife, Lady Eleanor de Canterville. Unlike the rest of her family, Virginia does not dismiss the ghost. She takes him seriously: she listens to him and learns an important lesson, as well as the true meaning behind a riddle. Sir Simon de Canterville says that she must weep for him, for he has no tears; she must pray for him, for he has no faith; and then she must accompany him to the angel of death and beg for Death's mercy upon Sir Simon. She does weep for him and pray for him, and she disappears with Sir Simon through the wainscoting and goes with him to the Garden of Death and bids the ghost farewell. Then she reappears at midnight, through a panel in the wall, carrying jewels and news that Sir Simon has passed on to the next world and no longer resides in the house. Virginia's ability to accept Sir Simon leads to her enlightenment: Sir Simon, she tells her husband several years later, helped her understand "what Life is, what Death signifies, and why Love is stronger than both". The story ends with Virginia marrying the Duke of Cheshire after they both come of age.

In 1985, 16-year-old high school student Ted Stroehmann (Ben Stiller) lands a prom date with his dream girl Mary Jensen (Cameron Diaz), which is cancelled after a painful and embarrassing zipper accident. After the ordeal gains the attention of numerous members of the household and community and Ted is carted off to the hospital, he subsequently loses contact with Mary. 13 years later in 1998, 29-year-old Ted is still in love with Mary. On the advice of his best friend Dom (Chris Elliott), he hires a smarmy private detective named Pat Healy (Matt Dillon) to track her down. Healy finds that she is an orthopedic surgeon living in Miami with her friend, Magda, and quickly falls in love with Mary as well. He lies to Ted about her, saying she is grossly overweight with many children, to discourage him from having any contact with her. Healy resorts to lying, cheating, stalking, and even drugging Magda's dog to win Mary over, but is exposed by Mary's architect friend, Tucker (Lee Evans), who is heavily reliant on crutches and speaks with an English accent. Enraged, Healy tails Tucker and discovers him to be a fraud himself: he is an able-bodied, entirely American pizza delivery boy who is also in love with Mary. For years, Tucker has been driving away potential rivals through slander, including one oft-mentioned suitor referred to only as "Brett." Meanwhile, Ted decides he still wants to reconnect with Mary and, aided by Dom, drives down to Florida and discovers the truth about her. Ted seems to have won Mary's love, until an anonymous letter exposes his connection with Healy, and she breaks contact with him. Ted confronts Healy and Tucker, and Mary is accosted by Dom, who is revealed to be her former boyfriend "Woogie," who "got weird on her" back in high school, stealing all her shoes. When Mary is finally together with all of her deceitful suitors, Ted realizes that the only one who did not resort to lying and manipulation to win Mary was Brett, who turns out to be NFL quarterback Brett Favre. After reuniting Brett and Mary, Ted leaves tearfully until Mary chases after Ted, saying that she would be happiest with him. The film concludes with the two engaging in a kiss while a guitarist (Jonathan Richman), who periodically narrated the story in song throughout the film, is accidentally shot by Magda's boyfriend, who was trying to shoot Ted so he could win over Mary.

Anita "Needy" Lesnicki, once an insecure and bookish teenager living near Devil's Kettle, Minnesota, is now a violent mental inmate who narrates the story as a flashback while in solitary confinement. She has been friends with a selfish and popular cheerleader, Jennifer Check, since childhood, despite having little in common. One night, Jennifer takes Needy to a local dive bar to attend a concert by indie rock band Low Shoulder. A suspicious fire engulfs the bar, killing several people, and Jennifer, who is in shock, agrees to leave with the band despite Needy's protests. Later that evening, Jennifer, covered in blood, appears in Needy's kitchen and proceeds to eat food from the refrigerator. Unable to digest the matter, she vomits a trail of black, spiny fluid and then leaves in a hurry as Needy calls after her. The next morning at school, Jennifer appears fine and shrugs off Needy's concerns. While the whole town is devastated by the deaths caused by the fire, Jennifer seduces the school's football captain in the woods and then kills him; his disemboweled corpse is later found. Meanwhile, the members of Low Shoulder gain popularity due to their rumored heroism during the fire and offer to make a charity appearance at the school's spring formal. A month later, Jennifer is beginning to look pale, and accepts a date with school goth/emo Colin, whom she brutally kills that night. While Needy and her boyfriend, Chip, have sex, Needy senses something dreadful has happened. She leaves in a panic and almost runs over Jennifer, drenched in blood. At home, she finds Jennifer in her bedroom. Jennifer kisses her, initiating a brief makeout session, and soon explains what happened after the fire: Low Shoulder took her into the woods and offered her as a virgin sacrifice to Satan in exchange for fame and fortune. Although the sacrifice and greedy exchange were a success, Jennifer was not a virgin, and when lead singer Nikolai murdered her, the ritual backfired and a demonic spirit took over her body. Unbeknownst to Needy, Jennifer also encountered Indian exchange student Ahmet after the fire and, upon hearing that no one knew he had survived, took him into the woods and ate him, rendering him her first victim. Jennifer states that she can withstand virtually any injury without pain and is rather difficult to kill. At school the following day, the town is stunned by Colin's death. Needy goes to the school library's occult section and surmises that Jennifer is a succubus; she is weakest when she is hungry, and must feed on flesh in order to sustain her life and appearance. Needy tells Chip about her discoveries and warns him not to attend the school dance. He does not believe her and she subsequently breaks up with him in order to protect him. Chip still goes to the dance, hoping to meet with Needy, but is instead intercepted by Jennifer, who seduces him and takes him to an abandoned pool house. Needy arrives there and finds Jennifer feeding on Chip. Needy tries to drown Jennifer but Jennifer, hovering in the air, attacks her. She is then stabbed by a fatally injured Chip with a pool skimmer. Jennifer escapes while Needy watches her boyfriend die. Needy decides she must kill Jennifer for the common good. She goes to Jennifer's home and sees her, already recovered, picking out her next victims in her yearbook. Crashing through the window, Needy engages in a fight with Jennifer wielding a box cutter. Culminating with a stab to the heart, Needy finally destroys the demon and kills her. Jennifer's mother enters and finds Needy with the box cutter on top of her daughter's body. Soon after, Needy is brought to an asylum. Since she was bitten non-fatally by Jennifer, she has obtained some of Jennifer's supernatural powers, such as the ability to hover in the air. Set upon revenge for what was done to herself, Jennifer, and Chip, she escapes the mental facility and hitchhikes a ride to the hotel where Low Shoulder are staying; there, she slaughters the members, whose killings are later discovered by local authorities.

The tale opens with an illustration of a wide-eyed kitten: "This is a Pussy called Miss Moppet, she thinks she has heard a mouse!" The following illustration depicts a mouse wearing a pink bowtie and green jacket "peeping out behind the cupboard, and making fun of Miss Moppet. He is not afraid of a kitten." Miss Moppet darts at him, but misses and bumps her head on the cupboard. She hits the cupboard very hard and rubs her nose. The mouse scurries to the top of the cupboard and watches her. Miss Moppet ties a duster about her head and sits before the fire on a red hassock. The mouse's curiosity is piqued; he thinks she looks very ill and comes sliding down the bell-pull. "Miss Moppet looks worse and worse." The mouse creeps nearer. Miss Moppet holds her head in her paws and peeks at the mouse through a hole in the duster. "The Mouse comes very close." Miss Moppet jumps and snags him by the tail. "And because the Mouse has teased Miss Moppet—Miss Moppet thinks she will tease the Mouse; which is not at all nice of Miss Moppet." The kitten ties the mouse up in the duster then tosses it about like a ball. The mouse peeks from the hole in the duster. In the last illustration but one, Miss Moppet is seated upright on her rump and staring at the reader. The duster lies opened and empty in her paws. "She forgot about that hole in the duster", and the mouse has escaped. He dances a jig safely out of Miss Moppet's reach atop the cupboard.

The primary focus of Democracy in America is an analysis of why republican representative democracy has succeeded in the United States while failing in so many other places. Tocqueville seeks to apply the functional aspects of democracy in the United States to what he sees as the failings of democracy in his native France. Tocqueville speculates on the future of democracy in the United States, discussing possible threats to democracy and possible dangers of democracy. These include his belief that democracy has a tendency to degenerate into "soft despotism" as well as the risk of developing a tyranny of the majority. He observes that the strong role religion played in the United States was due to its separation from the government, a separation all parties found agreeable. He contrasts this to France where there was what he perceived to be an unhealthy antagonism between democrats and the religious, which he relates to the connection between church and state. Tocqueville also outlines the possible excesses of passion for equality among men, foreshadowing the totalitarian states of the twentieth century. Insightful analysis of political society was supplemented in the second volume by description of civil society as a sphere of private and civilian affairs. Tocqueville observed that social mechanisms have paradoxes, like in what later became known as the Tocqueville effect: "social frustration increases as social conditions improve". He wrote that this growing hatred of social privilege, as social conditions improve, leads to the state concentrating more power to itself. Tocqueville's views on the United States took a darker turn after 1840, however, as made evident in Aurelian Craiutu's Tocqueville on America after 1840: Letters and Other Writings.

In Edwardian London, 1910, Cockney one-man band Bert is entertaining a crowd when he senses a change in the wind. Afterwards, he directly addresses the audience and gives them a tour of Cherry Tree Lane, stopping outside the home of the Banks family. George Banks returns home from his job at the bank to learn from his wife Winifred that their hired nanny, Katie Nanna, has left their service after his children, Jane and Michael, ran away "again". They are returned shortly after by the local constable, who reveals that the children were chasing a lost kite. The children ask their father to help build a better kite, but he dismisses them. Taking it upon himself to hire a nanny, George advertises for a stern, no-nonsense nanny. Instead, Jane and Michael present their own advertisement for a kinder, sweeter nanny, but when George rips up the letter and throws the scraps in the fireplace, the remains of the advertisement magically float up and out into the air. The next day, a queue of elderly, sour-faced nannies appear outside. However, a strong gust of wind blows the nannies away, and Jane and Michael witness a young nanny descend from the sky using her umbrella. Presenting herself to George, Mary Poppins calmly produces the children’s now restored advertisement and agrees with its requests, but promises the astonished banker she will be firm with his children. As George puzzles over the return of the advertisement, Mary is forced to hire herself and meets the children, baffling them with her behavior and bottomless carpet bag. She helps the children to tidy their nursery through song, before heading out for a walk in the park. Outside, they meet Bert who now works as a screever, drawing chalk sketches on the pavement. Mary uses her magic to transport the group into one of the drawings, which becomes an animated countryside setting. While the children ride on a nearby carousel, Mary Poppins and Bert go on a leisurely stroll and are served tea by a quartet of penguin waiters. Mary enchants the carousel horses and participate in a horse race which she wins. While being asked to describe her victory, Mary announces the nonsense word “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”. However, the outing is ruined when a thunderstorm demolishes Bert's drawings, returning the group back to London. On another outing, the four meet Mary's jovial Uncle Albert who has floated up in the air due to his uncontrollable laughter. They join him for a tea party on the ceiling, telling jokes. George becomes increasingly annoyed by the cheery atmosphere of his family and threatens to fire Mary Poppins. Instead, Mary inverts his attempt by convincing him to take the children to the bank for a day. George takes Jane and Michael to the bank, where they meet his employers, Mr. Dawes Sr. and his son. Dawes aggressively attempts to have Michael invest his tuppence in the bank, snatching the money from him. Michael demands it back, causing other customers to misinterpret and all demand their money back, causing a bank run. Jane and Michael flee the bank, getting lost in the East End until they run into Bert, who is now a chimney sweep. He escorts them home, suggesting their father does not hate them but has his own troubles to deal with. The three and Mary venture onto the rooftops where they have a song-and-dance number with other chimney sweeps until George returns home. George receives a phone call from his employers, telling him to meet them later for disciplinary action. George speaks with Bert who tells him that while he needs to work, he should spend more time with his children before they grow up. Jane and Michael give their father Michael’s tuppence in the hope to make amends. George walks through London to the bank, where he is given a humiliating cashiering and is dismissed. Looking to the tuppence for words, he raucously blurts out, "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!", tells one of Uncle Albert's jokes the children originally told him, and happily heads home. Dawes mulls over the joke, but finally "gets" it, and floats up into the air, laughing. The next day, the wind changes, which means that Mary must leave. A happier George is found at home, having fixed his children’s kite, and takes the family out to fly it. In the park, the Banks meet Mr. Dawes Jr, who reveals that his father died happily laughing from the joke and re-employs George as a junior partner. With her work done, Mary flies away with Bert bidding her farewell, telling her not to stay away too long.

Elizabeth Halsey is an immoral, gold-digging Chicago-area middle school English teacher who curses at her students, drinks heavily, smokes marijuana, and shows movies while sleeping through class. She plans to quit teaching and marry her wealthy fiancĂŠ, Mark, but when he dumps her after learning she is only after his money, Elizabeth must resume her job. She tries to win over substitute teacher Scott Delacorte, who is also wealthy because his family runs a watch company. Amy Squirrel, a dedicated but overly enthusiastic colleague, also pursues Scott while the school's gym teacher, Russell Gettis, makes it clear that he is interested in Elizabeth romantically; she, however, is not interested in him because he's just a gym teacher. Early in the film, Elizabeth plans to get surgery to enlarge her breasts, and becomes all the more motivated to do so once she learns Scott's ex-girlfriend had large breasts. However, when she tries to schedule an appointment for her breast surgery, she cannot afford the $9,300 procedure. To make things worse, Scott admits that he has a crush on Amy, and that he only likes Elizabeth as a friend. Elizabeth attempts to raise money for the surgery by participating in her 7th grade class car wash in provocative clothing and by manipulating parents to give her money for more school supplies and tutoring, but her efforts are not enough. Amy, acting on the growing resentment between them due to Elizabeth pursuing Scott and ignoring school rules, attempts to warn the principal about Elizabeth's embezzlement scheme, but he dismisses her claims as groundless. Elizabeth later learns from her best friend, Lynn Davies, that the teacher of the class with the highest state test scores will receive a $5,700 bonus. With this knowledge, Elizabeth decides to change her style of teaching, forcing the class to intensely read and study To Kill A Mockingbird for the upcoming test. However, the change is too late and insufficient. The students have terrible scores on their quizzes, frustrating her even more. Meanwhile, she befriends Russell the gym teacher as Amy and Scott start dating. Desperate to pay off the procedure for her breast surgery, Elizabeth steals the state test answers by disguising herself as a journalist and seducing Carl Halabi, a state official who is in charge of creating and distributing the exams. Elizabeth gets Carl drunk and convinces him to take her to his office to have sex, but she spikes his drink and steals a copy of the answers. A month later, Elizabeth's class aces the test and she wins the bonus, giving her the funds needed to get her breasts enlarged. When Elizabeth learns that Amy and Scott are chaperoning an upcoming field trip, she smears an apple with poison ivy and leaves it for Amy, who ends up with her face breaking out in blisters, so she cannot go. On the trip, Elizabeth seduces Scott. They dry hump and Elizabeth secretly calls Amy using Scott's phone leaving a message recording all the action, ensuring she knows about the affair. However, Scott's peculiar behavior, which was subtly exposed by Russell, disappoints Elizabeth. Elizabeth later gives advice to one of her students who has an unrequited crush on the superficial Chase in class, which causes her to reflect on how she has been superficial as well. On a field trip the boy makes an embarrassing public confession of his love and is ridiculed by his classmates. Elizabeth takes him aside, gives him her bra, and tells everyone she caught him having sex with a student from another school, which erases his image as a loser. Left behind at the school, Amy switches Elizabeth's desk with her own to trick the janitor into unlocking Elizabeth's sealed drawer. Amy finds Elizabeth's journalist disguise and the practice test, which leads her to suspect Elizabeth cheated on the state exam. Amy informs the principal and gets Carl to testify against her. However, Elizabeth took embarrassing photos of Carl while he was drugged and, with the help of her roommate, Kirk, uses them to blackmail him to say she is innocent. Having failed to nail Elizabeth for cheating, Amy accuses her of drug use, based on a tip from a student. When the police arrive and bring their sniffer dog to search the school, they find Elizabeth's mini liquor bottles, marijuana and OxyContin pills in Amy's classroom, in a secret compartment in Elizabeth's desk which Elizabeth helpfully points out to the police. At the end of the school year, Amy is moved to the worst school in the county by the superintendent. Scott asks Elizabeth to start over, indicating that he now has a crush on her, but Elizabeth rejects him in favor of a relationship with Russell, who she has learned she has a lot in common with. When the new school year starts, Elizabeth has not gotten the breast enlargement after all, because she feels that she looks fine the way she is. She also has a new position as the school's guidance counselor.

Written by Alexandre Dumas, fils, (1824–1895) when he was 23 years old, and first published in 1848, La Dame aux Camélias is a semi-autobiographical novel based on the author's brief love affair with a courtesan, Marie Duplessis. Set in mid-19th century France, the novel tells the tragic love story between fictional characters Marguerite Gautier, a demimondaine, or courtesan, suffering from "consumption" (tuberculosis), and Armand Duval, a young bourgeois. Marguerite is nicknamed la dame aux camélias (French for 'the lady of the camellias') because she wears a red camellia when she's menstruating and unavailable for making love and a white camelia when she is available to her lovers. Armand falls in love with Marguerite and ultimately becomes her lover. He convinces her to leave her life as a courtesan and to live with him in the countryside. This idyllic existence is interrupted by Armand's father, who, concerned with the scandal created by the illicit relationship, and fearful that it will destroy Armand's sister's chances of marriage, convinces Marguerite to leave. Up until Marguerite's death, Armand believes that she left him for another man. Marguerite's death is described as an unending agony, during which Marguerite, abandoned by everyone, regrets what might have been. The story is narrated after Marguerite's death by two male narrators, Armand and an unnamed frame narrator. Some scholars believe that Marguerite's illness and Duplessis's publicized cause of death, "consumption", was a 19th-century euphemism for syphilis. Dumas, fils, is careful to paint a favourable portrait of Marguerite, who despite her past is rendered virtuous by her love for Armand, and the suffering of the two lovers, whose love is shattered by the need to conform to the morals of the times, is rendered touchingly. In contrast the Chevalier des Grieux's love for Manon in Manon Lescaut (1731), a French novel by Abbé Prévost referenced at the beginning of La Dame aux Camélias, Armand's love is for a woman who is ready to sacrifice her riches and her lifestyle for him, but who is thwarted by the arrival of Armand's father. The novel is also marked by the description of Parisian life during the 19th century and the fragile world of the courtesan.

A group of college friends consisted of Harvey, Nikki, Rob, Skip, Nan, Chaz, Kit, and Arch–gather, celebrate spring break by spending the weekend at the island mansion of their friend and Skip's sister Muffy St. John, on the weekend leading up to April Fools' Day. The tone is set almost immediately with Muffy preparing details around the house, and finds an old jack-in-the-box she remembers in a flashback sequence. Meanwhile, her friends are joking around on the pier, then on the ferry to the island. When en route to the island, local deckhand buck Buck is seriously injured in a gruesome accident. Once on the island and in the mansion, it turns out Muffy has set up a variety of little jokes from the simple such as whoopie cuchions and dribble glasses, to the more complex and disturbing such as an audiotape of a baby crying in someone's room and heroin paraphernalia in a guest's wardrobe. Through it all, despite the friends in general try to relax, Skip goes missing. Kit catches a glimpse of what looks like his dead body. Soon, Arch and Nan also go missing next. During a search, Nikki falls into the island's well and finds the severed heads of Skip and Arch and the dead body of Nan. Afterward, the remaining group discover that the phones are dead and there is no way to get off the island until Monday. One after another, the group either vanishes or being killed and their bodies being found. Kit and Rob put together some clues and realizing that everyone's earlier assumption is wrong; the kinsman of the deckhand injured when they arrived is a red herring. It also turns out that Muffy has a violently insane twin sister named Buffy, who has escaped. In fact, the "Muffy" they have been around since the first night was Buffy, pretending to be Muffy. They discover Muffy's severed head in the basement. Buffy chases them with a curved butcher's knife, and the couple are separated. Kit flees from Buffy into the living room where she finds everyone else there, alive and calmly waiting for her. It was all a joke, or more accurately, a dress rehearsal. It is revealed to the audience that the whole film was never a slasher film from the start, but rather pretending to be one. Muffy hopes to turn the mansion into a resort offering a weekend of staged horror. She even had a friend who does special effects and make-up for Hollywood help. Each "victim" agreed to take part as things were explained to them. Everyone has a huge laugh and break out lots of bottles of champagne. Later that night, a half-drunk Muffy goes to her room and finds a wrapped present on her bed. She unwraps it, and the present is the Jack-in-the-Box. Savoring the surprise, she turns the handle slowly and when "Jack" finally pops out, Nan, who knew Muffy from acting class, emerges from behind her and slits her throat with a razor. Muffy screams, but then realizes she is not really bleeding and that she used a trick razor and stage blood. The film ends with the Jack-in-the-box winking at the audience.

Naive and idealistic insurance agent Tim Lippe welcomes a former teacher into his home, addressing her as Mrs. Vanderhei. After having sex with her, he reminisces about his experiences as her student. In his position as an insurance agent, he is sent to represent his company, Brownstar Insurance, at a regional conference in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, as a replacement for his co-worker, Roger Lemke, who died in an auto-erotic asphyxiation accident. Tim idolized Roger, believing that his death was merely an unfortunate accident, and that he embodied all it was to be a moral Christian, the key criterion used to judge the winner of the coveted "Two Diamonds" award, which Roger had won three years in a row. Tim's boss, Bill, pressures him to win again to ensure they keep the company afloat. At the conference, Lippe meets fellow insurance agents Ronald "Ronimal" Wilkes, Dean "Dean-Z" Ziegler, and Joan "O-Fox" Ostrowski-Fox. He also meets Bree, a sex worker who works the parking lot in front of the hotel. She affectionately calls him "Butterscotch" after he offers her candy. Initially wary of the conference-goers, he spends more time with Ron, Dean, and Joan, and develops genuine friendships, including a crush on Joan. All the insurance agents participate in a scavenger hunt. Tim is paired with Joan, and, after they win, they become intoxicated with Dean in the hotel swimming pool. Tim and Joan's sexual tension builds to a head and, after making out in the pool, they have sex in Joan's hotel room. They were all seen in the pool by ASMI president Orin Helgesson. The next morning, Tim is guilt-ridden and calls Vanderhei to confess, before desperately asking her to marry him. After explaining she has been sleeping with other people and desires freedom, she suggests he take the opportunity to start a new life. Tim returns to Joan, who attempts to comfort him by telling him what Lemke was really like: she was his lover but left him after his sexual appetites became too twisted for her, and he bribed Helgesson for each one of his awards. Tim refuses to believe this and flees Joan's room, accusing her of being a "prostitute" sent to destroy his life. He runs into Dean and accidentally lets slip Lemke's bribery. As his friend, Dean swears to not tell anyone. After receiving advice from Dean, Tim goes to Helgesson for his assessment; it does not go well, and under the pressure he ends up also bribing Helgesson for the award, leaving him penniless and ashamed. Tim later comes across Bree and accompanies her to a party, where he gets high on crystal methamphetamine and inadvertently starts a fight. Ron, Joan, and Dean show up just in time to rescue him and Bree, who says she is in love with Tim. The night ends as Bill appears at Tim's door to inform him that with the successful acquisition of another Two Diamond award, he has received a generous offer for the company; despite meaning the branch's closure, he has chosen to sell. While Bill formally announces the sale, Tim bursts in, takes over the podium, and reveals that his company has unethically acquired the award every year by bribing Helgesson and confesses to doing so himself. Helgesson flees the room, his reputation in tatters, and a furious Bill confronts Tim, his revelations having cost Bill the sale of his company. Tim responds by announcing his intention to leave the company and start another with his clients from Brownstar, 17 of which have agreed to stay with him. Bill storms off, dumbfounded. As the four friends say their goodbyes and prepare to see each other next year, Joan and Tim are shown happy as friends, and Dean invites Ron and Tim to stay at a wealthy friend's cabin in Canada for the summer; both of them surprise Dean by gleefully accepting. The three of them go on to start their own company together called Top Notch, with Joan involved, too.

In 1916, Tsar Nicholas II hosts a ball at the Catherine Palace to celebrate the Romanov tricentennial. His mother, the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna, is visiting from Paris and gives a music box and a necklace inscribed with the words “Together in Paris” as parting gifts to her youngest granddaughter, eight-year-old Grand Duchess Anastasia. The ball is suddenly interrupted by the sorcerer Grigori Rasputin, the former royal advisor of the Romanovs until he was banished by Nicholas II for treason. Feeling betrayed and seeking revenge, Rasputin sold his soul in exchange for an unholy reliquary, which he uses to place a curse on the Romanov family, sparking the Russian Revolution. Only Marie and Anastasia are able to escape the ensuing siege of the palace, thanks to a young servant boy named Dimitri who shows them a secret passageway in Anastasia's room. Rasputin confronts the two royals outside on a frozen river, only to fall through the ice and freeze to death. The pair manage to reach a moving train, but only Marie climbs aboard while Anastasia falls, hitting her head on the platform and giving her amnesia. Ten years later in 1926, Russia is under communist rule and Marie has publicly offered 10 million rubles for the safe return of her granddaughter. Dimitri and his friend/partner-in-crime Vladimir search for a look-alike to bring to Paris and pass off as Anastasia so as to collect the reward from Marie. Elsewhere, Anastasia, now using the name "Anya", leaves the rural orphanage where she grew up, having lost her memory prior to arriving there. Accompanied by a stray puppy she names "Pooka", she decides to head to Saint Petersburg, inspired by the passage on the necklace she still has. She is unable to leave Russia due to not having an exit visa, but a strange woman advises her to see Dimitri at the abandoned palace where he has made residence there. In the deserted palace she encounters Dimitri and Vladimir, who are impressed by her resemblance to the "real" Anastasia and decide to take her with them to Paris. Bartok, Rasputin's albino bat minion, is nearby and notices his master's dormant reliquary suddenly revived by Anastasia's presence; it drags him to limbo, where the soul of Rasputin survives. Enraged to hear that Anastasia escaped the curse, Rasputin sends his demonic minions from the reliquary to kill her; despite two assassination attempts, the trio manage to (unwittingly) foil him, forcing Rasputin and Bartok to travel back to the surface. Anastasia, Dimitri and Vladimir eventually reach Paris and go to meet Marie, who refuses to see her, having been nearly fooled numerous times before by impostors. Despite this, Sophie (Marie's cousin) quizzes Anastasia to confirm her identity. Though Anastasia offers the expected answers as taught to her by Dimitri, he realizes she is indeed the real Anastasia when she vaguely recollects how a boy had saved her ten years prior. Sophie, also convinced of Anastasia's identity, arranges a meeting with Marie at the Palais Garnier Opera house, but Marie initially refuses, having heard of Dimitri's scheme to present a stand-in in order to collect the reward money. Anastasia overhears the argument and angrily leaves. Dimitri kidnaps Marie and takes her to see Anastasia. When she refuses, Dimitri shows her the music box that he had found at the palace, and when its music plays, Anastasia is awash with her memories, convincing Marie of her identity. The two are joyfully reunited. Marie offers Dimitri the reward money, but to her surprise, he refuses it and leaves for Russia, thanking Anastasia for her return to her grandmother. That night at Anastasia's return celebration, Marie informs her of Dimitri's gesture. Anastasia, deep in thought about Dimitri, wanders onto the Pont Alexandre III where she is trapped and attacked by Rasputin. Dimitri returns to save her, but is injured and knocked unconscious while Bartok abandons Rasputin. In the struggle, Anastasia manages to get hold of Rasputin's reliquary and crushes it under her foot, destroying it. With Rasputin's soul having been tied to the reliquary, he promptly dies and disintegrates. Afterwards, Dimitri and Anastasia reconcile after Anastasia finally discovers the truth about herself; they elope and Anastasia sends a farewell letter to Marie and Sophie, promising to return one day. The couple kisses on a riverboat and Bartok shares a kiss with a female bat before bidding the audience farewell.

Gabriel Oak is a young shepherd. With the savings of a frugal life, and a loan, he has leased and stocked a sheep farm. He falls in love with a newcomer six years his junior, Bathsheba Everdene, a proud beauty who arrives to live with her aunt, Mrs. Hurst. Over time, Bathsheba and Gabriel grow to like each other well enough, and Bathsheba even saves his life once. However, when he makes her an unadorned offer of marriage, she refuses; she values her independence too much, and him too little. Feeling betrayed and embarrassed, Gabriel offers blunt protestations that only foster her haughtiness. After a few days, she moves to Weatherbury, a village some miles off. When next they meet, their circumstances have changed drastically. An inexperienced new sheepdog drives Gabriel's flock over a cliff, ruining him. After selling off everything of value, he manages to settle all his debts but emerges penniless. He seeks employment at a hiring fair in the town of Casterbridge. When he finds none, he heads to another such fair in Shottsford, a town about ten miles from Weatherbury. On the way, he happens upon a dangerous fire on a farm and leads the bystanders in putting it out. When the veiled owner comes to thank him, he asks if she needs a shepherd. She uncovers her face and reveals herself to be none other than Bathsheba. She has recently inherited her uncle's estate and is now wealthy. Though somewhat uncomfortable, she employs him.

The work has a recognizable structure, for the most part indicated by the author himself, which can be summarized as follows:The Prince starts by describing the subject matter it will handle. In the first sentence Machiavelli uses the word "state" (Italian stato which could also mean "status") in order to neutrally cover "all forms of organization of supreme political power, whether republican or princely". The way in which the word state came to acquire this modern type of meaning during the Renaissance has been the subject of many academic discussions, with this sentence and similar ones in the works of Machiavelli being considered particularly important. Machiavelli said that The Prince would be about princedoms, mentioning that he has written about republics elsewhere (possibly referring to the Discourses on Livy although this is debated), but in fact he mixes discussion of republics into this in many places, effectively treating republics as a type of princedom also, and one with many strengths. More importantly, and less traditionally, he distinguishes new princedoms from hereditary established princedoms. He deals with hereditary princedoms quickly in Chapter 2, saying that they are much easier to rule. For such a prince, "unless extraordinary vices cause him to be hated, it is reasonable to expect that his subjects will be naturally well disposed towards him". Gilbert (1938:19–23), comparing to traditional presentations of advice for princes, stated that the novelty in chapters 1 and 2 is the "deliberate purpose of dealing with a new ruler who will need to establish himself in defiance of custom". Normally, these types of works were addressed only to hereditary princes. He thinks Machiavelli may have been influenced by Tacitus as well as his own experience, but finds no clear predecessor for this. This categorization of regime types is also "un-Aristotelian" and apparently simpler than the traditional one found for example in Aristotle's Politics, which divides regimes into those ruled by a single monarch, an oligarchy, or by the people, in a democracy. He also ignores the classical distinctions between the good and corrupt forms, for example between monarchy and tyranny. Xenophon, on the other hand, made exactly the same distinction between types of rulers in the beginning of his Education of Cyrus where he says that, concerning the knowledge of how to rule human beings, Cyrus the Great, his exemplary prince, was very different "from all other kings, both those who have inherited their thrones from their fathers and those who have gained their crowns by their own efforts". Machiavelli divides the subject of new states into two types, "mixed" cases and purely new states.

Two American college students, David Kessler and Jack Goodman, backpack across the North York Moors. As darkness falls, they stop for the night at a pub called "The Slaughtered Lamb". Jack notices a five-pointed star on the wall. When Goodman asks about it, the pubgoers stop talking and become hostile. The pair decides to leave, although the pub landlady insists they "can't let them go". Instead of changing their minds, the local clients only warn them to keep to the road, stay clear of the moors and beware of the full moon. While talking, David and Jack end up wandering off the road onto the moors. Jack and David hear sinister howls, which seem to be getting closer. They start back to the Slaughtered Lamb but realize that they are now lost. The boys are attacked by a supernaturally large wolf-like animal and Jack is killed. The attacker is shot by some of the pubgoers but instead of a dead animal, David sees the corpse of a naked man lying next to him. David survives the mauling and is taken to a hospital in London. When David wakes up three weeks later, he does not remember what happened. He is interviewed by police Inspector Villiers who tells him that he and Jack were attacked by an escaped lunatic. David insists that they were actually attacked by a large dog or wolf. Jack appears to David as a reanimated corpse to explain that they were attacked by a werewolf, and that David is now a werewolf. Jack urges David to kill himself before the next full moon, not only because Jack is cursed to exist in a state of living death for as long as the bloodline of the werewolf that attacked them survives, but also to prevent David from inflicting the same fate on anyone else. Meanwhile, Dr. Hirsch takes a trip to the Slaughtered Lamb to see if what David has told him is true. When asked about the incident, the pubgoers deny any knowledge of David, Jack, or their attacker. But one distraught pubgoer speaks to Dr. Hirsch outside the pub and says that David should not have been taken away, and that he and everyone else will be in danger when he changes, only to be quickly silenced by a fellow pubgoer. Upon his release from the hospital, David moves in with Alex Price, a pretty young nurse who grew infatuated with him in the hospital. He stays in Alex's London apartment, where they later make love for the first time. Jack, in an advanced stage of decay, appears to David to warn him that he will turn into a werewolf the next day. Jack again advises David to take his own life to avoid killing innocent people. When the full moon rises, David painfully transforms into a werewolf and starts to prowl the streets and the London Underground, slaughtering six Londoners in the process. When he wakes in the morning, he is naked on the floor of the wolf cage at London Zoo, has no memory of his activities, and is unharmed by the resident wolves. David realizes that Jack was right about everything and that he is responsible for the murders of the night before. After failing to get himself arrested, David tries to slit his wrists with a pocket knife. David sees Jack, in a yet more advanced stage of decay, outside an adult cinema in Piccadilly Circus. Inside, Jack is accompanied by David's victims from the previous night, all of whom are furious at David for killing them. They all then insist that he must commit suicide before turning into a werewolf again. While talking with them as they try to offer him the least painful way to kill himself, David transforms and goes on another killing spree. After bursting out of the cinema, biting off Inspector Villiers' head in the process, David wreaks havoc in the streets and is ultimately cornered in an alley by police. Alex tries to calm him down by telling him that she loves him. Though he is apparently placated for a moment, he is shot and killed when he lunges forward, returning to human form in front of a grieving Alex as he dies.

From the listless repose of the place, and the peculiar character of its inhabitants, who are descendants from the original Dutch settlers, this sequestered glen has long been known by name of Sleepy Hollow ... A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere. — Washington Irving, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" The story is set in 1790 in the countryside around the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town (historical Tarrytown, New York), in a secluded glen called Sleepy Hollow. Sleepy Hollow is renowned for its ghosts and the haunting atmosphere that pervades the imaginations of its inhabitants and visitors. Some residents say this town was bewitched during the early days of the Dutch settlement. Other residents say an old [[Native Americans in the Unit ella Wilson is the best ed States|Native American]] chief, the wizard of his tribe, held his powwows here before the country was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson. The most infamous spectre in the Hollow is the Headless Horseman, said to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper that had his head shot off by a stray cannonball during "some nameless battle" of the American Revolutionary War, and who "rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head". The "Legend" relates the tale of Ichabod Crane, a lean, lanky and extremely superstitious schoolmaster from Connecticut, who competes with Abraham "Brom Bones" Van Brunt, the town rowdy, for the hand of 18-year-old Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter and sole child of a wealthy farmer, Baltus Van Tassel. Crane, a Yankee and an outsider, sees marriage to Katrina as a means of procuring Van Tassel's extravagant wealth. Bones, the local hero, vies with Ichabod for Katrina's hand, playing a series of pranks on the jittery schoolmaster, and the fate of Sleepy Hollow's fortune weighs in the balance for some time. The tension between the three is soon brought to a head. On a placid autumn night, the ambitious Crane attends a harvest party at the Van Tassels' homestead. He dances, partakes in the feast, and listens to ghostly legends told by Brom and the locals, but his true aim is to propose to Katrina after the guests leave. His intentions, however, are ill-fated. After having failed to secure Katrina's hand, Ichabod rides home "heavy-hearted and crestfallen" through the woods between Van Tassel's farmstead and the Sleepy Hollow settlement. As he passes several purportedly haunted spots, his active imagination is engorged by the ghost stories told at Baltus' harvest party. After nervously passing under a lightning-stricken tulip tree purportedly haunted by the ghost of British spy Major André, Ichabod encounters a cloaked rider at an intersection in a menacing swamp. Unsettled by his fellow traveler's eerie size and silence, the teacher is horrified to discover that his companion's head is not on his shoulders, but on his saddle. In a frenzied race to the bridge adjacent to the Old Dutch Burying Ground, where the Hessian is said to "vanish, according to rule, in a flash of fire and brimstone" upon crossing it, Ichabod rides for his life, desperately goading his temperamental plow horse down the Hollow. However, to the pedagogue's horror, the ghoul clambers over the bridge, rears his horse, and hurls his severed head into Ichabod's terrified face. The next morning, Ichabod has mysteriously disappeared from town, leaving Katrina to marry Brom Bones, who was said "to look exceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod was related." Indeed, the only relics of the schoolmaster's flight are his wandering horse, trampled saddle, discarded hat, and a mysterious shattered pumpkin. Although the nature of the Headless Horseman is left open to interpretation, the story implies that the ghost was really Brom (an agile stunt rider) in disguise. Irving's narrator concludes, however, by stating that the old Dutch wives continue to promote the belief that Ichabod was "spirited away by supernatural means," and a legend develops around his disappearance and sightings of his melancholy spirit.

The story takes place at the castellated abbey of the "happy and dauntless and sagacious" Prince Prospero. Prospero and 1,000 other nobles have taken refuge in this walled abbey to escape the Red Death, a terrible plague with gruesome symptoms that has swept over the land. Victims are overcome by "sharp pains", "sudden dizziness", and hematidrosis, and die within half an hour. Prospero and his court are indifferent to the sufferings of the population at large; they intend to await the end of the plague in luxury and safety behind the walls of their secure refuge, having welded the doors shut. One night, Prospero holds a masquerade ball to entertain his guests in seven colored rooms of the abbey. Each of the first six rooms is decorated and illuminated in a specific color: blue, purple, green, orange, white, and violet. The last room is decorated in black and is illuminated by a scarlet light, "a deep blood color" cast from its stained glass windows. Because of this chilling pairing of colors, very few guests are brave enough to venture into the seventh room. A large ebony clock stands in this room and ominously chimes each hour, upon which everyone stops talking or dancing and the orchestra stops playing. Once the chiming stops, everyone immediately resumes the masquerade. At the chiming of midnight, the revelers and Prospero notice a figure in a dark, blood-splattered robe resembling a funeral shroud. The figure's mask resembles the rigid face of a corpse and exhibits the traits of the Red Death. Gravely insulted, Prospero demands to know the identity of the mysterious guest so they can hang him. The guests, too afraid to approach the figure, instead let him pass through the six chambers. The Prince pursues him with a drawn dagger and corners the guest in the seventh room. When the figure turns to face him, the Prince lets out a sharp cry and falls dead. The enraged and terrified revelers surge into the black room and forcibly remove the mask and robe, only to find to their horror that there is nothing underneath. Only then do they realize the figure is the Red Death itself, and all of the guests contract and succumb to the disease. The final line of the story sums up, "And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all".

Madame Bovary takes place in provincial northern France, near the town of Rouen in Normandy. Charles Bovary is a shy, oddly dressed teenager arriving at a new school where his new classmates ridicule him. Charles struggles his way to a second-rate medical degree and becomes an officier de santé in the Public Health Service. He marries the woman his mother has chosen for him, the unpleasant but supposedly rich widow Heloise Dubuc. He sets out to build a practice in the village of Tostes (now Tôtes). One day, Charles visits a local farm to set the owner's broken leg and meets his patient's daughter, Emma Rouault. Emma is a beautiful, daintily dressed young woman who has received a "good education" in a convent. She has a powerful yearning for luxury and romance inspired by reading popular novels. Charles is immediately attracted to her and visits his patient far more often than necessary until Heloise's jealousy puts a stop to the visits. When Heloise dies, Charles waits a decent interval before courting Emma in earnest. Her father gives his consent, and Emma and Charles marry. The novel's focus shifts to Emma. Charles means well but is plodding and clumsy. After he and Emma attend an elegant ball given by the Marquis d'Andervilliers, Emma finds her married life dull and becomes listless. Charles decides his wife needs a change of scenery and moves his practice to the larger market town of Yonville (traditionally identified with the town of Ry). There, Emma gives birth to a daughter, Berthe, but motherhood proves a disappointment to Emma. She becomes infatuated with an intelligent young man she meets in Yonville, a young law student, Léon Dupuis, who shares her appreciation for literature and music and returns her esteem. Concerned with maintaining her self-image as a devoted wife and mother, Emma does not acknowledge her passion for Léon and conceals her contempt for Charles, drawing comfort from the thought of her virtue. Léon despairs of gaining Emma's affection and departs to study in Paris. One day, a rich and rakish landowner, Rodolphe Boulanger, brings a servant to the doctor's office to be bled. He casts his eye over Emma and imagines she will be easily seduced. He invites her to go riding with him for the sake of her health. Charles, solicitous for his wife's health and not at all suspicious, embraces the plan. Emma and Rodolphe begin an affair. She, consumed by her romantic fantasy, risks compromising herself with indiscreet letters and visits to her lover. After four years, she insists they run away together. Rodolphe does not share her enthusiasm for this plan and on the eve of their planned departure, he ends the relationship with an apologetic, self-effacing letter placed at the bottom of a basket of apricots he has delivered to Emma. The shock is so great that Emma falls deathly ill and briefly turns to religion. When Emma is nearly fully recovered, she and Charles attend the opera, at Charles' insistence, in nearby Rouen. The opera reawakens Emma's passions, and she encounters Léon who, now educated and working in Rouen, is also attending the opera. They begin an affair. While Charles believes that she is taking piano lessons, Emma travels to the city each week to meet Léon, always in the same room of the same hotel, which the two come to view as their home. The love affair is ecstatic at first, but Léon grows bored with Emma's emotional excesses, and Emma grows ambivalent about Léon. Emma indulges her fancy for luxury goods with purchases made on credit from the crafty merchant Lheureux, who arranges for her to obtain power of attorney over Charles' estate. Emma's debt steadily mounts. When Lheureux calls in Bovary's debt, Emma pleads for money from several people, including Léon and Rodolphe, only to be turned down. In despair, she swallows arsenic and dies an agonizing death. Charles, heartbroken, abandons himself to grief, preserves Emma's room as a shrine, and adopts her attitudes and tastes to keep her memory alive. In his last months, he stops working and lives by selling off his possessions. When he finds Rodolphe and Léon's love letters, he still tries to understand and forgive her. His remaining possessions are seized to pay off Lheureux. He dies, and his young daughter Berthe is placed with her grandmother, who soon dies. Berthe then lives with an impoverished aunt, who sends her to work in a cotton mill. The book concludes with the local pharmacist Homais, who had competed with Charles's medical practice, gaining prominence among Yonville people and being awarded for his medical achievements.

In 1985, John Bennett is a lonely child living in Norwood, MA, a suburb of Boston, who wished for his new Christmas gift—a large teddy bear named Ted—to come to life and become his friend. The wish coincides with a shooting star and comes true; word spread and Ted was briefly a celebrity. In 2012, John and Ted are still living in Boston, aged 35 and 27 respectively, and are still staunch companions enjoying a hedonistic life. John is dating 28-year-old, Lori Collins, who is from Pennsylvania. As their anniversary approaches, Lori hopes to marry John but feels he could not move forward with Ted around. John is hesitant against making Ted leave, but he is persuaded to act when they find Ted at home with four prostitutes. John finds Ted his own apartment and a job at a grocery store, where Ted begins dating his coworker Tami-Lynn. Lori learns that John has been skipping work—using her as an excuse—to continue to spend most of his time with Ted. Things start to come to a head when John and Lori are invited to a party put on by Lori's womanizing manager Rex, and Ted lures John away to a party at his apartment with the offer to meet Sam J. Jones, the star of their favorite film, Flash Gordon. Although John intends to stay only a few minutes, he gets caught up in the occasion. Lori finds John there and breaks up with him. John blames Ted for ruining his life and tells him to stay away. John and Ted confront each other about their ruined friendship and manage to reconcile after a violent brawl in John's hotel room. To repair John's relationship with Lori, Ted arranges with an old lover, singer Norah Jones, to help by having John express his love for Lori with a song during her concert, in which he does an off-key rendition of Rita Coolidge's Octopussy theme song, All Time High. Although John's performance proves to get him angrily and severely booed off the stage, Lori is touched by the attempt and returns to her apartment after being angered by Rex's sneering of him. Ted comes clean to Lori about his role in John's relapse and offers to leave them alone forever if she can talk to him. Lori is persuaded, but moments after she leaves, Ted is kidnapped by Donny, an obsessive stalker who idolized Ted as a child. Donny plans to make Ted the toy of his brutish son Robert. Ted distracts Robert and reaches a phone to contact John, but he is immediately recaptured. Realizing Ted is in danger, John and Lori locate Donny's residence and track him to rescue Ted. The chase leads to Fenway Park, where John punches Robert, but during the chase, Ted is damaged and falls onto the field ripped entirely in half. A police car arrives, forcing Donny to flee. As John and Lori gather Ted's stuffing, Ted relays his wish that John be happy with Lori, as the magic that gives him life fades away. Unable to accept Ted's death, a distraught John and Lori attempt to repair Ted, which proves useless. That night, Lori feels guilty about the incident, and makes a wish on a shooting star. The next morning, John hangs his head while looking over Ted's dead body. Fortunately, Ted is magically restored and after he tricks John into thinking he is physically/mentally challenged, he and Lori fully reconcile with Ted, who encourages them to resume their relationship. With that resolution, John and Lori are married (with Sam Jones as the presiding minister), and Ted comfortably accepts having a life of his own as he and Tami-Lynn continued their torrid love affair. One afternoon, Ted was caught behind the deli counter eating potato salad off of Tami-Lynn's bare bottom. He was instantly promoted to store manager. Sam Jones attempts to restart his career and moves into a studio apartment with Brandon Routh. Rex gives up his pursuit of Lori, goes into a deep depression, and dies of Lou Gehrig's disease. Donny gets arrested by the Boston Police Department for kidnapping a plush toy, but the charges are dropped because they sound ridiculous. Robert hires a personal trainer, loses a significant amount of weight, and goes on to become Taylor Lautner.

In a brief scene in 1964, an aging, overweight Italian American, Jake LaMotta (Robert De Niro), practices a comedy routine. The rest of the film then occurs in flashback. In 1941, LaMotta is in a major boxing match against Jimmy Reeves, where he received his first loss. Jake's brother Joey LaMotta (Joe Pesci) discusses a potential shot for the middleweight title with one of his Mafia connections, Salvy Batts (Frank Vincent). Some time thereafter, Jake spots a 15-year-old girl named Vikki (Cathy Moriarty) at an open-air swimming pool in his Bronx neighborhood. He eventually pursues a relationship with her, even though he is already married. In 1943, Jake defeats Sugar Ray Robinson, and has a rematch three weeks later. Despite the fact that Jake dominates Robinson during the bout, the judges surprisingly rule in favor of Robinson and Joey feels Robinson won only because he was enlisting into the US Army the following week. By 1947, Jake marries Vikki. Jake constantly worries about Vikki having feelings for other men, particularly when she makes an off-hand comment about Tony Janiro, Jake's opponent in his next fight. His jealousy is evident when he brutally defeats Janiro in front of the local Mob boss, Tommy Como (Nicholas Colasanto), and Vikki. As Joey discusses the victory with journalists at the Copacabana, he is distracted by seeing Vikki approach a table with Salvy and his crew. Joey speaks with Vikki, who says she is giving up on his brother. Blaming Salvy, Joey viciously attacks him in a fight that spills outside of the club. Como later orders them to apologize, and has Joey tell Jake that if he wants a chance at the championship title, which Como controls, he will have to take a dive first. In a match against Billy Fox, after briefly pummeling his opponent, Jake does not even bother to put up a fight. He is suspended shortly thereafter from the board on suspicion of throwing the fight, though he realizes the error of his judgment when it is too late. He is eventually reinstated, and in 1949, wins the middleweight championship title against Marcel Cerdan. A year later, Jake asks Joey if he fought with Salvy at the Copacabana because of Vikki. Jake then asks if Joey had an affair with her; Joey refuses to answer, insults Jake, and leaves. Jake directly asks Vikki about the affair, and when she hides from him in the bathroom, he breaks down the door, prompting her to sarcastically state that she had sex with the entire neighborhood (including his brother, Salvy, and Tommy Como). Jake angrily walks to Joey's house, with Vikki following him, and assaults Joey in front of his wife and children. After defending his championship belt in a grueling fifteen round bout against Laurent Dauthuille in 1950, he makes a call to his brother after the fight, but when Joey assumes Salvy is on the other end and starts insulting and cursing at him, Jake says nothing and hangs up. Estranged from Joey, Jake's career begins to decline slowly and he eventually loses his title to Sugar Ray Robinson in their final encounter in 1951. By 1956, Jake and his family have moved to Miami. After he stays out all night at his new nightclub there, Vikki tells him she wants a divorce (which she has been planning since his retirement) as well as full custody of their kids. She also threatens to call the cops if he comes anywhere near them. He is later arrested for introducing under-age girls to men in his club. He tries and fails to bribe his way out of his criminal case using the jewels from his championship belt instead of selling the belt itself. In 1957 he goes to jail where he pounds the walls, sorrowfully questioning his misfortune and crying in despair. Upon returning to New York City in 1958, he happens upon his estranged brother Joey, who forgives him but is elusive. Returning to the opening scene in 1964, Jake refers to the "I coulda been a contender" scene from the 1954 film On the Waterfront starring Marlon Brando, complaining that his brother should have been there for him but is also keen enough to give himself some slack. After a stagehand [played by director Martin Scorsese in a brief cameo] informs him that the auditorium where he is about to perform is crowded, Jake starts to chant "I'm the boss" while shadowboxing. The film cuts to black with the following Biblical quote filling the screen: So, for the second time, [the Pharisees] summoned the man who had been blind and said: "Speak the truth before God. We know this fellow is a sinner." "Whether or not he is a sinner, I do not know," the man replied. "All I know is this: Once I was blind and now I can see." John IX. 24–26, The New English Bible The film subsequently ends with an on-screen dedication to Scorsese's New York University film professor, Haig P. Manoogian: Remembering Haig P. Manoogian, teacher. May 23, 1916 – May 26, 1980. With Love and resolution, Marty.

In January 1865, President Abraham Lincoln expects the Civil War to end within a month. However, he is concerned that his 1863 Emancipation Proclamation may be discarded by the courts once the war has concluded and that the proposed Thirteenth Amendment will be defeated by the returning slave states. Lincoln feels it is imperative to pass the amendment by the end of the month, thus removing any possibility that slaves who have already been freed may be re-enslaved. The Radical Republicans fear the amendment will be defeated by some who merely wish to delay its passage; the support of the amendment by Republicans in the border states is not yet assured either, since they prioritize the issue of ending the war. Even if all of them are ultimately brought on board, the amendment will still require the support of several Democratic congressmen if it is to pass. With dozens of Democrats having just become lame ducks after losing their re-election campaigns in the fall of 1864, some of Lincoln's advisors believe that he should wait until the new Republican-heavy Congress is seated, presumably giving the amendment an easier road to passage. Lincoln, however, remains adamant about having the amendment in place and the issue of slavery settled before the war is concluded and the southern states readmitted into the Union. Lincoln's hopes for passage of the amendment rely upon the support of Francis Preston Blair, a founder of the Republican Party whose influence can ensure that all members of the western and border state conservative Republican faction will back the amendment. With Union victory in the Civil War seeming highly likely and greatly anticipated, but not yet a fully accomplished fact, and with two sons serving in the Union Army, Blair is keen to end the hostilities as soon as possible. Therefore, in return for his support, Blair insists that Lincoln allow him to immediately engage the Confederate government in peace negotiations. This is a complication to Lincoln's amendment efforts since he knows that a significant portion of the support he has garnered for the amendment is from the Radical Republican faction for whom a negotiated peace that leaves slavery intact is morally unacceptable. Unable to proceed without Blair's support, however, Lincoln reluctantly authorizes Blair's mission. In the meantime, Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward work on the issue of securing the necessary Democratic votes for the amendment. Lincoln suggests that they concentrate on the lame duck Democrats, as they have already lost re-election and thus will feel free to vote as they please, rather than having to worry about how their vote will affect a future re-election campaign. Since those members also will soon be in need of employment and Lincoln will have many federal jobs to fill as he begins his second term, he sees this as a tool he can use to his advantage. Though Lincoln and Seward are unwilling to offer direct monetary bribes to the Democrats, they authorize agents to quietly go about contacting Democratic congressmen with offers of federal jobs in exchange for their voting in favor of the amendment. With Confederate envoys ready to meet with Lincoln, he instructs them to be kept out of Washington, as the amendment approaches a vote on the House floor. At the moment of truth, Thaddeus Stevens decides to moderate his statements about racial equality to help the amendment's chances of passage. A rumor circulates that there are Confederate representatives in Washington ready to discuss peace, prompting both Democrats and conservative Republicans to advocate postponing the vote on the amendment. Lincoln explicitly denies that such envoys are in or will be in the city — technically a truthful statement, since he had ordered them to be kept away — and the vote proceeds, narrowly passing by a margin of two votes. When Lincoln subsequently meets with the Confederates, he tells them that slavery cannot be restored as the North is united for ratification of the amendment, and that several of the southern states' reconstructed legislatures would also vote to ratify. On April 3, Lincoln visits the battlefield at Petersburg, Virginia, where he exchanges a few words with Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant. Six days later, Grant receives General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Courthouse. On April 14, Lincoln is in a meeting with members of his cabinet, discussing possible future measures to enfranchise blacks when he is reminded that First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln is waiting to take them to their evening at Ford's Theatre. That night, while Lincoln's son Tad is watching Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp at Grover's Theatre, the manager suddenly stops the play and announces that the President has been shot, to the audience's shock and Tad's distress. The next morning at the Petersen House, Lincoln dies; Secretary of War Edwin Stanton declares, "Now he belongs to the ages". The film concludes in flashback to Lincoln delivering his second inaugural address.

The play opens on the day of the feast celebrating the third wedding anniversary of the wedding of Bengt Guateson and Margit. Erik of Hogge, a friend of Knut Gesling, the King's sheriff, and Knut himself are seeking permission for Knut to marry Margit's sister, Signe. Knut, a warlike man, is advised that he must demonstrate peaceful ways for a year before Margit will support the marriage. They are invited to the feast, under pledge that they will be peaceful that night. They depart to look for Margit's kinsman, Gudmund Alfson, who they know to be outlawed and suspect to be nearby. Once they depart and her husband leaves, Margit speaks of her regret in marrying Bengt Gauteson, even though he was a wealthy older landowner. Her woe is captured by her phrase, "I myself am the Hill-King's wife!" Gudmund Alfson arrives. Margit, who has loved him since he departed three years earlier, treats him poorly until she realizes that, although once close to the king, he has been outlawed and is on the run. She then dreams of marrying him and obtains poison to administer to Bengt. Meanwhile, Gudmund speaks to Signe, who has grown up since he last saw her, expressing his love. Signe remembers him well and is most willing. Knut returns in the evening for the feast. Finding Gudmund there, although he is the sheriff, Knut does not take Gudmund to demonstrate his intent to be peaceful, but declares that this day shall end peacefully. They both speak together, expressing their intent to marry. After some discussion they both proclaim, and realize they woo the same woman. Since Signe loves Gudmund, Knut announces he is leaving peacefully, but will return in the morn to take Gudmund. Magrit prepares to poison Bengt after many of the guests depart, leaving him a poisoned drink as she goes to bed. He is advised of Knut’s return and, setting aside his drink, goes to meet Knut and his men. Gudmund & Signe enter and almost drink the poison. As Knut returns in the morning and meets Bengt who is set upon defending his household, Knut slays him. Bengt’s friends capture Knut and bring him before Magrit. The king’s men arrive. Gudmund is prepared to surrender, but finds that the king has recognized his error and restored all of Gudmund’s property and standing. Margit wishes Gudmund and Signe well and goes off to St. Sunniva's cloister.

Jack Manfred (Clive Owen) is an aspiring writer going nowhere fast. To make ends meet and against his better judgment, he takes a job as a croupier. The interview was set up by his father, a small-time hustler back home in South Africa. Jack finds himself drawn into the casino world, and the job gradually takes over his life. He goes drinking with Matt (Paul Reynolds), a croupier whom he knows is cheating the casino. He sleeps with a fellow croupier named Bella (Kate Hardie) in contravention of casino policy. His relationship with girlfriend Marion (Gina McKee) begins to deteriorate when he lets her read part of his book about a cold, unfeeling croupier who enjoys seeing gamblers lose — a character transparently based on Jack himself. Bella confronts Jack at his apartment, accuses him of getting her fired and tells Marion about the one-night stand. One gambler, Jani (Alex Kingston), tries to befriend Jack — another serious violation of casino rules. Jani shows him bruises saying she got them from gambling creditors and asks Jack to be the inside man for a planned robbery at the casino. All he has to do is raise the alarm when a gambler cheats at his table. Jack eventually agrees and accepts a £10,000 advance with an additional £10,000 if all goes well. In doing so, Jack notices that Jani's injuries were faked. Marion reconciles with Jack but discovers that he is involved in something criminal and tries to foil it. On the night of the robbery, Jack raises the alarm anyway and gets beaten by the gambler as a distraction while others try to grab the money. They fail, and Jack and Marion have an argument but she stays with him. When a late-night knock at the door comes, Jack assumes it to be the casino robbers demanding the return of their advance money. Instead, it is a policeman, who informs him that Marion has been killed in an apparent hit-and-run. Jack finishes his book and gets it published anonymously. It is a big success, but he doesn't change anything about his life, continuing to work as a croupier and live in his basement flat, not even buying the new car he wanted. Jack goes on with his life and gets another call, this one from Jani, who congratulates him on playing his part in the attempted robbery and implies that she benefited significantly. Then she puts his father on the phone, and he implies that he set up the croupier job for Jack in order to arrange for the attempted robbery, and he benefited as well. Stunned but amused, Jack hangs up. Just then, Bella appears from the bedroom and kisses him.

In 1952, Ed Wood is struggling to join the film industry. Upon hearing of an announcement in Variety magazine that producer George Weiss is trying to purchase Christine Jorgensen's life story, Ed wants to meet Weiss. Weiss explains that Variety's announcement was a news leak, and it is impossible to purchase Jorgensen's rights. The producer decides to fictionalize the film, titled I Changed My Sex!. Ed tries to convince Weiss that he is perfect to direct the film because he is a transvestite, but is unsuccessful since Weiss wants a director with experience. Ed meets his longtime idol Bela Lugosi and the two become friends. Wood persuades Weiss to let him direct the film by convincing him that having a star in the film would sell tickets, and they could sign Bela for a low price. Ed and Weiss argue over the film's title and subject matter: Weiss has the poster printed, which Ed changes to Glen or Glenda and writes the film about a transvestite rather than a sex change. Weiss allows Ed to shoot whatever he wants as long as the film meets the required length. Ed takes to film production with an unusual approach; shooting only one take per scene, giving actors very little direction and using stock footage to fill in gaps. The movie is released to critical and commercial failure. Because of this, Ed is unsuccessful in getting a job at Screen Classics, but Ed's girlfriend, Dolores Fuller, tells him that he should try financing his next film independently. Ed is unsuccessful in finding money for Bride of the Atom, but is introduced to the psychic The Amazing Criswell who gives him advice on how to sell himself better. Ed meets Loretta King, who he thinks has enough money to fund Bride of the Atom and ends up casting her as the lead instead of Dolores as planned. Filming begins, but is halted when it is revealed that Loretta is actually poor, and Ed has no money to continue production. Ed convinces meat packing industry tycoon Don McCoy to take over funding the film, who agrees as long as the film stars his son Tony as the leading man and the film ends with an explosion. The filming finishes with the title being changed to Bride of the Monster, but Dolores breaks up with Ed after the wrap party because of his circle of friends, his work, and transvestism. Bela attempts to conduct a double suicide with Ed after the government cuts off his unemployment, but is talked out of it. Bela checks himself into rehab, and Ed meets Kathy O'Hara, who is visiting her father there. Ed takes her on a date and reveals to her his transvestism, which she accepts. Ed shoots a film with Bela outside his home. When Ed and company attend the premiere for Bride of the Monster, an angry mob chases them out of the theater. Bela passes away, leaving Ed without a star. Ed convinces a church leader named Reynolds that funding Ed's script for Grave Robbers from Outer Space would result in a box office success, and generate enough money for Reynolds' dream project. Dr. Tom Mason, Kathy's chiropractor, is chosen to be Bela's stand-in for resembling Lugosi. Ed and the Baptists have conflicts over the title and content of the script which they want to have changed to Plan 9 from Outer Space, along with Ed's B movie directing style, his casting decisions and his transvestism. Ed leaves the set to go to the nearest bar, where he encounters his idol, Orson Welles. Filming for Plan 9 finishes with Ed taking action against his producers. Plan 9 is premiered and Ed and Kathy go to Las Vegas to get married.

The film features a narrative set in an alternative reality in which there is no such thing as lying and everything said is the absolute truth. In this world people make blunt, often unintentionally offensive statements. Physicians are brutally honest with patients. They show no warmth and offer no hope. Not being able to lie has resulted in an absence of religion in this alternative reality. Because there is no fiction, the movie industry is limited to dry, lecture-style historical readings and product advertisements are bluntly truthful. Mark Bellison (Ricky Gervais) is an average Joe lecture-film writer who is assigned to write about the 14th century, a "very boring" era. One night he goes out on a date with the beautiful, kind-hearted and wealthy Anna McDoogles (Jennifer Garner). She tells Mark she is not attracted to him, because of his looks and failing financial situation, but is going out with him to satisfy her extremely prejudiced mother and as a favour to Mark's best friend Greg Kleinschmidt (Louis C.K.). The next day Mark is fired from his job because of the lack of interest in his films, and his landlord threatens to evict him for not paying his rent. Depressed, he goes to the bank to close his account. The teller informs him that the computers are down, and asks him how much money he has in his account. Mark is about to tell her when a strange reaction occurs in his brain, as he remembers how much money his landlord said he owed ($800). He has an epiphany that enables him to tell the world's first lie, to the effect that he has $800 in his account. The computer comes back online and shows his balance is $300. The teller gives him the full $800 noting that the computer has made a mistake. Mark then lies in a variety of other circumstances, including, preventing a police officer (Edward Norton) from arresting his friend Greg for drunk driving, getting money from a casino, and stopping his neighbour Frank Fawcett (Jonah Hill) from committing suicide. He realises that lying can be used for better purposes than just for personal gain by doing this. He then writes a screenplay about the world being invaded by aliens in the 14th century, in which it is claimed that the memories of all humans were erased. He becomes wealthy from the success of the film which he names The Black Plague. Mark convinces Anna to go out with him again, hoping she will see past his looks now that he is financially secure. On their date Anna congratulates Mark for his success and admits that he would be a good husband and father. She is still not attracted to him, saying that, if they ever have children, Mark would contribute half of the heredity to their children, resulting in "fat kids with snub noses". Mark then gets a call that his mother has had a heart attack and rushes to the hospital. There, the doctor (Jason Bateman) tells him that his mother is going to die. She is scared of death, believing that it will bring an eternity of nothingness. Mark, through tears, tells her that death instead brings a joyful afterlife, introducing the concept of a Heaven to her, and she dies happy while the doctors and nurses appear astonished by what he has said. Mark soon receives worldwide attention for his supposed new information about death. Under pressure from Anna, he tells them, through "ten rules", that he talks to a "Man In The Sky" who controls everything and promises great rewards in the good place after you die, as long as you do no more than three "bad things". Some time later Anna and Mark are together in a park and Anna asks him, if they marry, would his now being rich and famous make their children more physically attractive. Mark wants to lie but does not because of his strong feelings for Anna. Meanwhile, Mark's enemy Brad Kessler (Rob Lowe) pursues Anna romantically, motivated by Mark's success. However, Brad's arrogant, spiteful manner makes Anna uncomfortable, though she continues dating him; they become engaged. Anna invites Mark to the wedding. Mark tries to discourage her from marrying Brad, but fails. Anna goes to the park she first went to with Mark and sees a slightly overweight child with an ice cream being bullied by thinner children. She shouts at them and they run away. She approaches the boy and wipes away his tears while asking his name. He replies 'Short Fat Brian' to which she tells him: 'You are so much more than just that.' Before the wedding Mark's friend Greg shows up and tries to convince him that he has not missed his chance with Anna. Mark reluctantly attends Anna and Brad's wedding, where he objects to the marriage, but the officiant informs him that only the Man in the Sky can stop the wedding. Brad and Anna both ask Mark to ask the Man in the Sky what Anna should do but Mark refuses to say anything and leaves, wanting Anna to choose for herself. Anna walks out and Mark confesses his ability to lie and tells her that the Man In The Sky was made up. Anna struggles to comprehend the concept and asks why he did not lie to convince her to marry him; Mark states that it "wouldn't count". Anna confesses that she loves him. Some time later, the now-pregnant Anna and Mark are shown happily married with a son, who appears (by his actions) to have inherited his father's ability to lie.

Manhattan press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) has been unable to gain mentions for his clients in J.J. Hunsecker's (Burt Lancaster) influential, nationally syndicated newspaper column of late because of Falco's failure to make good on a promise to break up the romance between Hunsecker's younger sister Susan (Susan Harrison) and musician Steve Dallas (Martin Milner), an up-and-coming jazz guitarist. Falco is losing money and clients. Given one last chance by the bullying, intimidating Hunsecker, he schemes to plant a false rumor in a rival column that Dallas is a dope-smoking Communist, then encourages Hunsecker to rescue Dallas's reputation, certain that the headstrong boyfriend will reject Hunsecker's favor and end up looking bad to Susan. The plan works, in a way—Dallas can't resist insulting Hunsecker's methods, and, forced to choose between them, the timid Susan breaks up with Dallas in order to protect him from her brother. Hunsecker, however, is enraged by Dallas's insults to him after a brief confrontation. He decides to ruin the boy after all (against Falco's advice) and wants to have marijuana planted on the musician, then have him arrested and roughed up by corrupt police Lt. Harry Kello (Emile Meyer). It is such a dirty trick that even Falco wants no part of it, at least until Hunsecker promises to take a long vacation from his powerful column and turn it over to Falco in his absence. At a nightclub, Falco slips the marijuana cigarettes into a pocket of a coat belonging to Dallas, who is accosted by Kello outside the club. Falco is summoned to Hunsecker's penthouse apartment, only to find Susan there by herself and about to attempt suicide. He grabs her just as her brother walks in, but Hunsecker, encouraged by Susan's silence, accuses Falco of trying to assault Susan and begins beating the physically weaker Falco. Falco pleads that he only came to the apartment at Hunsecker's request, prompting Hunsecker to tell Falco that he never called him. As Susan stops Hunsecker from further harming him, Falco realizes that Susan placed the call in order to bring the men to blows. In a climactic confrontation, Falco reveals to Susan that it was her brother who ordered him to destroy Dallas's reputation and their relationship. Hunsecker makes a call to Kello to come after Falco, who tries to flee but is caught in Times Square by the brutal cop. Back in the penthouse, Susan, her bags packed, acknowledges to her brother that she attempted suicide, considering death preferable to living with him. She walks out on him, saying that she will go to Dallas and tells Hunsecker that she pities rather than hates him. A mortified J.J. looks at his sister from his apartment, as she walks out into the daylight.

Madeleine Lee, the daughter of an eminent clergyman, is a 30-year-old widow of independent means living in New York City. Five years ago she lost, in quick succession, her husband and her baby. She used to be "a rather fast New York girl" before her marriage but now is virtually unable to get over the great loss she has suffered. Bored stiff by New York society, Madeleine Lee decides to go to Washington to be close to the hub of politics. Together with her sister Sybil Ross, she arrives in the capital, and in no time her salon becomes the meeting place of important people in the city. Although she has no intention whatsoever of becoming romantically involved, two men eventually emerge from the group gathering around her both of whom would very much like to marry her: John Carrington, who is truly and deeply in love with her; and Silas P. Ratcliffe, whose marriage to Madeleine Lee would help him advance his political career. Over the months, Madeleine Lee gets more and more insight into the machinations at the center of political life. Seeing his chances fade, Ratcliffe devises a sophisticated scheme to get rid of John Carrington: he secures a post abroad for his rival, who—as the job is rather well-paid and his family has little money—cannot but accept the offer. Step by step, Ratcliffe manoeuvres Madeleine Lee into a difficult position in which he thinks the only choice left to her will be to marry him. Carrington, however, has left behind a sealed letter in which he accuses Ratcliffe of being corrupt. In particular, he accuses him of having taken graft during the election campaign eight years ago. All evidence, Carrington adds, has been destroyed, so it is his word against Ratcliffe's. The latter of course denies all allegations, but Madeleine Lee is so shocked at the revelation that she turns down Ratcliffe's proposal of marriage. Furious, Ratcliffe leaves Madeleine's house, only to be accosted and ridiculed by his arch-enemy Baron Jacobi, the Bulgarian minister. There even ensues a brief scene of physical violence between the two, but at the very last moment Ratcliffe, whose career would be ruined otherwise, is able to keep his wrath in check. Disillusioned by politics, Madeleine Lee now wants to go abroad, preferably to Egypt. Sybil, who has become Carrington's confidante, writes him a letter in which she tells him he should try again to win her sister's heart once they have returned from their tour.

In "the not-too-distant future", eugenics is common. A genetic registry database uses biometrics to classify those so created as "valids" while those conceived by traditional means and more susceptible to genetic disorders are known as "in-valids". Genetic discrimination is illegal, but in practice genotype profiling is used to identify valids to qualify for professional employment while in-valids are relegated to menial jobs. Vincent Freeman is conceived without the aid of genetic selection; his genetics indicate a high probability of several disorders and an estimated life span of 30.2 years. His parents, regretting their decision, use genetic selection to give birth to their next child, Anton. Growing up, the two brothers often play a game of "chicken" by swimming out to sea with the first one returning to shore considered the loser; Vincent always loses. Vincent dreams of a career in space travel but is reminded of his genetic inferiority. One day Vincent challenges Anton to a game of chicken and bests him before Anton starts to drown. Vincent saves Anton and then leaves home. Vincent works as an in-valid, cleaning office spaces including that of Gattaca Aerospace Corporation, a space-flight conglomerate. He gets a chance to pose as a valid by using hair, skin, blood and urine samples from a donor, Jerome Eugene Morrow, who is a former swimming star paralyzed due to a car accident. With Jerome's genetic makeup, Vincent gains employment at Gattaca, and is assigned to be navigator for an upcoming trip to Saturn's moon Titan. To keep his identity hidden, Vincent must meticulously groom and scrub down daily to remove his own genetic material, and pass daily DNA scanning and urine tests using Jerome's samples. Gattaca becomes embroiled in controversy when one of its administrators is murdered a week before the flight. The police find a fallen eyelash of Vincent's at the scene. An investigation is launched to find the murderer, Vincent being the top suspect. Through this, Vincent becomes close to a co-worker, Irene Cassini, and falls in love with her. Though a valid, Irene has a higher risk of heart failure that will prevent her from joining any deep space Gattaca mission. Vincent also learns that Jerome's paralysis is by his own hand; after coming in second place in a swim meet, Jerome threw himself in front of a car. Jerome maintains that he was designed to be the best, yet wasn't, and that is the source of his suffering. Vincent repeatedly evades scrutiny from the investigation, and it is revealed that Gattaca's mission director was the killer, as the administrator was threatening to cancel the mission. Vincent learns the identity of the detective who closed the case, his brother Anton, who has become aware of Vincent's presence. The brothers meet, and Anton warns Vincent that what he is doing is illegal, but Vincent asserts that he has gotten to this position on his own merits. Anton challenges Vincent to one more game of chicken. As the two swim out in the dead of night, Anton is surprised at Vincent's stamina, and Vincent reveals that his trick to winning was not saving energy for the swim back. Anton turns back and begins to drown, but Vincent rescues him and swims them both back to shore using celestial navigation. On the day of the launch, Jerome reveals that he has stored enough DNA samples for Vincent to last two lifetimes upon his return, and gives him an envelope to open once in flight. After saying goodbye to Irene, Vincent prepares to board but discovers there is a final genetic test, and he currently lacks any of Jerome's samples. He is surprised when Dr. Lamar, the person in charge of background checks, reveals that he knows Vincent has been posing as a valid. Lamar admits that his son looks up to Vincent and wonders whether his son, genetically selected but "not all that they promised", could break the limits just as Vincent has. He passes Vincent as a valid. As the rocket launches, Jerome dons his swimming medal and immolates himself in his home's incinerator; Vincent opens the note from Jerome to find only a lock of Jerome's hair attached to it. Vincent muses on this, stating "For someone who was never meant for this world, I must confess, I’m suddenly having a hard time leaving it. Of course, they say every atom in our bodies was once a part of a star. Maybe I'm not leaving; maybe I'm going home."

Sam Wheat (Patrick Swayze), a banker, and Molly Jensen (Demi Moore), a potter, are a couple who renovate and move into an apartment in New York City with the help of Sam's friend and co-worker Carl Bruner (Tony Goldwyn). One afternoon, Sam discovers unusually high balances in obscure bank accounts, but despite Carl's offer to help investigate, Sam decides to investigate on his own. That night while walking home together Sam and Molly are mugged by a street thug who pulls a gun and demand's Sam's wallet. Sam struggles with the attacker and is shot. After pursuing the street thug, Sam runs back to Molly and—seeing her crying over his dead body—discovers that he has died from the gunshot and has become a ghost. Sam stays by the distraught Molly, trying to come to grips with his new condition, when Carl comes over and suggests Molly take a walk with him. Sam cannot bring himself to follow. Moments later, the mugger enters the empty apartment and commences searching for something. When Molly returns, Sam scares their cat into attacking the thug, who flees. Sam follows the mugger to his apartment in Brooklyn and learns that the man's name is Willie Lopez and that Willie intends to return later to continue the search. While walking back to the apartment, Sam happens upon the parlor of Oda Mae Brown (Whoopi Goldberg), a con artist posing as a medium. But when she can hear Sam, she realizes she has an actual gift. He convinces her of the danger that Molly is in and that Oda must warn her. Molly is skeptical about Oda until Oda relays information that only Sam could know. After Molly tells Carl about Oda Mae, Carl—unaware that Sam is following—then goes to Willie's apartment. There, to Sam's surprise, he finds that Carl and Willie are working together, that Carl had a hand in Sam's death, and that he had needed to obtain Sam's book of passwords in order to access and launder the excess money from the bank accounts. Under instructions relayed from Sam to Oda Mae, Molly goes to the police with Willie's name and address, but they find no criminal record of him—instead they show her Oda Mae's record and convince her that she's a con artist. Meeting a violent poltergeist in their ghostly realm, Sam learns from him how to manipulate physical objects from within the spirit realm. Sam then approaches Oda Mae and asks her not only to withdraw the money in the fake name that Carl had set up but then to give that $4 million to charity. Sam tries to scare Carl away from Molly but she reveals to Carl that Oda Mae was at the bank withdrawing the money. Sam then prevents Oda Mae from being attacked by Willie, terrorizing the thug and then sending him into oncoming traffic where Willie is hit by a car and killed. As Willie's ghost is grabbed by creatures from the shadows that drag him to Hell, Sam and Oda Mae return to the apartment where—by levitating a penny into Molly's hand—he convinces Molly that Oda Mae is telling the truth about him. Oda Mae allows Sam to possess her body so he and Molly can share a slow dance, but Carl interrupts them and Molly and Oda Mae flee onto the fire escape. Carl chases the women to a loft under construction and catches Oda Mae. When Molly comes to save her, she is grabbed and held hostage. Sam disarms Carl and chases him toward a window. He throws a suspended hook at Sam; it misses, swings back, and shatters the glass. As Carl tries to climb through the window, a sharp shard of broken glass falls, impaling him in the stomach. Carl's ghost rises from his body and, as Willie had been, he is grabbed by the creatures from the shadows and is carried to Hell. Sam asks if the women are all right. Miraculously, Molly can now hear him. A heavenly light shines in the room, illuminating Sam in sight of both of them. Realizing that it is his time to go, he and Molly share tearful goodbyes. Oda Mae tells him that he is being called home, and he thanks her for her help. Sam then walks into the light and onward to Heaven.

Crusoe (the family name corrupted from the German name "Kreutznaer") sets sail from the Queen's Dock in Hull on a sea voyage in August 1651, against the wishes of his parents, who want him to pursue a career, possibly in law. After a tumultuous journey where his ship is wrecked in a storm, his lust for the sea remains so strong that he sets out to sea again. This journey, too, ends in disaster, as the ship is taken over by Salé pirates (the Salé Rovers) and Crusoe is enslaved by a Moor. Two years later, he escapes in a boat with a boy named Xury; a captain of a Portuguese ship off the west coast of Africa rescues him. The ship is en route to Brazil. Crusoe sells Xury to the captain. With the captain's help, Crusoe procures a plantation. Years later, Crusoe joins an expedition to bring slaves from Africa, but he is shipwrecked in a storm about forty miles out to sea on an island (which he calls the Island of Despair) near the mouth of the Orinoco river on 30 September 1659. The details of Crusoe's island were probably based on the Caribbean island of Tobago, since that island lies a short distance north of the Venezuelan coast near the mouth of the Orinoco river, in sight of Trinidad. He observes the latitude as 9 degrees and 22 minutes north. He sees penguins and seals on his island. (However, seals and penguins live together in the Northern Hemisphere only around the Galápagos Islands.) As for his arrival there, only he and three animals, the captain's dog and two cats, survive the shipwreck. Overcoming his despair, he fetches arms, tools and other supplies from the ship before it breaks apart and sinks. He builds a fenced-in habitat near a cave which he excavates. By making marks in a wooden cross, he creates a calendar. By using tools salvaged from the ship, and some he makes himself from "ironwood", he hunts, grows barley and rice, dries grapes to make raisins, learns to make pottery and raises goats. He also adopts a small parrot. He reads the Bible and becomes religious, thanking God for his fate in which nothing is missing but human society. More years pass and Crusoe discovers native cannibals, who occasionally visit the island to kill and eat prisoners. At first he plans to kill them for committing an abomination but later realizes he has no right to do so, as the cannibals do not knowingly commit a crime. He dreams of obtaining one or two servants by freeing some prisoners; when a prisoner escapes, Crusoe helps him, naming his new companion "Friday" after the day of the week he appeared. Crusoe then teaches him English and converts him to Christianity. After more natives arrive to partake in a cannibal feast, Crusoe and Friday kill most of the natives and save two prisoners. One is Friday's father and the other is a Spaniard, who informs Crusoe about other Spaniards shipwrecked on the mainland. A plan is devised wherein the Spaniard would return to the mainland with Friday's father and bring back the others, build a ship, and sail to a Spanish port. Before the Spaniards return, an English ship appears; mutineers have commandeered the vessel and intend to maroon their captain on the island. Crusoe and the ship's captain strike a deal in which Crusoe helps the captain and the loyal sailors retake the ship and leave the worst mutineers on the island. Before embarking for England, Crusoe shows the mutineers how he survived on the island and states that there will be more men coming. Crusoe leaves the island 19 December 1686 and arrives in England on 11 June 1687. He learns that his family believed him dead; as a result, he was left nothing in his father's will. Crusoe departs for Lisbon to reclaim the profits of his estate in Brazil, which has granted him much wealth. In conclusion, he transports his wealth overland to England to avoid travelling by sea. Friday accompanies him and, en route, they endure one last adventure together as they fight off famished wolves while crossing the Pyrenees.

Starting in Vicksburg, Mississippi preceding the abolition of slavery, The Yellow Chief begins on the plantation of the Blackadder family. Blount Blackadder, the 18-year-old son of the plantation owner Squire Blackadder, punishes a mulatto slave, Blue Dick, out of revenge over a girl, a quadroon named Sylvia. The ‘punishment of the pump’, a frequent act at the Blackadder plantation, consists of placing the victims head directly under the painfully cold stream of a water pump. Daughter Clara Blackadder watches the shameful punishment, only daydreaming about the Irishmen Edward O’Neil, who her father forbids her from marrying. Whilst murdering Sylvia in the woods in the process, Blue Dick proceeds to escape the plantation, never to return. After experiencing bankruptcy five years later, the Blackadders sell their plantation and travel west in covered wagons to start a new life in California. A Choctaw Indian named Woboga guides them through the journey, and later turns out to be a spy for the antagonist Cheyenne Indian group led by Yellow Chief, who wants secret revenge against the Blackadder family. Through Woboga, Yellow Chief and his men find the ex-Mississippi planters corralled in an enclosed gorge in the Rocky Mountains by Bijou Creek of the South Platte River. They attack with gunfire, killing Squire Blackadder in the process, and capture the rest of the group as prisoners. Meanwhile, Edward O’Neil, who has since left Mississippi to the Colorado mountains to escape his heartbreak over Clara Blackadder, travels as a fur trapper with his experienced, older companion, ‘Lije Orton. The two trappers overhear Yellow Chief’s attack of the corralled emigrants and decide to receive help from the mountain men of Fort Saint Vrain. O’Neil sees that Clara is of those imprisoned and becomes determined to save her. Yellow Chief’s men create a wooden cross to emulate crucifixion for their white captives. As the Yellow Chief first administers a “dose” of cold water onto the “crucified” Blount Blackadder, the plantation emigrants begin to feel suspicious. It isn’t until Mr. Snively sees the Yellow Chief wash off his war paint in a waterfall, revealing his mulatto “yellow” skin, that the Yellow Chief’s true identity as Blue Dick is revealed. Another secret reveals itself when the Yellow Chief threatens Clara Blackadder to the “punishment of the pump.” Old Nan, an elder of the Blackadder slaves, comes forth to inform Blue Dick (the Yellow Chief) that he and Clara are blood siblings through master-slave relations. Squire Blackadder’s relation to Blue Dick only maddens him even more, as Blue Dick threatens to make Clara his slave. After much strategic planning, ‘Lije Orton, Edward O’Neil, and mountain man Black Harris track down Yellow Chief and his Cheyenne troupe and manage to kill them all with little difficulty. The emigrants continue their journey to California, leaving Clara behind to start a life on the east coast with O’Neil. Together they raise children and are often visited by ‘Lije to be updated on the mountain life.Many 19th century pulp western authors, Mayne Reid included, often returned to the same set trope of plot, characters, and conclusions in their novels. Mayne Reid was most noted for marrying off all his characters at the end of his stories. The Yellow Chief also features a common plot theme of Mayne Reid, in which a heroine's "weak brother" becomes caught in the clutches of a villain seeking revenge. Although The Yellow Chief was a dime novel, the cliff hangers throughout the plot seem to occur in the tradition of serial novels of 19th century literature. Many unrealistic coincidences and plot twists are presented to the reader, such as Blue Dick, the Blackadders, and O'Neil ending up in the same area of the Rocky Mountains. As a very short read, only 168 pages long, the different developments of action don't have much build-up. The plot of the novel, although maybe suspenseful for a 19th-century reader, comes across as frivolous and implausible to the contemporary reader.

Hedda, the daughter of an aristocratic and enigmatic general, has just returned to her villa in Kristiania (now Oslo) from her honeymoon. Her husband is George Tesman, a young, aspiring, and reliable (but not brilliant) academic who continued his research during their honeymoon. It becomes clear in the course of the play that she has never loved him but married him because she thinks her years of youthful abandon are over. It is also suggested that she may be pregnant. The reappearance of George's academic rival, Eilert Løvborg, throws their lives into disarray. Eilert, a writer, is also a recovered alcoholic who has wasted his talent until now. Thanks to a relationship with Hedda's old schoolmate, Thea Elvsted (who has left her husband for him), Eilert shows signs of rehabilitation and has just published a bestseller in the same field as George. When Hedda and Eilert talk privately together, it becomes apparent that they are former lovers. The critical success of his recently published work makes Eilert a threat to George, as Eilert is now a competitor for the university professorship George had been counting on. George and Hedda are financially overstretched, and George tells Hedda that he will not be able to finance the regular entertaining or luxurious housekeeping that she had been expecting. Upon meeting Eilert, however, the couple discover that he has no intention of competing for the professorship, but rather has spent the last few years labouring with Thea over what he considers to be his masterpiece, the "sequel" to his recently published work. Apparently jealous of Thea's influence over Eilert, Hedda hopes to come between them. Despite his drinking problem, she encourages Eilert to accompany George and his associate, Judge Brack, to a party. George returns home from the party and reveals that he found the complete manuscript of Eilert's great work, which the latter lost while drunk. When Eilert next sees Hedda, he confesses to her, despairingly, that he has lost the manuscript. Instead of telling him that the manuscript has been found, Hedda encourages him to commit suicide, giving him a pistol. She then burns the manuscript and tells George she has destroyed it to secure their future. When the news comes that Eilert has indeed killed himself, George and Thea are determined to try to reconstruct his book from Eilert's notes, which Thea has kept. Hedda is shocked to discover from Judge Brack that Eilert's death, in a brothel, was messy and probably accidental; this "ridiculous and vile" death contrasts with the "beautiful and free" one that Hedda had imagined for him. Worse, Brack knows the origins of the pistol. He tells Hedda that if he reveals what he knows, a scandal will likely arise around her. Hedda realizes that this places Brack in a position of power over her. Leaving the others, she goes into her smaller room and shoots herself in the head. The others in the room assume that Hedda is simply firing shots, and they follow the sound to investigate. The play ends with George, Brack, and Thea discovering her body.

In 1996, as part of a new military training program, a group of orphaned infants are selected at birth and raised as highly disciplined soldiers with no understanding of anything but military routine. They are trained to be ruthless obedient killers, and all those considered to be physically or mentally unworthy are executed. The survivors are turned into impassive dedicated fighting machines with no exposure to or understanding of the outside world. In 2035, at the age of 39, Sgt. Todd 3465 is a hardened veteran and the best soldier of the original 1996 infants, but his unit is challenged for replacement by a superior unit. Colonel Mekum, leader of the original project, introduces a new group of genetically engineered soldiers, designed with superior physical attributes and a complete lack of emotion, except complete aggression. Captain Church, the commander of Todd's unit, insists on testing the new soldiers' abilities against his proven older ones. A new soldier, Caine 607, easily defeats three of the original soldiers, but Todd gouges out Caine's eye before he seemingly dies when he falls from a great height; the body of a dead soldier actually cushioned his fall, and he is simply stunned and knocked unconscious. Mekum orders their bodies disposed of like garbage, declaring them obsolete, while the remaining older soldiers are demoted to menial unarmed support roles. Dumped on Arcadia 234, a waste disposal planet, Todd limps toward a colony whose residents crash-landed there years earlier; as they were believed dead, no rescue missions have been attempted. Todd is sheltered by Mace and his wife Sandra. Though they try to make him welcome, Todd has difficulty adapting to the community due to his extremely rigid impassive conditioning and their conflict-free lives. Todd develops a silent rapport with their mute son, Nathan, who had been traumatized by a snakebite as an infant, and watches upon the happy loving family with yearning in his eyes. When the child silently looks to him for a defense against a coiled snake, Todd refuses, demanding that Nathan face it down and strike back to protect himself. Nathan's parents intervene and disapprove of the lesson, unsure of how to deal with the silent soldier. Todd becomes disoriented by exposure to peaceful civilian life and soon begins to experience flashbacks from his time killing civilians and battling other soldiers. To make matters worse, he mistakes one of the colonists for an enemy when the fellow surprises him, nearly killing him. Fearful, the colonists expel Todd from the community. Apparently rejected by every society he has known, the military and the refugee civilians, Todd shows strong emotion for the first time after being expelled. Overcome by loss, he quietly cries. A short time later, Mace and Sandra are almost bitten by a snake while they sleep, but they are saved by Nathan's use of Todd's aggressive defensive technique to protect them. Now understanding the value of Todd's lesson, they seek him to reintegrate him into the community, regardless of the opposition of the others who fear him. The new genetically engineered soldiers arrive on the garbage planet, and, since the world is listed as uninhabited, Colonel Mekum decides to use the colonists' community as the target in a training exercise. Just after Mace finds Todd, apologizes and invites him back, the soldiers spot Mace and kill him. Though out-manned and outgunned, Todd's years of battle experience and superior knowledge of the planet allow him to return to the colony and kill the advance squad. Nervous that an unknown enemy force may be confronting them, Colonel Mekum orders the soldiers to withdraw and return with heavy artillery. Using guerrilla tactics, Todd outmaneuvers and defeats all of the remaining soldiers, including Caine 607, whom he defeats in vicious hand-to-hand combat by clever tactics rather than mere physical prowess. Panicking, Mekum orders the transport ship's crew, composed of Todd's old squad, to set up and activate a portable nuclear device powerful enough to destroy the planet. He then orders the ship to lift off, leaving the squad behind. When Captain Church objects, Mekum shoots him in cold blood. Before they can take off as planned, Todd appears, and his old comrades silently side with him over the army that has discarded them. They take over the ship, leaving Mekum and his supportive aides on the planet while they evacuate the remaining colonists. In an attempt to disarm the nuclear device, Mekum accidentally sets it off, killing him and his aides. Todd pilots the ship from Arcadia just ahead of the shockwave and sets course for the Trinity Moons, the colonists' original destination. When Nathan enters the control room and reaches for Todd, he then picks up Nathan and points to their new destination, while looking out upon the galaxy.

“A lady and gentleman are making love to one another in the drawing room of a flat in Ashley Gardens in the Victoria district of London.” The lady is a young widow, Grace Tranfield, in love with the man, Leonard Charteris, who is the ‘philanderer’ of the title. Grace is shocked and disconcerted to find that Charteris, on his own light‐hearted admission, has been in a similar position with Julia Craven and others. The affair with Julia, in fact, has never been broken off. He maintains that it is not his fault that half the women he speaks to fall in love with him; and he is in full flight of cajolery when Julia Craven herself erupts on to the scene, attacks Grace, and announces her intention of staying until Charteris has given her up. Charteris gets Grace out of the room and unsuccessfully reminds Julia of her supposedly advanced views on marriage. She changes from belligerence to pleading tears, without effect, and, to the consternation of both, the fathers of Grace and Julia enter together. Colonel Craven is suffering from a liver complaint, and much to Charteris’ impatience "has fully made up his mind not to survive next Easter", just to oblige the doctors. Cuthbertson, Grace’s father, is a dramatic critic and theatrically shocked to discover something of the Charteris‐Grace‐Julia triangle; but Charteris explains it is Grace whom he wants to marry. The scene changes to the Ibsen Club, of which most of the characters are members. A fashionable physician, Dr. Paramore, says he has made a discovery concerning Col. Craven’s fatal complaint, but horrifies Craven’s younger daughter Sylvia by his practice of vivisection. Craven turns up at Cuthbertson’s invitation, and Charteris outrages both men by admitting he had lied to them last night: the truth is, both young women want to marry him, but he does not want to marry either. Julia enters the Club with Paramore dancing attendance, and manages to trap Charteris alone. She is, however, forced to retire by Sylvia, who delights Charteris by saying Dr. Paramore is in love with Julia. Charteris attempts to flirt with Grace again but is repulsed, and attention is diverted by the distraught Dr. Paramore who has learnt in the British Medical Journal that his ‘discovery,’ Craven’s liver complaint, is a disease which doesn’t exist. He complains of lack of animals for experiment, and resents Craven’s delight at learning he is not to die. Charteris, to cheer him, suggests that Julia is fascinated by him, but it is Grace who comes in first and retires with the doctor privately. Changing tactics, Charteris points them out to Julia, arousing her jealousy. The result is another quarrel between Julia and Grace, who threatens to have Julia expelled from the Club. Julia hurries after Dr. Paramore, to enlist him as a witness in her favor, and Charteris tries to prevent the others following, in order to give the doctor time to propose to her. This Paramore does, at his house, and Julia, dubious but flattered, accepts him before the others arrive. Charteris is delighted, and Julia and Grace, reconciled, congratulate each other on having escaped him. Nevertheless, Julia bitterly regrets not being brave enough to kill Charteris. An alternate, and in fact Shaw's original, ending was preserved in manuscript, though not performed until the 1990s. In it the scene at Paramore's house takes place four years later, after his marriage to Julia, when Paramore has tired of Julia and she of marriage. Paramore has fallen in love with Grace and asks Charteris's advice. Eventually, Craven, Cuthbertson and Julia join them and Cuthbertson is persuaded to suggest a solution - divorce, though difficult to obtain in Victorian England without scandal and deceit, is quite easily obtained in South Dakota. Grace joins them, and after a new row between her and Julia, all is agreed. Julia and Charteris are left alone, she presses him to marry her once she is free, but he refuses on the grounds of being a philanderer and no fit husband, and they agree to return to their former ways.

In a Californian forest, a group of alien botanists land in a spacecraft, collecting flora samples. When government agents appear on the scene, they flee in their spaceship, leaving one of their own behind in their haste. At a suburban home, a ten-year-old fatherless boy named Elliot, is trying to spend time with his brother, Michael, and his friends. As he returns from picking up a pizza, he discovers that something is hiding in their tool shed. The creature promptly flees upon being discovered. Despite his family's disbelief, Elliot leaves Reese's Pieces candy to lure the creature to his bedroom. Before he goes to sleep, he realizes it is imitating his movements. He feigns illness the next morning to stay home from school and play with it. Later that day, Michael and their five-year-old sister, Gertie, meet it. They decide to keep it hidden from their mother, Mary. When they ask it about its origin, it levitates several balls to represent its solar system and then demonstrates its powers by reviving a dead chrysanthemum. At school the next day, Elliot begins to experience a psychic connection with the alien, including exhibiting signs of intoxication (because it is at his home, drinking beer), and he begins freeing all the frogs in his biology class. As the alien watches John Wayne hug Maureen O'Hara in The Quiet Man on TV, Elliot hugs a girl he likes. He is then sent to the principal's office. The alien learns to speak English by repeating what Gertie says as she watches Sesame Street and, at Elliot's urging, dubs itself "E.T." He reads 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. receives Elliot's help in building a device to "phone home" by using a Speak & Spell toy. Michael notices that his health is declining and that Elliot is referring to himself as "we." On Halloween, Michael and Elliot dress E.T. as a ghost so they can sneak him out of the house. Elliot and E.T. ride the former's bike to the forest, where E.T. makes a successful call home. The next morning, Elliot wakes up in the field, only to find E.T. gone, so he returns home to his distressed family. Michael searches for and finds E.T. dying next to a culvert, being investigated by a raccoon. Michael takes him home to Elliot, who is also dying. Mary becomes frightened when she discovers her son's illness and the dying E.T., just as government agents invade the house. Scientists set up a medical facility there, quarantining Elliot and E.T. Their link disappears and E.T. then appears to die while Elliot recovers. A grief-stricken Elliot is left alone with the motionless E.T. when he notices a dead chrysanthemum, the plant E.T. had previously revived, coming back to life. E.T. reanimates and reveals that his people are returning. Elliot and Michael steal a van that E.T. had been loaded into and a chase ensues, with Steve's friends joining them as they attempt to evade the authorities by bike. Suddenly facing a police roadblock, they escape as E.T. uses telekinesis to lift them into the air and toward the forest. Standing near the spaceship, E.T.'s heart glows as he prepares to return home. Mary, Gertie, and "Keys", a government agent, show up. E.T. says goodbye to Michael and Gertie, as she presents him with the chrysanthemum that he had revived. Before boarding the spaceship, he tells Elliot "I'll be right here," pointing his glowing finger to his forehead. He then picks up the chrysanthemum, boards the spaceship, and it takes off, leaving a rainbow in the sky as everyone watches it leave.

On 6 October 1971, American soldier Jacob Singer is with the 1st Air Cavalry Division, deployed in a village in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War, when his close-knit unit comes under attack. As many of Jacob’s comrades are killed or wounded, others exhibit abnormal behavior, including catatonia and a bloody seizure. A terrified Jacob flees into the jungle, only to be bayoneted in the gut. Jacob awakens in 1975, on a New York City Subway, with the novel The Stranger. Despite having a PhD, Jacob works as a postal clerk and lives in a rundown apartment in Brooklyn with his seductive girlfriend, Jezzie. Jacob misses his wife and their three sons, especially the youngest, Gabe, who died before the war. He is increasingly beset by disturbing experiences, including inexplicably locked subway exits, faceless vibrating people, a car trying to run him down, a nurse with grotesque teeth on the top of her head, and a bat-like monster penetrating Jezzie at a party, where Jacob collapses with a dangerous fever. The comrade who had gone catatonic, Paul, contacts him to reveal having had similar terrifying experiences, but is immediately killed when his car explodes. Commiserating after the funeral, the platoon-mates confess that all but one have also been living a nightmare. Jacob explains that the army must have done something to them, and they hire a lawyer to investigate. The lawyer backs out after reading military files documenting that the soldiers were never in combat and were discharged for psychological reasons. Jacob’s comrades also back out, looking scared, as Jacob demands they tell him who got to them. Jacob himself is later thrown into a car with intimidating men in suits who tell him to stop nosing around in military business, but he is able to jump from the moving car. Taken to the hospital, he finds himself strapped to a stretcher being wheeled over bloody body parts, past demented, disfigured inmates. Trapped with doctors wielding barbaric metal instruments, he is told he is already dead, but denies it. He is taken out of the hospital by his friend Louis, who quotes the 14th century Christian mystic Meister Eckhart: Eckhart saw Hell too. He said: “The only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won’t let go of life, your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away. But they’re not punishing you”, he said. “They’re freeing your soul. So, if you’re frightened of dying and ... you’re holding on, you’ll see devils tearing your life away. But if you’ve made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth.” Jacob is approached by a distressed Michael Newman, the man who treated his wound in a medevac helicopter in Vietnam and who dragged him away from Paul’s burning car. Newman tells a story of having been a chemist with the Army’s chemical warfare division in Saigon. He designed “the Ladder”, a drug that massively increased aggression, taking people straight to their most primal urges. A dose was secretly given to Jacob’s unit, who then turned on each other in a homicidal frenzy. At various times Jacob experiences the aftermath of his attack, such as being found gutted in the jungle and being evacuated under fire. At one point he awakens in his home before the war with his wife and all three sons, telling his wife he had a dream he was living with another woman, Jezzie. Eventually he re-experiences the traumatic moment, where it is a fellow American soldier who bayonets him. Finally given knowledge of what happened to him and why, in a calmer place, Jacob returns to his family's apartment. He sorts through his mementos, including his combat dog tags and honorable discharge. He is surprised to see his son Gabe at the foot of the stairwell, who takes him by the hand and leads him up the steps into a bright light. In a wartime triage tent, military doctors declare Jacob dead after “putting up quite a fight”. He has an expression of peace on his face, implying that he is finally dead.

In 2009, American geologist Adrian Helmsley visits astrophysicist Satnam Surtani in India and learns that neutrinos from a huge solar flare are heating Earth's core. Helmsley presents his information to White House Chief of Staff Carl Anheuser, who brings him to meet the president. The following year, U.S. President Thomas Wilson and other world leaders begin a secret project to ensure the survival of humanity. China and the G8 nations begin building nine arks, each capable of carrying 100,000 people, in the Himalayas near Cho Ming, Tibet. Nima, a Buddhist monk, is evacuated and his brother Tenzin joins the ark project. Funding is raised by selling tickets at €1 billion per person. By 2011, articles of value are moved to the arks with the help of art expert and First Daughter Laura Wilson. In 2012, struggling Los Angeles science-fiction writer Jackson Curtis is a chauffeur for Russian billionaire Yuri Karpov. Jackson's former wife (Kate) and their children (Noah and Lilly) live with Kate's boyfriend, plastic surgeon and pilot Gordon Silberman. Jackson takes Noah and Lilly camping in Yellowstone National Park. When they find an area fenced off by the Army, Jackson and his children climb over the fence. They are caught and brought to the geologist Adrian, who has read Jackson's books. After they are released they meet Charlie Frost, who hosts a radio show from the park. After Jackson and his children leave, Adrian learns that the Earth is about to undergo drastic changes in a few hours, realizing that it came much earlier than expected, as only three of the arks have been completed by this time. That night, after the military evacuates Yellowstone, Jackson watches Charlie's video of Charles Hapgood's theory that polar shifts and the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar predict a 2012 phenomenon. According to Charlie, anyone who attempted to inform the public was killed. Soon after Jackson and his children return home, he delivers Yuri's sons Alec and Oleg to the airport. After the two express that "they will live and he will die", Jackson rents a plane and rushes back to his family, realizing that Charlie was right. He rescues his family as the Earth-crust displacement begins and escapes from Los Angeles by air as California sinks into the Pacific Ocean. They fly to Yellowstone to retrieve a map from Charlie with the arks' location. As they leave, the Yellowstone Caldera erupts; Charlie is killed when he stays behind to cover the eruption. The group lands in Las Vegas to find a larger plane and meet Yuri, his twin sons Alec and Oleg, his girlfriend Tamara and their pilot Sasha, who are unable to leave because the airport is refusing to let them. Sasha an Antonov An-500 and pilots it with Gordon, and leave just as the Yellowstone ash cloud engulfs Las Vegas. Adrian, Carl and Laura fly to the arks on Air Force One. Knowing that his daughter will survive, President Wilson remains in the capital to address the nation for the last time while millions of people die in earthquakes and megatsunamis worldwide. With the presidential line of succession gone, Carl assumes the position of acting commander-in-chief. In the Pacific Ocean, a megatsunami strikes the Genesis and kills everyone on board, including Adrian's father. Yuri informs Jackson that he plans to stop at Hawaii to refuel, but this is cut short when they find that Hawaii has been engulfed in lava, forcing them to continue without the needed fuel, and arrive at China. Sasha continues flying the plane as the others escape on a Bentley Continental Flying Spur stored in the cargo hold. Sasha is killed when the plane crashes, and the others are spotted by Chinese Air Force helicopters. Yuri and his sons (who have tickets) are brought to the arks and the Curtis family, Tamara and Gordon are left behind. The remaining group is picked up by Nima and brought to the arks with his grandparents. With Tenzin's help they stow away on Ark 4, where the U.S. contingent is located. As a megatsunami breaches the Himalayas and approaches the site, an impact driver lodges in the ark-door gears. This keeps a boarding gate open, which prevents the ship's engines from starting. In the ensuing chaos where many people attempt to board the ships, Yuri, Tamara and Gordon are killed. Tenzin is injured, the ark begins filling with water and is set adrift. Carl wants to leave immediately, but Adrian manages to persuade the heads of state to let the people outside in. Ark 4 attempts to leave, but the lodged impact driver prevents it from doing so. Jackson and Noah dislodge the tool, and the crew of Ark 4 barely manages to regain control of the Ark before it smashes into Mount Everest. Jackson is reunited with his family and reconciles with Kate. Twenty-seven days later, the waters are receding. The arks approach the Cape of Good Hope, where the Drakensberg (now the tallest mountain range on Earth) is emerging. Adrian and Laura begin a relationship, and Jackson and Kate rekindle their romance.

In 1987, 16-year-old Claireece Precious Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) lives in the New York City ghetto of Harlem with her unemployed mother, Mary (Mo'Nique), who has long subjected her to physical, mental and sexual abuse. Precious has been raped by her father, Carl (Rodney "Bear" Jackson), resulting in two pregnancies. The family resides in a Section 8 tenement and survives on welfare. Her first child, "Mongo" (short for Mongoloid), has Down syndrome and is being cared for by Precious' grandmother, though Mary forces the family to pretend that Mongo lives with her and Precious so she can receive extra money from the government. When Precious' second pregnancy is discovered, her high school principal arranges for her to attend an alternative school, where she hopes Precious can change her life's direction. Precious finds a way out of her traumatic daily life by escaping into daydreams in which she is loved and appreciated. Inspired by her new teacher, Blu Rain (Paula Patton), Precious finally learns to read and write. She meets sporadically with social worker Ms. Weiss (Mariah Carey), who learns about incest in the household when Precious reveals who fathered her children. While Precious is in the hospital giving birth to her second child, Abdul, she meets John McFadden (Lenny Kravitz), a nursing assistant who shows her kindness. Upon returning home, her mother hits her and deliberately drops 3-day-old Abdul, angrily revealing that Precious' revelation about the incest has resulted in their being cut off from welfare. Precious fights back and flees her home with Abdul. As they set out, she stops at a church window and watches the choir singing a Christmas hymn inside, imagining that she and her fantasy boyfriend are together and singing the song. Precious breaks into her school classroom because it is cold and she has nowhere to go. After Blu discovers her the next morning, she frantically calls local shelters looking for a safe place for Precious to stay. Later that night, Precious stays with Blu and her live-in girlfriend. The next morning, Blu takes her and Abdul to find assistance for them. She tells Precious that she will be able to continue her schooling while she raises Abdul in a halfway house. Mary soon returns to inform Precious of her father's death from AIDS. Precious later learns that she is HIV-positive, though Abdul is not. Feeling dejected, she steals her case file from Ms. Weiss's office. As she shares the details of her file with her fellow students, she begins to hope for the future. Later, Precious meets with her mother at the social worker's office. Ms. Weiss confronts Mary about her abuse of Precious, pointing to specific incidents going back to when Precious was 3 years old. Mary tearfully says that it was Precious' fault that her father raped her because she "let him", and admits that she resents Precious for "stealing her man". Precious tells Mary that she finally sees her for what she is, and tells her mother that she will never see her or the children again. Mary begs Ms. Weiss to help her get Precious back, but a shaken Ms. Weiss silently brushes past her. Precious takes custody of Mongo, and plans to complete a GED test to receive a high school diploma equivalency. She walks out into the city with both children in tow, ready to start a new life.

A young Cambridge University professor, Horace Holly, is visited by a colleague, Vincey, who reveals that he will soon die. Vincey proceeds to tell Holly a fantastical tale of his family heritage. He charges Holly with the task of raising his young son, Leo (whom he has never seen) and gives Holly a locked iron box, with instructions that it is not to be opened until Leo turns 25. Holly agrees, and indeed Vincey is found dead the next day. Holly raises the boy as his own; when the box is opened on Leo's 25th birthday they discover the ancient and mysterious "Sherd of Amenartas", which seems to corroborate Leo's father's story. Holly, Leo and their servant, Job, follow instructions on the Sherd and travel to eastern Africa but are shipwrecked. They alone survive, together with their Arab captain, Mahomed; after a perilous journey into an uncharted region of the African interior, they are captured by the savage Amahagger people. The adventurers learn that the natives are ruled by a fearsome white queen, who is worshiped as Hiya or "She-who-must-be-obeyed". The Amahagger are curious about the white-skinned interlopers, having been warned of their coming by the mysterious queen. Billali, the chief elder of one of the Amahagger tribes, takes charge of the three men, introducing them to the ways of his people. One of the Amahagger maidens, Ustane, takes a liking to Leo and, by kissing him and embracing him publicly, weds him according to Amahagger customs. Leo, likewise, grows very fond of her. Billali tells Holly that he needs to go and report the white men's arrival to She. In his absence, some of the Amahagger become restless and seize Mahomed, intending to eat him as part of a ritual "hotpot". Realising what is about to happen, Holly shoots several of the Amahagger, killing Mahomed in the process; in the ensuing struggle Leo is gravely wounded, but Ustane saves his life by throwing herself onto his prostrate body to shield him from spears. All seems lost as the Amahagger resolve to kill Ustane along with the white men but Billali returns in the nick of time and declares that the three men are under the protection of She. Leo's condition, however, worsens and he nears death as Ustane faithfully tends to him. They are taken to the home of the queen, which lies near the ruins of the lost city of K么r, a once mighty civilisation that predated the Egyptians. The queen and her retinue live under a dormant volcano in a series of catacombs built as tombs for the people of K么r. There, Holly is presented to the queen, a white sorceress named Ayesha. Her beauty is so great that it enchants any man who beholds it. She, who is veiled and lies behind a partition, warns Holly that the power of her splendour arouses both desire and fear, but he is dubious. When she shows herself, however, Holly is enraptured and prostrates himself before her. Ayesha reveals that she has learned the secret of immortality and that she possesses other supernatural powers including the ability to read the minds of others, a form of telegnosis and the ability to heal wounds and cure illness; she is also revealed to have a tremendous knowledge of chemistry, but is notably unable to see into the future. She tells Holly that she has lived in the realm of K么r for more than two millennia, awaiting the reincarnated return of her lover, Kallikrates (whom she had slain in a fit of jealous rage). Later, when Holly inadvertently and secretly discovers Ayesha in her hidden chamber, he learns that she may have some degree of power to reanimate the dead. The next evening She visits Leo to heal him. But upon seeing his face, she is stunned and declares him to be the reincarnation of Kallikrates. She saves him and becomes jealous of Ustane. The latter is ordered to leave Leo and never to set her eyes on him again. Ustane refuses, however, and Ayesha eventually strikes her dead with magic. Despite the murder of their friend, Holly and Leo cannot free themselves from the power of Ayesha's beauty and Leo becomes bewitched. In explaining her history, Ayesha shows Leo the perfectly preserved body of Kallikrates, which she has kept with her, but she then dissolves the remains with a powerful acid, confident that Leo is indeed the reincarnation of her former lover. In the climax of the novel, Ayesha takes the two men to see the Pillar of Fire, passing through the ruined city of K么r into the heart of the ancient volcano. She is determined that Leo should bathe in the fire to become immortal and remain with her forever, and that together they can become the immortal and all-powerful rulers of the world. After a perilous journey, they come to a great cavern, but at the last Leo doubts the safety of entering the flame. To allay his fears, Ayesha steps into the Spirit of Life, but with this second immersion, the life-preserving power is lost and Ayesha begins to revert to her true age. Holly speculates that it may be that a second exposure undoes the effects of the previous or the Spirit of Life spews death on occasion. Before their eyes, Ayesha withers away in the fire, and her body shrinks. The sight is so shocking that Job dies in fright. Before dying, She tells Leo, "Forget me not. I shall come again!"

The story revolves around the imprisonment under false pretenses by Bolshevik agents of an exiled Russian noblewoman. The Scottish local community mobilises to uncover and thwart the conspiracy against her, and to defend the neutrality of Scotland against the Russian revolutionary struggle. A plot based on espionage and covert violence is set against the seemingly tranquil Scottish rural backdrop, a narrative device commonly found in Buchan’s novels. He uses this notably in The Thirty Nine Steps. The novel contrasts the domestic characters, heroes and villains, with their more alien Russian counterparts. Huntingtower is characteristic of Buchan’s novels, particularly in its class-based paternalism; its xenophobic prejudices, which are mitigated by instinctive humanity and dry humour; and its shrewd common-sense understanding of personality and motivation. We see Buchan's class based paternalism in the attitudes of various characters, from Saskia's insistence on pointing out the former status of her Russian family to Phemie Morran's lifelong loyalty to the extinct Kennedy family, to whom she was once a domestic servant. Heritage and McCunn instantly react to the first foreign resident of Huntingtower, a man called Leon, whose unwholesome appearance Buchan describes with relish: "He was a sturdy fellow in a suit of blackclothes which had not been made for him. He might have been a butler en deshabille, but for the presence of a pair of field boots into which he had tucked the ends of his trousers. The curious thing about him was his face, which was decorated with features so tiny as to give the impression of a monstrous child. Each in itself was well enough formed, but eyes, nose, mouth, chin were of smallness curiously out of proportion to the head and body. Such an anomaly might have been redeemed by the expression; good-humour would have invested it with an air of agreeable farce. But there was no friendliness in the man’s face. It was set like a judge’s in a stony impassiveness." Huntingtower chapter three. The moment when Dickson McCunn relinquishes his timid wish to remain strictly inside the law and decides to take a hand against the foreign conspirators gives an ironic insight into McCunn's social conditioning, whereby the veranda is an acceptable way to break into a house and the coal hole is unacceptable. "They both looked at Dickson, and Dickson, scarlet in the face, looked back at them. He had suddenly found the thought of a solitary march to Auchenlochan intolerable. Once again he was at the parting of the ways, and once more caprice determined his decision. That the coal-hole was out of the question had worked a change in his views, Somehow it seemed to him less burglarious to enter by a veranda. He felt very frightened but for the moment quite resolute. “I’m coming with you,” he said." Huntingtower chapter five. In this novel Buchan creates characters across a broad spectrum of Scottish social classes and backgrounds, and while no one except McCunn is presented in great depth, we are given sharp and revealing character sketches of other key characters. Heritage’s single handed defence of the actual tower and his attempt to free-climb away from the burning building show not only his actions but his reasons and thinking, why he is doing what he is doing. Wee Jaikie's inner life is only hinted at occasionally, but his dogged perseverance and resourcefulness come through at several moments when his interventions are important. In the final resolution of the story, a band of adventurers ranging from an injured laird and his faithful menservants to a group of semi-outcast street urchins from Glasgow have bonded and have combined to fight for a common purpose, out of belief in right and wrong, and allegiance to Scotland.

Divorced American Harvey Shine writes jingles for television commercials, a job not in keeping with his one-time aspiration to be a jazz composer and pianist. His position at work is tenuous as he departs for London to attend his daughter Susan's wedding. Upon arrival at Heathrow Airport, he encounters Kate Walker, a single Londoner who collects statistics from passengers as they pass through the terminals. Tired and anxious to get to his hotel, Harvey brusquely dismisses her when she approaches him to ask questions. Harvey is upset to discover his ex-wife Jean rented a house to accommodate family and friends from the States but failed to include him. At the rehearsal dinner on the night preceding the wedding, it becomes increasingly clear Harvey is systematically being excluded from the clan around his ex-wife's new husband Brian and is treated as a mere guest. They fake their politeness towards him and make him feel embarrassed and uncomfortable. When Harvey tells Susan, with whom he has shared a strained relationship since his divorce, that he will be attending the ceremony but not the subsequent reception because he needs to return to the States for an important meeting, she informs him she has asked her stepfather Brian to give her away. Meanwhile, Kate is on a blind date that is not going well. When she returns to the table after taking yet another call from her neurotic mother Maggie, who is certain her Polish neighbor is burying bodies in a shed in his yard, she discovers her date has invited friends to join them. Feeling unwanted and excluded from the conversation, she eventually excuses herself and goes home. The following morning Harvey attends the wedding but quickly leaves for the airport without congratulating the married couple. But due to heavy traffic delays he misses his flight at Heathrow. When he calls his boss Marvin to advise him he will be returning a day later than planned, he is fired. Determined to drown his sorrows, Harvey goes to an airport bar and sees Kate. Recognizing her from the day before, he apologizes for his rude behavior. She initially resists the attention he is paying her but soon they're both glad to finally have an honest conversation about what they're feeling and thinking. Harvey follows Kate to the Heathrow Express and, upon arrival at Paddington station, asks if he can walk her to her writing class on the South Bank. She accepts his offer and is pleased when he offers to meet her after class. As they stroll along the River Thames, Harvey mentions he is missing Susan's wedding reception, and Kate urges him to go. He finally relents, but only if she will accompany him. When Kate insists she is not properly dressed for such an occasion, Harvey buys her a dress and the two head to the Grosvenor House Hotel, where they are welcomed coolly by Susan and get two places at the children's table. When the father of the bride is called upon to make a toast, Brian rises and begins to speak until Harvey interrupts. He then delivers an eloquent speech that redeems him with his daughter and endears him to Kate. Immediately following the first dance of the bride and groom, the groom calls Harvey up to dance with his daughter for the Father-Daughter Dance. He happily does so, and then all the guests join them on the floor for the rumba, tango and other dances, with Harvey enjoying himself on the dance floor, alone. Kate is left at the table, once again in the same position as when she was on her blind date. Her smile becomes more strained as she looks about and sees herself alone at the table in a room of strangers for several dances, Harvey having apparently forgotten she was there. When she surmises he will not be coming to ask her to dance, her smile disappears and she quietly leaves the room and stands in front of the elevator, preparing to leave. Harvey, now looking for Kate, goes into the corridor and seeing her waiting for the elevator, he disappears into a side annex with a piano and begins to softly play one of his own jazz compositions for her. She hears the music and follows it, finding Harvey smiling and waiting for her. He asks her to return to the reception to dance and stay with him. She smiles and agrees. Following the reception, Harvey and Kate walk and talk until dawn. They exchange a single, gentle kiss and agree to meet at noon. At his hotel, Harvey experiences serious heart palpitations and is rushed to the hospital, where he receives a call from Marvin who, having discovered his employee is more indispensable than he thought, urges him to return to work as soon as possible. Harvey decides he prefers to remain in London and explore the possibility of a relationship with Kate. He tracks her down at her writing class and reveals why he missed their rendezvous. Overcautious about romance because of so many past disappointments, Kate initially resists his suggestion that they see what the future might bring them, but finally agrees to give things a chance. As they slowly stroll away, Harvey invites Kate to ask him the questions she would have asked him at the airport terminal, and this time, he happily answers, telling her his place of residence "...is in transition."

Graeme Willy (Simon Pegg) and Clive Gollings (Nick Frost) are British comic book enthusiasts and best friends who travel to the United States to attend the annual San Diego Comic-Con International, and to take a road trip through the American Southwest to visit sites significant to UFO lore. While driving on a remote desert highway at night, after a tense situation with some rednecks in a diner, Graeme and Clive observe a car driving erratically and then crash. They stop to investigate and offer assistance to the driver, who turns out to be an alien named Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen). Clive faints, but Graeme agrees to assist Paul and gives him a ride. Later, United States Secret Service Agent Zoil (Jason Bateman) arrives at the car crash site and informs his unseen female superior, "the Big Guy" (Sigourney Weaver), that he is closing in on Paul. She sends two inept rookies, Haggard (Bill Hader) and O'Reilly (Joe Lo Truglio), to assist Zoil. Graeme, Clive and Paul camp at an RV park run by two Christian fundamentalists; one-eyed Ruth Buggs (Kristen Wiig) and her father, Moses. Upon Ruth discovering Paul the next day, the three are forced to take her with them. During an argument about her religion, Paul puts his hand on her forehead and shows her his collective knowledge, after which Ruth realizes that everything she was raised to believe is questionable. Paul later uses his healing powers to cure Ruth's blinded eye and convinces her to moderate her fundamentalist beliefs. The fugitives stop at a bar and Ruth tries to call Moses, but Zoil intercepts the call and she is accosted by the rednecks from the start of their journey, starting a bar fight in the process. Later, at another RV park, Ruth is questioned by Agent Zoil, but claims to know nothing about "a one-eyed girl" or "two British nerds". Released, she and Graeme retrieve Clive and Paul, who narrowly escape O'Reilly. Frustrated, Zoil orders Haggard and O'Reilly to return to base, but they insist on catching the alien on their own. The group soon arrive at a house owned by Tara (Blythe Danner), who rescued Paul when he first crashed on Earth. As she makes tea for her visitors, Haggard, O'Reilly and Zoil surround the house. The fugitives flee, but O'Reilly shoots at them, igniting gas from Tara's stove and destroying her house. O'Reilly is apparently killed in the explosion. Haggard pursues and catches up to the RV. Due to an error in judgement, Haggard drives off a cliff and is killed. Zoil reassures the Big Guy that he will have Paul within the hour, but she is tired of waiting and informs Zoil that she has ordered a "military response". Paul, Graeme, Clive, Ruth and Tara arrive at Devils Tower National Monument, where they set off fireworks as a signal to Paul's mothership. A helicopter suddenly arrives with agents and The Big Guy. Zoil then appears and starts a stand-off, disabling the agents, but is then wounded by The Big Guy. Secretly, Zoil is Paul's friend and attempting to aid the escape under cover of capturing Paul. Moses arrives unexpectedly and fires his shotgun with the intent on killing Paul but Graeme jumps in front of Paul and Ruth and is fatally wounded. Paul once again uses his healing powers to heal Graeme and revives him in spite of the danger to himself. Graeme sits up and kisses Ruth, but then they hear an ahem from The Big Guy. Just as The Big Guy is about to kill them, she is crushed by a suddenly arriving spaceship. Paul says goodbye to his friends before he leaves in the ship with Tara. Two years later, Graeme, Clive, Ruth, and O'Reilly (who survived the explosion) are at another Comic-Con where Graeme and Clive are promoting Paul, their best-selling novel.

Nicky Rogan has written several plays and has achieved success. It is now opening night of his latest effort, and all around him assure him that this one will be the best yet. But as opening hour approaches, Rogan falls prey to doubts and fears, egged on by another playwright whose last work was trashed by the local newspaper's new drama critic, Steven Schwimmer. He eventually lets those fears drive him to adopt a resolve to kill the critic (who he assumes will also trash his play), and he procures a handgun with which to perform the deed. Instead of attending the play's opening night Rogan spends the time in a bar, accompanied by a lady cab driver and her grandson; earlier in the evening the lady misidentified Rogan as a local small-time hoodlum, and Rogan does not correct her misidentification. They watch the most crucial Game 6 of the World Series playoff between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Mets. The Sox had won 3 games and could clinch the title by winning Game 6, but Rogan, a lifelong Sox fan, knows how easily they can lose when they should win. He spends the evening waiting for the inevitable, even though the Sox are ahead most of the time. When the inevitable does occur (due to an unexpected pair of errors at the end of the final inning), he snaps, and heads out to take out his rage on the newspaper critic. He not only finds the critic, but finds him in the early stages of deflowering the playwright's daughter. He begins firing wildly, but is finally calmed when he learns that the critic is equally devastated by the Sox's loss. They end up together, watching an interminable rerun of the final error on a small television set in the critic's apartment.

Mary Stuart is imprisoned in England — nominally for the murder of her husband Darnley, but actually due to her claim to the throne of England held by Queen Elizabeth I. While Mary's cousin, Elizabeth, hesitates over signing Mary's death sentence, Mary hopes for a reprieve. After Mary finds out that Mortimer (created by Schiller), the nephew of her custodian, is on her side, she entrusts her life to him. Mortimer is supposed to give Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, a letter from Mary, in which she pleads for help. This is a delicate situation, for Leicester seems to support Queen Elizabeth. After numerous requests, Mary finally gains the opportunity to meet Queen Elizabeth (something that, in reality, never happened). This meeting ends in an acrimonious argument, caused by Mary's unwillingness to submit entirely to Elizabeth's wish. The argument leads to the inevitable suspicion that the cause of reprieve will not succeed. To complicate matters further, Mortimer plans to free Mary from the prison by force, a dramatized version of the unsuccessful Babington Plot, but when his attempt is found out, he commits suicide. Queen Elizabeth eventually persuades herself to sign Mary's death warrant. Elizabeth insists that her only reason for signing is the pressure from her own people to do so. The signed warrant is handed to Queen Elizabeth's undersecretary Davison without any clear instructions on what to do with it. In the process, Elizabeth transfers the burden of responsibility to him, fully aware that he in turn will hand over the warrant to Lord Burleigh, and thus confirm Mary's death sentence. Burleigh demands the signed document from Davison, who — despite his uncertainty — eventually hands it to him. As a result, Burleigh has Mary executed. The play ends with Elizabeth blaming both Burleigh and Davison for Mary's death (banishing the former from court and having the latter imprisoned in the Tower), Lord Shrewsbury (who pleaded for mercy for Mary throughout the play) resigning his honors and Leicester leaving England for France. Elizabeth is left completely alone as the curtain falls.

After enjoying the favours of Onaelia, niece to the duke of Medina, the Spanish king repudiates her and her son, Sebastian, making Paulina, daughter of the duke of Florence, his queen. On hearing this, the noble soldier Balthazar works on the conscience of the king to take back Onaelia. Despite the threat of civil war, the king refuses. Count Malatesta proposes to the queen that she pretend to be pregnant, to sound the hearts of the Spanish people. Roderigo, Lopez, and Valasco, dons of Spain, rally to the cause of their majesties against the duke of Medina's faction. Angered at her rival, the queen proposes to Balthazar the murder of Onaelia and her son, to which he pretends to acquiesce after receiving the king's command. But, loyal to Onaelia, Balthazar announces these plots to Medina, who disguises himself as a French doctor to gain access to the king. When the disguised Medina speaks to the king, he becomes convinced of the legitimacy of the king's plot to murder his niece as well as Balthazar's loyalty. To appease the rebellious faction, the king proposes a marriage between Onaelia and Cockadillio, a courtier, an offer which is accepted. The queen and Malateste again confer, deciding to poison Onaelia. During the marriage ceremony, the king takes up the poisoned cup meant for Onaelia, to the queen's and Malateste's consternation. While the king is drinking, Malateste admits their crime and is stabbed to death by the faction. While dying, the king passes the crown to Sebastian and commands that the queen be sent back to Florence with treble dowry. Onaelia and Balthazar are appointed to protect Sebastian in his youth.

The work outlines St. Augustine's sinful youth and his conversion to Christianity. It is widely seen as the first Western autobiography ever written, and was an influential model for Christian writers throughout the following 1,000 years, through the Middle Ages. It is not a complete autobiography, as it was written in his early 40s, and he lived long afterwards, producing another important work (City of God). It does, nonetheless, provide an unbroken record of his development of thought and is the most complete record of any single person from the 4th and 5th centuries. It is a significant theological work, featuring spiritual meditations and insights. In the work St. Augustine writes about how much he regrets having led a sinful and immoral life. He discusses his regrets for following the Manichaean religion and believing in astrology. He writes about Nebridius's role in helping to persuade him that astrology was not only incorrect but evil, and St. Ambrose's role in his conversion to Christianity. The first nine books are autobiographical and the last four are commentary. He shows intense sorrow for his sexual sins, and writes on the importance of sexual morality. The books were written as prayers to God, thus the title, based on the Psalms of David; and it begins with "For Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee." The work is thought to be divisible into books which symbolize various aspects of the Trinity and trinitarian belief.

The Mystery of a Hansom Cab takes place in Melbourne, Australia and involves an investigation into a homicide, after a corpse is discovered in the evening, in a hansom cab. The city of Melbourne plays a significant role in the plot and, as the author describes: "Over all the great city hung a cloud of smoke like a pall." The killer's identity is not as significant a revelation in the story as are the roles of the influential and secretive Frettlby family, and their secret: they have an illegitimate daughter living on the streets. The class divide between Melbourne's wealthy and less fortunate is addressed throughout the plot. The protagonist in the novel is a policeman named Detective Gorby, who is given the task of solving the murder. As Hume describes the character's investigative skills: "He looked keenly round the room, and his estimate of the dead man's character was formed at once." The author commented in a later introduction, "All of the scenes in the book, especially the slums, are described from personal observation; and I passed a great many nights in Little Bourke Street, gathering material". At this time, the street had gained notoriety as a place frequented by prostitutes and criminals.

Equality 7-2521, writing by candlelight in a tunnel under the earth, tells the story of his life up to that point. He exclusively uses plural pronoun(s) ("we", "our", "they") to refer to himself and others. He was raised like all children in his society, away from his parents in collective homes. Later, he realized that he was born with a "curse", that makes him learn quickly and ask many questions. He excelled at the Science of Things and dreamed of becoming a Scholar. However, a Council of Vocations assigns all people to their Life Mandate, and he was assigned to be a Street Sweeper. Equality 7-2521 accepts his street sweeping assignment as penance for his "Transgression of Preference" in secretly desiring to be a Scholar. He works with Union 5-3992 and International 4-8818, who is Equality's only friend (which is another Transgression of Preference). He found an entrance to a tunnel in their assigned work area. Despite International's protests that any exploration unauthorized by a Council is forbidden, Equality entered the tunnel and found that it contains metal tracks. Equality realized that the tunnel is from the Unmentionable Times of the distant past. He began sneaking away from his community to use the tunnel as a laboratory for scientific experiments. He stole paper and is using it to write his journal. He is now 21 years old. While cleaning a road at the edge of the City, Equality meets Liberty 5-3000, a 17-year-old Peasant girl who works in the fields. He commits another transgression by thinking constantly of her, instead of waiting to be assigned a woman at the annual Time of Mating. She has dark eyes and golden hair, and he names her "The Golden One". When he speaks to her, he discovers that she also thinks of him. Later he reveals his secret name for her, and Liberty tells Equality she has named him "The Unconquered". Continuing his scientific work, Equality rediscovers electricity. In the ruins of the tunnel, he finds a glass box with wires in it, that gives off light when he passes electricity through it. He decides to take his discovery to the World Council of Scholars, thinking that such a great gift to mankind will outweigh his transgressions and lead to him being made a Scholar. However, one night he loses track of time in the underground tunnel and his absence from the Home of the Street Sweepers is noticed. He is whipped and held in the Palace of Corrective Detention. The night before the World Council of Scholars is set to meet, he easily escapes; there are no guards because no one has ever attempted escape before. The next day he presents his work to the World Council of Scholars. Horrified that he has done unauthorized research, they assail him as a "wretch" and a "gutter cleaner", saying he must be punished. They say his discovery must be destroyed, lest it disrupt the plans of the World Council and the Department of Candles. Equality seizes the box and flees into the Uncharted Forest that lies outside the City. In the Uncharted Forest, Equality sees himself as damned for having left his fellow men, but he enjoys his freedom. No one will pursue him into this forbidden place. He only misses the Golden One. On his second day of living in the forest, the Golden One appears, having followed him into the forest. They live together in the forest and try to express their love for one another, but they lack the words to express love as individuals. They find a house from the Unmentionable Times in the mountains, and decide to live in it. While reading books from the house's library, Equality discovers the word "I" and tells the Golden One about it. Having rediscovered individuality, they give themselves new names from the books: Equality becomes "Prometheus" and Liberty becomes "Gaea". Prometheus talks about the past, wondering how men could give up their individuality, and plans a future in which they will regain it.

Anna Karenina is the tragic story of a married aristocrat/socialite and her affair with the affluent Count Vronsky. The story opens when she arrives in the midst of a family broken up by her brother's unbridled womanizing—something that prefigures her own later situation, though she would experience less tolerance by others. A bachelor, Vronsky is eager to marry her if she will agree to leave her husband Karenin, a senior government official, but she is vulnerable to the pressures of Russian social norms, the moral laws of the Russian Orthodox Church, her own insecurities, and Karenin's indecision. Although Vronsky and Anna go to Italy, where they can be together, they have trouble making friends. Back in Russia, she is shunned, becoming further isolated and anxious, while Vronsky pursues his social life. Despite Vronsky's reassurances, she grows increasingly possessive and paranoid about his imagined infidelity, fearing loss of control. A parallel story within the novel is that of Konstantin Levin, a wealthy country landowner who wants to marry Princess Kitty, sister to Dolly and sister-in-law to Anna's brother Oblonsky. Konstantin has to propose twice before Kitty accepts. The novel details Konstantin's difficulties managing his estate, his eventual marriage, and his personal issues, until the birth of his first child. The novel explores a diverse range of topics throughout its approximately thousand pages. Some of these topics include an evaluation of the feudal system that existed in Russia at the time—politics, not only in the Russian government but also at the level of the individual characters and families, religion, morality, gender and social class.The novel is divided into eight parts. Its epigraph is Vengeance is mine, I will repay, from Romans 12:19, which in turn quotes from Deuteronomy 32:35. The novel begins with one of its most often-quoted lines: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Born in 1930 to a recently widowed Englishwoman on a homestead in rural Natal, little Peter Philip (Guy Witcher) is schooled in the ways of England by his mother and the ways of Africa by a Zulu nanny (Nomadlozi Kubheka), whose son Tonderai is also his best friend. Their easy life is forever shattered, however, when the farm's cattle are claimed by rinderpest. PK's mother succumbs to a nervous breakdown, and he is sent away to a conservative Afrikaans boarding school while she recovers. Being the only English speaker, PK soon earns almost universal contempt from his scathing Afrikaner fellows—particularly an older student, Jaapie Botha. Botha's abuse and the inferiority complex which results strikes PK with a severe case of nocturnal enuresis, a habit which he eventually overcomes with local sangoma Dabula Manzi. In conquering his nightmares, PK is given a chicken (Mother Courage), which becomes his closest companion. Botha subsequently captures PK and Mother Courage and has them tried before a mock court while elaborating on the depth of his hatred for the British—a people he holds responsible for atrocities committed during the Second Boer War. The Afrikaans boys hang Mother Courage and kill her with a rock, but their attempts to kill PK in a similar manner are interrupted by a teacher who later oversees Botha's expulsion. With his mother dead, PK finds himself living with his grandfather in Barberton. He eventually seeks a mentor in Karl "Doc" von Vollensteen (Armin Mueller-Stahl), a lonely German musician who lost his family in Europe. Doc warms to PK and under his guidance the latter soon becomes an excellent pianist. He is interned as an enemy alien at the onset of World War II, but PK continues to visit him regularly in prison. Doc introduces the boy to Geel Piet, a Cape Coloured inmate who takes von Vollensteen's place as PK's mentor, training him to be an excellent boxer. Piet also impresses on PK his mantra: "first with the head, then with the heart", a phrase that will see the young man through even greater hard times ahead. A maturing PK (Simon Fenton) begins to express sympathy towards black prisoners, who are detained under appalling conditions. He works with Doc to distribute contraband among the Africans, writing their letters to home, and sharing their many sufferings. The war does not end happily for PK, as Doc is repatriated and Piet—seriously injured by a white warder—fails to survive his sentence. PK is sent away again, this time to study at the prestigious Prince of Wales School in Johannesburg. While attending a boxing championship, he is enamoured by Maria Marais, daughter of a leading National Party official. Since her strict father will not permit them to see each other openly, they begin dating in secret. On one such outing they are introduced to Gideon Duma, a prominent boxer in Alexandra, a notorious black township. Duma's passion for resisting apartheid inspires PK, and he begins teaching English at a rural African school. Maria's father, incensed by the couple's ongoing relationship and PK's ties to a multiracial gym, leads him to request a formal investigation by one of his South African Police contacts, Colonel Breyten. Breyten and his sergeant, an embittered Jaapie Botha, place PK under surveillance for subversion. His clashes with the SAP finally come to a head when Maria is killed during a raid on a biracial church by the security forces. Maddened by grief, PK considers fleeing to England, but is consoled by his former boxing partner, who reminds him of all the good he can still do in Africa. Botha leads a violent raid on Alexandra the following night. He threatens to shoot Elias Mlungisi, the local boxing promoter, only to be confronted by PK. They spar; PK easily bests his childhood enemy. Botha is still bent on executing the erstwhile victor, but an arriving Gideon Duma despatches the policeman with a cricket bat before he can fire. Now fugitives from the apartheid government, PK and Duma vow to continue a campaign against racial injustice. Peter's closing narration identifies meaningful voices during his life; from mother and nanny, to Doc and Dabula Manzi, Geel Piet and, finally, Maria Marais.

In the main plot, William the Conqueror falls in love with the image on the shield that the Marquess of Lubeck carries in a tournament. In disguise, William travels to the court of King Zweno of Denmark to see the original of the portrait; once there, he falls in love with Marianna, a Swedish princess held hostage at the Danish court. Marianna, however, is faithful to her suitor, Lubeck, and has no interest in William; but the king's daughter Blanche becomes infatuated with the newcomer. The ladies stage a plot, in which William absconds with the woman he thinks is Marianne; in doing so he gets in trouble with Zweno, who is under the same mistaken impression. When the woman's true identity is revealed – she is of course Blanche – William accepts her as his wife. Lubeck and Marianne are left, happily, to each other. In the subplot, Em, the beautiful daughter of the miller of Manchester, is wooed by three suitors, Valingford, Mountney, and Manvile. Preferring Manvile, she pretends blindness to evade Valingford, and deafness to avoid Mountney. But Manvile proves unfaithful to Em. In the end, Manvile loses both of the women he pursues, and Em marries Valingford, the one of the three who has remained true to her; and it is revealed that Em is actually of the gentry – her father is Sir Thomas Goddard, and the miller of Manchester was his disguise. The two plots meet at the end, as William recognizes Goddard's banishment was unjust and revokes it. Em makes William realize that the world does contain virtuous women, which helps to reconcile him to his marriage with Blanche.

Travis Bickle, a 26-year-old honorably discharged U.S. Marine, is a lonely, depressed young man living on his own in New York City. He becomes a taxi driver to cope with his chronic insomnia, driving passengers every night around the boroughs of New York City. He also spends time in seedy porn theaters and keeps a diary. Travis becomes infatuated with Betsy, a campaign volunteer for Senator and presidential candidate Charles Palantine. After watching her interact with fellow worker Tom through her window, Travis enters to volunteer as a pretext to talk to her, and takes her out for coffee. On a later date, he takes her to see a Swedish sex education film, which offends her, and she goes home alone. His attempts at reconciliation by sending flowers are rebuffed, so he berates her at the campaign office, before being kicked out by Tom. Travis confides in fellow taxi driver Wizard about his thoughts, which are beginning to turn violent, but Wizard assures him that he will be fine, leaving Travis to his own destructive path. Travis is disgusted by the sleaze, dysfunction, and prostitution that he witnesses throughout the city, and attempts to find an outlet for his frustrations by beginning a program of intense physical training. A fellow taxi driver refers Travis to illegal gun dealer Easy Andy, from whom he buys a number of handguns. At home, Travis practices drawing his weapons and constructs a sleeve gun to hide and then quickly deploy a gun from his sleeve. One night, Travis enters a convenience store moments before an attempted armed robbery and he shoots and kills the robber. The shop owner takes responsibility for the shooting, taking Travis' handgun. On another night, teenage prostitute Iris enters Travis's cab, attempting to escape her pimp Matthew "Sport" Higgins. Sport drags Iris from the cab and throws Travis a crumpled twenty-dollar bill, which continually reminds him of her and the corruption that surrounds him. Some time later, Travis hires Iris, but instead of having sex with her, attempts to dissuade her from continuing in prostitution. He fails to completely turn her from her course, but she does agree to meet with him for breakfast the next day. Travis leaves a letter to Iris at his apartment saying he will soon be dead, with money for her to return home. After shaving his head into a mohawk, Travis attends a public rally, where he plans to assassinate Senator Palantine, but Secret Service agents notice him with his hand in his coat and chase him. He flees and later goes to the East Village to invade Sport's brothel. A violent gunfight ensues and Travis kills Sport, a bouncer, and a mafioso. Travis is severely injured with multiple gunshot wounds. Iris witnesses the fight and is hysterical with fear, pleading with Travis to stop the killing. After the gunfight, Travis attempts suicide, but has run out of ammunition and resigns himself to lying on a sofa until police arrive. When they do, he places his index finger against his temple gesturing the act of shooting himself. Travis, after having recovered from his wounds and returning to work, receives a letter from Iris' father thanking him for saving her life and revealing that she has returned home to Pittsburgh, where she is going to school. Later, he reconciles with Betsy after dropping her off at home in his cab. When she tries to pay her fare, Travis simply smiles at her and drives away. In the final shot, Travis looks in the rearview mirror and suddenly becomes agitated.

Martin, CEO of Tri-Oceanic Corp., hires geologist Steven Beck to supervise an undersea mining operation for six months. The crew consists of members Doc, Willie, Sixpack, Jones, DeJesus, Bowman and Cobb. While working outside their deep sea station in a pressure suit, Sixpack discovers a Soviet shipwreck, Leviathan. The crew salvage a safe from Leviathan, finding records detailing the deaths of several crew members as well as a video log from the captain. Sixpack also finds a flask of vodka which he shares with Bowman. Doc and Beck review the captain's video, which describes puzzling medical problems amongst his crew. They also discover that Leviathan was scuttled. The following morning, Sixpack feels sick and Doc discovers lesions along his back. He dies a few hours later, but Doc and Beck keep it quiet to avoid a panic. Doc checks the crew to confirm no one else is sick, but does not have the chance to examine Bowman. While Beck and Doc confer with Martin on the surface, Bowman begins feeling ill. She finds Sixpack's corpse, which is mutating and growing. When Bowman's hair starts falling out, she realizes the same thing is happening to her. Beck and Doc request emergency evacuation, but Martin reports a severe storm on the surface that will delay evacuation for 12 hours. Doc finds that Bowman killed herself. Her body is taken to sickbay, where it merges with Sixpack's. When the crew discovers the mutating bodies, they decide to dump both of them in the ocean. As they are about to "flush" the cadavers, the body bag begins squirming. Believing someone inside may be alive, the crew opens it. The creature inside claws Cobb before they eject it. They realize that Leviathan was experimenting on its unwitting crew with mutagens. The mutagen was mixed with the vodka that the crew, and later Sixpack and Bowman, drank. The ship was scuttled when the experiment escaped control. A tentacle was severed when the corpses were ejected; it mutates into a lamprey-like creature that attacks DeJesus in the kitchen. Jones seals the kitchen's pressure doors and goes for help. He asks Cobb to watch the door, but when he searches for a weapon, the creature assimilates DeJesus and rips its way out of the kitchen. It then grows tentacles that attack the crew. The creature attacks the medical bay, devouring blood and plasma from the cooler. This inspires Beck to use a pint of his blood to attract the beast, then attempt to flush it the same way they did with Sixpack and Bowman. Doc ejects the escape pods so that no one can escape and risk bringing the mutagen to the surface. Beck consults with Martin for emergency evacuation. Martin assures them that they will not be left behind, but that she cannot carry out the rescue because of a hurricane. Cobb's injuries worsen, causing him to mutate and infect Doc. Williams escapes as Beck and Jones try trapping the creature. They escape to another part of the station. The crew tries accessing weather information through the computer, but it is blocked. Williams asks the computer for a financial report from the company and they discover that Tri-Oceanic Corporation has declared them dead, labeling it an accident. The creature damages vital systems, causing the pressure to drop and an implosion to occur. They decide to use their dive suits to escape. The creature attacks them, but is crushed by the lift as Beck escapes. They make it to the surface, which is calm and sunny. As they are met by a Coast Guard helicopter, the mutant surfaces nearby and tries to take Jones. He keeps it from escaping at the cost of his own life, and Beck throws a demolition charge into the creature's mouth, causing it to explode. After they are dropped off on a Tri-Oceanic oil drilling platform, the two survivors are greeted by Martin. Martin tells them she believed they would make it, smiling insincerely and asking how Beck feels. Beck punches Martin in the face, knocking her out, and then answers her question by saying "Better. A lot better."

Kirk Kettner (Jay Baruchel) is a twenty-something TSA officer employed at the Pittsburgh International Airport along with his friends, fellow TSA officer Stainer (T. J. Miller), airline reservations agent Devon (Nate Torrence), and baggage handler Jack (Mike Vogel). Kirk has a poor track record with dating and is hoping to reconcile with his self-centered ex-girlfriend, Marnie (Lindsay Sloane), who despite having broken up with him two years earlier, and having since found a new boyfriend Ron (Hayes MacArthur), has remained close with Kirk's parents (Debra Jo Rupp and Adam LeFevre), brother Dylan (Kyle Bornheimer), and pregnant sister-in-law-to-be Debbie (Jessica St. Clair). At work one morning, an attractive young woman, Molly McCleish (Alice Eve), arrives at the passenger terminal to board a flight to New York City. While proceeding through the TSA security checkpoint, Molly's striking looks attract unwanted attention from several male TSA officers who try flirting with her awkwardly. Kirk is the only TSA officer to treat Molly courteously. On the airplane, she realizes that she accidentally left her cellphone in the airport security area. When she calls up her phone, Kirk answers and arranges a time to meet the following evening so that Kirk can return it. When Devon and Kirk arrive at the Andy Warhol Museum, where Molly, a lawyer-turned-event planner, is managing an event, Kirk collides with Molly's sister, Katie (Kim Shaw) and spills his drink on the museum director. Kirk takes the blame for the incident to protect Katie, after which a grateful Molly offers Kirk tickets to a Pittsburgh Penguins hockey game at the Mellon Arena. When Kirk and Stainer meet Molly and her best friend Patty (Krysten Ritter), who develops an immediate mutual loathing with Stainer (he subsequently refers to her as "The Hamburglar"), at the game, Kirk, still convinced Molly is not interested in him, assumes Molly meant to set him up with Patty, until Patty explicitly tells him of Molly's interest. The two begin to date after this, with Kirk confiding in her his dream of becoming a pilot someday, though Stainer predicts their relationship will fail as he deems Molly a "10" in a scale of attractiveness, and Kirk only a "5", telling him a girl he loved once broke up with him for this very reason. Patty, for her part, believes Molly had only chosen Kirk because he was a "safe" choice after being hurt by her last boyfriend, Air Force pilot Cam (Geoff Stults), who assumes Kirk is a waiter and attempts to order drinks from Kirk when they first meet, and then believing Kirk to be a homosexual friend of Molly's. Molly then invites herself to Kirk's family lunch, where she charms his family and even Ron after highly intimidating the men of the house with her looks. Molly's attentions to Kirk stir jealousy in Marnie, who feels upstaged by Molly's attractiveness, and takes a sudden interest in Kirk again. After returning to Molly's apartment, Kirk ejaculates prematurely in his pants when things start to heat up, just as Molly's parents (played by Eve's real-life parents, Sharon Maughan and Trevor Eve) arrive for a surprise visit. Desperate to conceal the stain on his pants, Kirk seems discourteous by avoiding to stand up and shake hands, and quickly leaves Molly's apartment. Molly grows cool to Kirk after this, believing he fled to avoid meeting her parents. At Jack's urging, Kirk admits the true reasons for his leaving, and their relationship resumes. During a date, Kirk suggests to Molly that she throw a birthday party for Katie (with music provided by Stainer's Hall & Oates tribute band, "Adult Education"). Kirk is troubled, when Molly is intentionally vague about Kirk's line of work to her parents. To add to his troubles, Molly's macho ex-boyfriend Cam shows up and messes with Kirk by deliberately alluding to Molly having some sort of "defect". After the party, both of them go back to Molly's apartment and make out, where Kirk discovers Molly's "defect" is slightly webbed toes, which Kirk considers so minor that he decides that she is indeed too perfect for him. Molly is upset that Kirk is so insecure that he felt he could only be with her if something was wrong with her. After telling Kirk that she and Cam had broken up because of his own insecurities, with him even cheating on her, she admits she had indeed asked Kirk out because she considered him safe and breaks up with him. Kirk leaves and later resumes his relationship with Marnie, planning on a family trip to Branson. Stainer and Patty realize their mistake in telling Kirk and Molly it wouldn't work out; Stainer tells Kirk that he is a "10" too. They pull Kirk off his plane as the aircraft prepares to depart to Branson as he tries to leave with his family and Marnie, while Patty brings Molly to the airport. Kirk rejects Marnie during an unorthodox airport pursuit and meets Molly in the airport where she tells him that he is out of shape and she asked him out because she thought he was safe and wouldn't hurt her. She then continues to tell him that she doesn't care what he is employed as and that she misses him and wants to be together with him. Kirk and Molly then make up and resume their relationship, even if their friends don't approve it. Later, as a surprise, Kirk is seen walking on the airport Tarmac with Molly where he takes Molly on a trip in a small plane, with him as the pilot. The couple are last seen happily together in a small plane taking off from Pittsburgh airport.

Rose Lorkowski (Amy Adams) is a thirty-something single mother, working full-time as a maid. Her underachieving sister Norah (Emily Blunt) lives with their father Joe (Alan Arkin), and is fired from her job as a waitress. After the school expels Rose's son Oscar for his erratic behavior, she is told she must put him on medication or send him to a private school. Unable to make enough money with her current job, Rose asks Mac (Steve Zahn), her ex-boyfriend during their high school years and her married lover, for advice. Mac recommends a crime scene cleanup job, and with his connections as a police officer, he gets Rose and Norah into the business. At first, the sisters perform their job poorly, carelessly handling the hazardous materials by throwing them into dumpsters instead of properly disposing of them in an incinerator. Needing to operate as a more reputable service, the sisters get the necessary tools from Winston (Clifton Collins, Jr.), a one-armed storekeeper of a shop for cleanup material. The sisters name their cleanup business "Sunshine Cleaning" and start making progress as their reputation grows. They begin to find meaning in their function to "help" in some way in the aftermath of a loss or disaster, even though the job stirs up memories of their own mother's suicide. At the same time, the members of the family deal with their individual problems. Rose encounters some of her former high school classmates and is embarrassed by the state of her position in life. After an encounter with Mac's pregnant wife in a gas station, Rose realizes that Mac will never leave his marriage, and ends their relationship. Norah meets and has a relationship with Lynn, the daughter of a woman whose house they cleaned. Joe begins to sell shrimp, hoping to raise enough money to buy a pair of expensive binoculars that Oscar wants for his birthday. One day, an insurance company calls for the services of Sunshine Cleaning, granting the sisters the potential to obtain a breakthrough reputation. Unfortunately for Rose, a baby shower is on the same day, with all her high school classmates attending. She asks Norah to clean the house alone until she can catch up. Norah's attempt to clean the house is disastrous as she accidentally burns down the house with an unattended candle. The burning of the house tarnishes the business reputation and they are forced to pay a debt of $40,000, which the sisters simply cannot afford. Sunshine Cleaning goes out of business, and Rose is forced to return to her previous job as a maid. Meanwhile, Joe's shrimp plan goes awry as all the stores and restaurants he approaches refuse to buy. Joe had not realized when he purchased the shrimp that no legitimate business would be willing to accept the health risks involved in buying food from a non-reputable source. Lynn becomes frustrated as she questions whether Norah was truly interested in her at all. At Oscar's birthday party, Norah apologizes to Rose, and despite still being mad at her, Rose forgives her. The family and Winston then celebrate Oscar's birthday. Sometime later, Rose visits her father who says he's sold his house and explains that with the money, he has started, with Winston's help, a new cleanup business named Lorkowski Cleaning. He asks Rose to go into partnership with him and she agrees. Norah goes on a road trip to find her new self, while Rose starts working with her father at Lorkowski Cleaning. The movie ends on a positive note, with the implication that Norah has reached a positive turning point in her life and is at peace with herself and that Rose will successfully run her business while also looking after her eccentric father.

Raised on the prosperous farm of Hugo Jocelyn, descendant of a French knight, Innocent has always believed herself to be Jocelyn's illegitimate daughter by his fiancee before her death. She is an idealistic woman, inspired by the romanticism of the medieval French literature preserved by her ancestor; indeed, she feels she knows "Sieur Amadis" personally. As an infant, Innocent was dumped at the farm during a violent storm, by a stranger who explained he had to keep going but feared endangering the child. He promised to return, but never did, instead sending money every six months. Jocelyn reveals this in a deathbed confession. After his death, Innocent receives a visit from her birth mother, Lady Blythe. A shallow and pretentious noblewoman, she explains that Innocent was the result of a fling she'd had with artist Pierce Armitage. He was probably the one who left her at the farm. Innocent departs for London, planning to earn her living by writing and "make a name" for herself, since she has none by birthright. She has one book already written; it's wildly successful, and she writes another. In the usual Corellian coincidences, Innocent's landlady had had a serious relationship with Pierce Armitage, and Lord Blythe had been his friend at school. Lady Blythe confesses all, then dies. In Italy, Lord Blythe discovers Armitage alive and tells him of Innocent; Armitage at once prepares to claim his daughter legally. However, Innocent has been lured into a romance with a modern-day Amadis Jocelyn, descendant of her "Sieur Amadis"' brother. She mistakes his flirtations and romantic gestures for real love, but he thinks of it as a mere fling. When he casts her out, Innocent is heartbroken, and returns to her farm to die.

Ex-fighter pilot and taxi driver Ted Striker (Robert Hays) became traumatized during an unnamed war, leading to a pathological fear of flying. As a result, he is unable to hold a responsible job. His wartime girlfriend, Elaine Dickinson (Julie Hagerty), now a flight attendant, leaves him. Striker nervously boards a Boeing 707 (Trans American Flight 209) from Los Angeles to Chicago on which she is serving, hoping to win her back, but she rebuffs him. After dinner is served, many of the passengers fall ill, and fellow passenger Dr. Rumack (Leslie Nielsen) deduces that the passengers have contracted food poisoning from the fish. The cockpit crew, including pilot Clarence Oveur (Peter Graves) and co-pilot Roger Murdock (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), have also been affected, leaving no one to fly the plane. Elaine contacts the Chicago control tower for help, and is instructed by tower supervisor Steve McCroskey (Lloyd Bridges) to activate the plane's autopilot, a large inflatable pilot doll (listed as "Otto" in the end credits), which will get them to Chicago, but will not be able to land the plane. Rumack convinces Striker to fly the plane, though Striker feels unable to handle the pressure and the unfamiliar aircraft. McCroskey knows that he must get someone else to help take the plane down and calls Rex Kramer (Robert Stack), Striker's commanding officer in the war. Despite their hostile relationship, he is the best choice to instruct Striker. As the plane nears Chicago, Striker is overcome by stress and manages to land the plane only after a pep talk from Dr. Rumack. With Kramer's advice, Striker is able to land the plane safely with only minor injuries to some passengers. Striker's courage rekindles Elaine's love for him, and the two share a kiss. "Otto" takes off in the evacuated plane after inflating a female companion.

The novel opens with the introduction of its title characters. The heroine is "the superb Virginia St. John," a celebrated beauty, famous for being famous. At the age of thirty she is the newlywed wife of an English bishop. The hero (the term has to be applied satirically) is Prof. Paul Darnley, a prominent intellectual: "He had written three volumes on the origin of life, which he had spent seven years in looking for in hay and cheese; he had written five volumes on the entozoa of the pig, and two volumes of lectures, as a corollary to these, on the sublimity of human heroism and the whole duty of man. He was renowned all over Europe and America as a complete embodiment of enlightened modern thinking. He criticised everything; he took nothing on trust, except the unspeakable sublimity of the human race and its august terrestrial destinies." Both characters are traveling abroad the steamship Australasian, sailing from Melbourne to London; Virginia is on her way to Chausible Island to meet her new husband, while Paul is journeying home to his elderly wife, whom he has been avoiding for the past eighteen months. (Mrs. Prof. Darnley has an irrational determination to convince her atheist and materialist husband of the existence of Hell.) On the voyage, Paul lectures on his value system, which is essentially Comte's "Religion of Humanity," and manages to convince many passengers and crew of the truth of his outlook (though Virginia does not listen to him). An approaching storm inspires the crew to load the ship's cutter with survival supplies, including tinned meats and cases of champagne. The storm passes, but the ship's boiler suddenly explodes; the Australasian quickly sinks with the loss of almost all on board. Yet Paul and Virginia manage to reach a nearby island in the cutter. (Shipwreck on a deserted island, as a start for a new and better society, is a staple in the utopian genre — as in the Spensonia books of Thomas Spence, among other possible examples.) Paul finds a deserted house built from wreckage; it is a comfortable and neatly furnished cottage, and the two survivors move in. Virginia is deeply distraught over their recent tragedy — but her state of mind improves when she realizes that the largest trunk in her luggage is on the cutter. The tinned meats and champagne also come in handy. Two other survivors appear: an English clergyman who has been converted to Positivism by Paul, and an elderly woman. The latter soon dies, giving Paul and the clergyman opportunity to debate the meaning of her death from the Positivist viewpoint. Paul keeps himself busy searching for the missing link. Liberated from the trammels of traditional culture and belief, Paul confidently expects instant attainment of the sublime happiness that is the natural state of free human beings. The clergyman proves to be an inconvenient convert, however; he spends his time getting drunk and trying to kiss Virginia, and Paul's intellectual arguments have little influence on him. Physical intimidation is more effective, since the clergyman is both a "coward" and a "weakling." When the drunken clergyman falls off a cliff, Paul meditates on the utilitarian aspects of his death. Paul eventually converts Virginia; she gives up her religious faith, and replaces it with a sexual desire for Paul — which the intellectual Paul finds very uncomfortable. In her new commitment to "glorious truth," Virginia snoops through all of Paul's private papers, and discovers his secret: he himself was once a clergyman. By the final chapter of the story, Paul is reduced to baying at the moon. His howls attract the notice of another couple. The woman turns out to be Paul's wife, who has come searching for her errant husband. And the man is Virginia's husband the Bishop. It happens that the island on which Paul and Virginia landed is none other than Chausible Island, her destination, and the cottage they've been occupying was prepared by the Bishop for Virginia. At the end of the book, Paul discovers that his wife has attained her goal, and that he now believes in Hell.

In 1968, Frank Lucas is the right-hand man of Harlem gangster Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson. When Johnson dies of a heart attack, Lucas takes control of the Harlem crime scene. After handing in almost $1 million that he found in a mobster's car, Newark detective Richie Roberts is ostracized in his precinct. After his exiled and addicted partner overdoses on a potent brand of heroin called "Blue Magic", Captain Lou Toback puts Roberts in charge of a task force that targets local suppliers. Lucas buys Blue Magic directly from producers in Thailand and smuggles it into the U.S. through returning Vietnam War servicemen. His low overhead allows him to eventually wholesale Blue Magic to most the dealers in the New York area. With this monopoly, Lucas expands his control to nightclubs, casinos, and prostitution. He buys a mansion for his mother and recruits his five brothers, including Huey and Turner, as lieutenants to spread his empire. During his rise to becoming Harlem's crime boss, Lucas falls in love with Eva, a Puerto Rican beauty queen. As Lucas' business prospers, he makes a point of operating quietly and dressing with a modest conservatism both as a sign of strength and to avoid attracting police attention. Also, he stays away from the drugs to avoid making hard decisions under the influence. However, Lucas violates these principles when he attends the Fight of the Century with Eva, sporting gaudy clothes that were a present by Eva; Roberts attends the fight, notices the previously unknown Lucas with even better seats than the Italian mobsters, and investigates him. Meanwhile, Lucas needs to deal with Lucchese mafia boss Dominic Cattano, who threatens to destroy Lucas' family unless he gets in on a deal, and corrupt NYPD detectives led by Nick Trupo, who attempts to extort and blackmail him to give them a cut. Lucas must also compete with local crime figure Nicky Barnes, a young gun trying to take over Harlem who has been diluting Lucas' Blue Magic and selling it under the same brand name. After the Fall of Saigon cuts off Lucas' supply, he is forced to rely on the other crime rings. Roberts' detectives witness Frank Lucas' cousin and driver shoot a woman and then use the threat of a long sentence to get him to wear a wire. The gathered information allows Roberts and his task force to identify and search one of the last planes carrying Lucas' stock, discovering Blue Magic in the coffins of dead returning servicemen. With this evidence they obtain a warrant to follow the drugs into Newark's projects and Lucas' heroin processing facility. In the ensuing shootout, Steve Lucas, Frank Lucas' young nephew who gave up a promising career for the New York Yankees to join Lucas' crime family, is killed. Meanwhile, Trupo, whose prized Shelby Mustang Lucas had destroyed, and his men break into Lucas' mansion to steal his emergency cash supply hidden under the doghouse, killing the dog. As Lucas gets ready to go after Trupo, his mother dissuades him from killing a cop, warning him that she and Eva will leave him if he does. Lucas is arrested after Roberts' team conducts a raid on the shops run by his brothers. In the police station, Lucas offers to bribe Roberts, but is rebuffed. Instead, Roberts offers Lucas a chance at a shorter jail sentence if he aids his investigation of dirty cops in the NYPD and Lucas duly provides Roberts with the names. In the end, three quarters of the New York DEA are arrested and convicted, and a distraught Trupo commits suicide. Roberts, having just passed the bar exam, defends Lucas as his first client. Lucas is sentenced to 70 years in prison, of which he serves 15 years and is released in 1991.

On July 2, 1937, Amelia Earhart (Hilary Swank) and her navigator, Fred Noonan (Christopher Eccleston), are on the last leg of an around-the-world flight. Moving in vignettes from her early years when Earhart was captivated by the sight of an aircraft flying overhead on the Kansas prairie where she grew up, her life over the preceding decade gradually unfolds. As a young woman, she is recruited by publishing tycoon and eventual husband, George Putnam (Richard Gere) to become the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean, albeit as a passenger. Taking command of the flight results in a success and she is thrust into the limelight as the most famous woman pilot of her time. Putnam helps Earhart write a book chronicling the flight, much like his earlier triumph with Charles Lindbergh's We. Earhart gradually falls in love with Putnam and they eventually marry, although she enacts a "cruel" pledge as her wedding contract. Embarrassed that her fame was not earned, Earhart commences to set myriad aviation records, and in 1932, recreates her earlier transatlantic flight, becoming the first female pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic. Throughout a decade of notoriety, Earhart falls into an awkward love affair with pilot and future Federal Aviation administrator Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor). In a display of romantic jealousy, Putnam quietly tells Amelia that he does not want Vidal in his house. Earhart is annoyed by the seemingly endless agenda of celebrity appearances and endorsements but Putnam reminds his wife that it funds her flying. Earhart returns to her husband on the eve of her last momentous flight. Earhart's last flight was her biggest and most dangerous adventure to date. Her plan was to fly around the world. Earhart's first attempt ends in a runway crash in Hawaii, due to a collapsed landing gear, and her aircraft requires extensive repairs before the flight can be attempted again. Eventually, she takes the repaired Lockheed Model 10 Electra, sponsored by Purdue University, in a reverse direction, leaving the lengthy trans-Pacific crossing at the end of her flight. Setting out to refuel at tiny Howland Island, radio transmissions between USCGC Itasca, a Coast Guard picket ship, and Earhart's aircraft reveal a rising crisis. Earhart radios to Itasca that the sky has become cloudy and overcast. When Itasca attempts to radio her back, however, all Earhart gets is static. For the rest of the approach, Earhart cannot hear Itasca's transmissions, although they can hear hers. The Coast Guard radio operators realize that they do not have sufficient length to provide a "fix". Itasca has a directional finder with a dead battery, and weak radio communications prevent Earhart and USCG Itasca from making contact. Running low on fuel, Earhart and Noonan continue to fly on over empty ocean, as Earhart informs the Itasca that she is on position line 157-337, running north and south. She is not heard from again. A massive search effort is unsuccessful, but solidifies Earhart as an aviation icon.

A 1908 review of the book summarizes the light plot of the story in overenthusiastic fashion: The story opens with a jump--literally. A young New Yorker, rich, of course, hears from his window on a night of fog and mist a woman's voice singing divinely. He falls in love with it head over heels and he falls downstairs in about the same way, he is such a hurry to see the singer. But by the time her reaches the street, lo! she has vanished, and only a policeman remains. Late on, this young, adventurous Mr. Hillard again meets the young, adventurous singer under most mystifying circumstances. They dine together, but she comes in mask. What the voice has begun, the masks puts the finishing touches to. From then on Hillard is full forty fathoms deep in love and curiosity. Then the scene shifts to Italy, with the shifting fortunes of an American comic opera company, stranded at Venice. The beautiful singer becomes the prima donna of this company. The soubrette is one Kitty Killigrew, and around her flourishes a most enticing, exciting and enlivening subplot. She dances her way straight into your heart. Amusing things happen at Venice. Thrilling things happen at Monte Carlo. At Florence the climax is reached, and it makes you fairly gasp with its intense interest. At Bellaggio, the loveliest of lovely spots in the land of love, the curtain goes down on happy lovers.

Augusta Triumphans offers suggestions for the enhancement of the city of London. It begins with two introductory paragraphs. The former is a brief reflection on “projecting heads” and the attitude of the English towards them.“Projecting heads”, that is to say individuals who create schemes for social improvement, are invited to make proposals without fearing to be ridiculed. They should exclusively focus on offering honest advice. In addition, the possible shortcomings of their projects should be forgiven in that “It is a kind of good action to mean well, and the intention ought to palliate the failure”. As for the English, they are described as the least clement nation towards such individuals. They “treat them in the vilest manner” and it is because of this reason that their country is “esteemed so bad at invention”. In the second opening paragraph, the narrator explains the reason why he has written this pamphlet. He wants to make good use of the remaining time of his life by putting innovative proposals down on paper. On the whole, this work is intended to be the “testimony of” his “good will to” his “fellow-creatures”. Immediately after this introductory discourse, Andrew Moreton moves on to illustrate the project upon which he has reflected most. He fosters the establishment of a London university to oppose the contemporary corruption of learning and education. Subsequently, four titled sections come one after the other and present other schemes for social improvement. Section one calls for the establishment of a foundling hospital. It would prevent many mothers from freeing themselves of their illegitimate offspring through abortion or abandonment in parishes which do not offer them decent living conditions. Section two shows how a real academy of music would "prevent the expensive importation of foreign musicians, & c". Section three firstly offers advice to rescue "youths and servants" from moral corruption. Secondly, it denounces certain social evils: prostitution, gambling, and a series of dissolute manners to spend one's free time on Sunday such as alcohol misuse. Thirdly, it makes a digression on husbands's abuses of their wives and comments about contemporary private madhouses. Section four encourages the adoption of measures to stop street robbery. They include moral education and the introduction of a competent and paid body of watchmen as well as an adequate system of street lighting at night. The final part of Augusta Triumphans is titled “Omissions”. It is a revision of two aspects of the projects which have been illustrated so far. Andrew Moreton begins with rejecting his initial idea of founding a London university composed of “only a hall or public room”. Rather, “it should be a large house or inn, in the nature of a college, with store of convenient rooms for gentlemen, not only to study separately, but wherein to lodge their books, for it would be most inconvenient to lug them backwards and forwards”. He then expands his “discourse on madhouses”, particularly by offering a suggestion to impede the unjust confinement of widows or other women who find themselves with a fortune and no male guidance. In order to prevent them from becoming victims of greedy and manipulatory “strangers”, the nearest male relative should succeed the deceased gentleman in the management of the estate. At the end of the pamphlet is attached a letter “To Lieutenant-Colonel Samuel Robinson” which is dated “Sept. 23, 1728”. Its signatory, Andrew Moreton, begins with briefly congratulating the addressee for his “election into the chamberlainship of the city of London”. He subsequently poses a series of questions to understand the purpose of “the orphan’s tax”.

The plot opens on the royal family of Paflagonia eating breakfast together: King Valoroso, his wife, the Queen, and their daughter, Princess Angelica. Through the course of the meal it is discovered that Prince Bulbo, heir to the neighbouring kingdom of Crim Tartary, and son of King Padella is coming to visit Paflagonia. It is also discovered, after the two females have left the table, that King Valoroso stole his crown, and all his wealth, from his nephew, Prince Giglio, when the prince was an infant. Prince Giglio and Princess Angelica have been brought up together very closely, Princess Angelica being considered the most beautiful and wisest girl in the kingdom and Giglio being much overlooked in the household. Giglio, besotted with his cousin, has given her a ring belonging to his mother, which, unknown to them, was given to her by the Fairy Blackstick and which held the power to make the wearer beautiful to everyone who beheld them. After an argument with Giglio, about the arrival of the long-awaited Prince Bulbo, Angelica throws the ring out of the window and can be seen for her own, less attractive self. Prince Bulbo, in his turn, possesses a magic rose, with the same power as the ring and coming from the same source: the Fairy Blackstick. Upon his arrival, this causes Angelica to be madly in love with him. Angelica's governess, Countess Gruffanuff, finds the magic ring in the garden and, whilst wearing it, convinces Giglio to sign a paper swearing to marry her. She then gives the ring to Angelica's maid, Betsinda, an orphan discovered by the family with a torn cloak in her possession. The maid, however, is actually Rosalba, the only child of the true king of Crim Tartary. When Betsinda wears the ring to take the warming pan around the bedrooms, Princes Bulbo and Giglio immediately fall in love with her, along with King Valoroso. This excites the rage of The Queen, Angelica and Gruffanuff, and causes Betsinda to be driven from the house. In response to Giglio's rudeness, Valoroso orders him to be executed, but his Captain of the Guards, Count Kutasoff Hedzoff, takes Bulbo to the scaffold instead, where he is reprieved at the last moment by Angelica, who takes his rose, returns to her former beauty and marries him. Giglio is forced to flee and, with some help from The Fairy Blackstick, disguises himself as a student. In the meantime Rosalba has returned to Crim Tartary and discovered her heritage by means of the torn cloak, which is reunited with its other half to make the words "Princess Rosalba". King Padella, after his offer of marriage is refused, orders Rosalba to be thrown to the lions. Giglio, upon hearing this, takes back his throne in Paflagonia and leads his army to rescue Rosalba, using the captured Bulbo as a hostage. When Padella refuses the exchange, Giglio decides that he had better keep his word and put Bulbo to death as threatened. However, the lions set upon Rosalba happen to be exactly the same lions which she grew up with in the wild, prior to being found by Princess Angelica, and carry her on their backs to Giglio's camp, where the pair are reunited. Giglio and Rosalba return to Paflagonia along with Bulbo, now wearing the fairy ring. When they sit down to breakfast on their wedding day, Gruffanuff produces the paper pledging Giglio to herself. Wishing to put him in his place for his earlier arrogance, the Fairy Blackstick refuses to help at first and Giglio is forced to take Gruffanuff to the church in Rosalba's place. However, when they reach the building, The Fairy Blackstick transforms the doorknocker back into Gruffanuff's real husband, long believed dead after being bewitched by the fairy herself many years before. Giglio and Rosalba are then free to marry and do so. The Fairy Blackstick then leaves, never to be heard of again.

Colonel Worth, a Confederate veteran, lives in San Francisco, California with his guardian Elena and his son Norman. At the outset of the novel, Col. Worth talks about the Battle of Manila of the Spanish–American War in the Philippines, especially Admiral George Dewey's damage done to the Spanish fleet. Meanwhile, his guardian and son go to a socialist meeting. Indeed, his son Norman becomes infatuated with Barbara Bozenta, a socialist figure, and hosts a socialist meeting at Col. Worth's country house near Berkeley on July 4, American Independence Day. The meeting is canceled when Norman attempts to put up the Red Flag as opposed to the American flag. Col. Worth buys the island of Ventura for his son Norman. Located off the coast of Santa Barbara, it is meant for Norman to establish a socialist commune there. When his socialist friends fail to work, law and order needs to be restored. However, Comrades Herman and Catherine Wolf take over as heads of the commune, and sentence Norman to work in the stables, under the threat of the lash. Productivity falls as workers know they must work nine hours a day, and thus work slowly. When Norman finds a way to find gold on the beach, the device is stolen by Wolf. Wolf's wife Catherine then leaves for Santa Barbara, deeming family life to be too capitalistic. Eventually, Norman reaches out to his father and to the Governor of California, who liberate the island. The Red flag is replaced with the American flag.

Trevor Gooden (Dean Winters) survives a car accident that apparently kills his wife Kirsty Cotton-Gooden (Ashley Laurence) when their car plunges off a bridge into the river below. Trevor manages to escape with his life, but even though police divers find both car doors open there is no sign of Kirsty. One month later, Trevor wakes up in a hospital and realizes that his wife is missing, but because of a head injury his memory is uncertain and he cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality. Trevor finds himself the prime suspect in a murder case, and has two homicide detectives on his tail. Many strange events befall him, until the Cenobite Pinhead shows him reality. The reality is that Kirsty is in fact still alive. Trevor learns that in reality he was never a good guy. He cheated on his wife with many other women, and tried to get rid of Kirsty by making her reopen the Lament Configuration. She does, but before being taken, she strikes one last deal with Pinhead: she offers to give him five souls in exchange for hers. She kills three of Trevor's mistresses and one of Trevor's friends, who was conspiring to kill her for her fortune. Trevor is in shock by the revelation and takes off the covers on the operating table, believing it to be Kirsty. The person on the table is not Kirsty, but is in fact him. He is the fifth soul and this entire time he has been in Hell living in limbo. Trying to rediscover his past and piece his life back together was his punishment for his disloyalty to his wife and his inability to accept who he truly was. It seems that she has pinned all of the murders on Trevor and shot Trevor through the head, leading him to crash the car into the river. The film ends with Kirsty walking away from the crime scene with the Lament Configuration in hand.

In 1841, Solomon Northup is a free African-American man working as a violinist, living with his wife and two children in Saratoga Springs, New York. Two white men, Brown and Hamilton, offer him short-term employment as a musician if he will travel with them to Washington, D.C. However, once they arrive, the duo drug Northup and conspire to deliver him to a slave pen. Northup is later shipped to New Orleans along with others who have been detained against their will. A slave trader named Freeman gives Northup the identity of "Platt", a runaway slave from Georgia, and sells him and another slave Eliza to plantation owner William Ford. Due to tension between Northup and another plantation worker, Ford sells him to another slave owner named Edwin Epps. In the process, Northup attempts to explain that he is actually a free man, but to no avail. Some time later, an outbreak of cotton worm befalls Epps' plantation. Unable to work his fields, Epps leases his slaves to a neighboring plantation for the season. While there, Northup gains the favor of the plantation's owner, Judge Turner, who allows him to play the fiddle at a neighbor's wedding anniversary celebration, and to keep his earnings. When Northup returns to Epps, he attempts to use the money to pay a white field hand and former overseer, Armsby, to mail a letter to his friends in New York state. Armsby agrees to deliver the letter, and accepts Northup's saved money in return, but later betrays him to Epps. Northup is narrowly able to convince Epps that Armsby is lying and avoids punishment. Northup begins working on the construction of a gazebo with a Canadian laborer named Samuel Bass. Bass is unsettled by the brutal way that Epps treats his slaves and expresses his opposition to slavery, earning Epps's enmity. Patsy sneaks off to Mistress Shaw's house to get some soap to clean herself. Epps calls her a liar and ties her to post to prepare her for a whipping. Epps hands the whip to Northup and forces him to whip Patsy. Northup reluctantly begins to whip her but Epps rips the whip out of Northup's hands and unleashes a brutal whipping on Patsy. Her back is shredded and her flesh is torn apart. Later Northup confides his kidnapping to Bass. Once again, Northup asks for help in getting a letter to Saratoga Springs. Bass, risking his life, agrees to send it. One day, Northup is called over by the local sheriff, who arrives in a carriage with another man. The sheriff asks Northup a series of questions to confirm his answers match the facts of his life in New York. Northup recognizes the sheriff's companion as Mr. Parker, a shopkeeper he knew in Saratoga. Parker has come to free him, and the two embrace, though an enraged Epps furiously protests the circumstances and tries to prevent him from leaving. After being enslaved for 12 years, Northup is restored to freedom and returned to his family. As he walks into his home, he sees his wife with their son and daughter and her husband, who present him with his grandson and namesake, Solomon Northup Staunton. The film's epilogue displays a series of graphics recounting Northup's unsuccessful suits against Brown, Hamilton and Burch, the 1853 publication of Northup's slave narrative memoir, Twelve Years a Slave, his role in the abolitionist movement, and the mystery surrounding details of his death and burial.

In 1845, James Howlett, a boy living in Canada, witnesses his father being killed by groundskeeper Thomas Logan. The trauma activates the boy's mutation: bone claws protrude from his knuckles, and he kills Thomas, who reveals that he is James's real father. James flees along with Thomas's son Victor Creed, who is thus James's half-brother. They spend the next century as soldiers, fighting in the American Civil War, both World Wars, and the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, Victor attempts to rape a Vietnamese woman, and kills a senior officer who tries to stop him. James defends Victor and the two are sentenced to execution by firing squad, which they survive. Major William Stryker approaches them in military custody, and offers them membership in Team X, a group of mutants including Agent Zero, Wade Wilson, John Wraith, Fred Dukes, and Chris Bradley. They join the team for a few years, with James now using the alias Logan, but the group's (especially Victor's) disregard for human life causes James to leave. Six years later, James (now using the name Logan) is working as a lumberjack in Canada, where he lives with his girlfriend Kayla Silverfox. Stryker and Zero approach Logan at work. Stryker reports that Wade and Bradley have been killed, and he thinks someone is targeting the team's members. Logan refuses to rejoin Stryker, but after finding Kayla's bloodied body in the woods, Logan realizes Victor is responsible. He finds him at a local bar, but Logan loses the subsequent fight. Afterward, Stryker explains that Victor has gone rogue, and offers Logan a way to become strong enough to get his revenge. Logan undergoes a painful operation to reinforce his skeleton with adamantium, a virtually indestructible metal. Once the procedure is complete, Stryker attempts to betray Logan by ordering that his memory be erased, but Logan overhears this and escapes to a nearby farm, where an elderly couple take him in. Zero kills them the following morning and tries to kill Logan. Logan takes down Zero's helicopter, killing him, and swears to kill both Stryker and Victor. Logan locates John and Fred at a boxing club. Fred explains that Victor is still working for Stryker, hunting down mutants for Stryker to experiment on at his new laboratory, located at a place called "The Island". Fred mentions Remy "Gambit" LeBeau, is the only one who escaped from the island and therefore knows its location. John and Logan find LeBeau in New Orleans, then both fight Victor, who kills John and extracts his DNA. Agreeing to help release mutants that Stryker has captured, Gambit takes Logan to Stryker's facility on Three Mile Island. Logan learns that Kayla is alive, having been coerced by Stryker into keeping tabs on him in exchange for her sister's safety. However, Stryker refuses to release her sister and denies Victor the adamantium bonding promised for his service, claiming that test results revealed Victor would not survive the operation. Stryker activates Wade, now known as Weapon XI, a "mutant killer" with the powers of multiple mutants, who he refers to as the "Deadpool". While Logan and Victor join forces to fight Weapon XI, Kayla is mortally wounded leading the Island's captive mutants – including a teenager named Scott Summers – to safety. The mutants are subsequently rescued by Professor Charles Xavier. Logan decapitates Weapon XI, destroying one of the cooling towers in the process. Stryker arrives and shoots Logan in the head with adamantium bullets, rendering him unconscious. Before Stryker can shoot Kayla, she grabs him and uses her mutant power to persuade him to turn around and walk away until his feet bleed. Logan regains consciousness but has lost his memory. He sees Kayla's body, but does not recognize her, and leaves the island. In a mid-credits scene, Stryker is detained for questioning by some MPs in connection with the death of his superior, General Munson, whom Stryker did in fact kill after Munson declared his intention to shut down Stryker's project. In a post-credits scene, Logan tells a Japanese barmaid he's "drinking to remember". In another, Deadpool is shown to still be alive.

Private investigator Tom Welles (Nicolas Cage) is contacted by Daniel Longdale (Anthony Heald), attorney for wealthy widow Mrs. Christian (Myra Carter), whose husband has recently died. While clearing out her late husband's safe, she and Longdale found an 8mm film which appears to depict a real murder of a girl, but Mrs. Christian wants to know for certain. After looking through missing persons files, Tom discovers that the girl is Mary Ann Mathews (Jenny Powell), and visits her mother, Janet Mathews (Amy Morton). While searching the house with her permission, he finds Mary Ann's diary, in which she says that she went to Hollywood to become a film star. He asks Mrs. Mathews whether she wants to know the truth, even if it is a horrible truth. She says that she wants to know what happened to her daughter, so after reading the diary and a note left for her mother inside of it, he leaves it for her and then leaves. In Hollywood, with the help of an adult video store employee called Max California (Joaquin Phoenix), Tom penetrates the underworld of illegal pornography. Contact with a sleazy talent scout named Eddie Poole (James Gandolfini) leads them to director Dino Velvet (Peter Stormare), whose violent pornographic films star a masked man known as "Machine" (Chris Bauer). To gain more evidence, Tom pretends to be a client interested in commissioning a hardcore bondage film to be directed by Velvet and starring Machine. Velvet agrees and arranges a meeting in New York City. At the meeting, attorney Longdale appears and explains that Christian had contracted him to procure a snuff film. Longdale says that he told Velvet that Tom might come looking for them. Realizing that the snuff film was authentic, the private eye knows he is at risk. Velvet and Machine produce a bound and beaten Max, whom they abducted to force Tom to bring them the only surviving copy of the illegal film. Once he delivers it, but before he turns it over, they kill Max and beat Tom and then burn the film. As they are about to kill Tom, he tells them that Christian had paid $1 million for the film and that the reason Christian wanted the film made was for the simple reason that he had enough money to make it possible. Unbeknownst to them previously Velvet, Poole, and Machine received much less and that Longdale kept the major portion. In an ensuing fight, Velvet and Longdale are both killed; Tom wounds Machine and escapes. He calls Mrs. Christian to tell her his discoveries and recommends going to the police, to which she agrees. Arriving at her estate, Tom is told that Mrs. Christian committed suicide after hearing the news. She left envelopes for the Mathews family and Tom: it contains the rest of his payment and a note reading, "Try to forget us." Tom decides to seek justice for the murdered girl by killing the remaining people involved. Tracking down Eddie, Tom takes him to the shooting location and tries to kill him. Eddie shows no remorse for his role in the murder and taunts Tom for being unable to go through with it. He calls Mrs. Mathews to tell her the truth about her daughter's fate and asks a devastated Janet for her permission to punish those responsible, to which she says yes. With that, he returns and pistol whips Eddie to death. After burning his body and the pornography from his car, Tom traces Machine and attacks him at his home. Tom unmasks him, revealing a bald, bespectacled man named George. He says, "What did you expect? A monster?" George goes on to tell Tom that he has no ulterior motive for his sadistic actions; he does them simply because he enjoys it. They struggle, and Tom kills him. After returning to his family, Tom receives a letter from Mrs. Mathews, thanking him for killing the men responsible and suggesting he and she were the only ones to care about Mary Ann.

During the worst recorded rainstorm in the history of the Midwestern United States, armored truck drivers Tom (Christian Slater) and his uncle Charlie (Edward Asner) are collecting the money from the local banks affected by the rising flood waters. In the small town of Huntingburg, Indiana, which has been evacuated, Tom and Charlie drive into a ditch and become stuck, and Charlie calls dispatch to alert the National Guard. They are then ambushed by Jim (Morgan Freeman) and his gang of armed robbers, Kenny (Michael Goorjian), Mr Mehlor (Dann Florek) and Ray (Ricky Harris). Kenny accidentally shoots Charlie dead, as Tom gets away with the $3 million in cash and hides it in a cemetery. After being chased through the local Middle School by the gang now travelling with a boat and jet skis, Tom takes refuge in a nearby church. He is knocked out and wakes up in a cell at the local Sheriff's office. Tom tells the Sheriff (Randy Quaid) about the gang and the area he hid the money, although he keeps him locked up. He and his Deputy Wayne (Mark Rolston) then leave to investigate, whilst another officer Phil (Peter Murnik) is ordered to take Karen (Minnie Driver), the woman who knocked Tom out and is currently restoring the church, out of town. In protest, she pushes Phil out of the boat so she will be able to fill the water pumps at her church. The town's dam continues to experience huge pressure from the rain and the operator Hank (Wayne Duvall) is forced to open another levee. This causes another huge burst of water to stream through the town, resulting in even worse flooding, especially at the church. Tom wakes in his cell, trapped as the Sheriff's building slowly fills up with water. After filling the pumps at the church, Karen returns and saves him by opening the light fitting on the roof for him to escape. They are then spotted by the gang, and hide before having to get out of the water because a nearby transformer is going to blow. Kenny grabs Tom and they both fall in the water, but Tom fights him off before Kenny is electrocuted and later dies. Tom and Karen enter a nearby house, only to discover locals Doreen (Betty White) and Henry Sears (Richard Dysart) who believe they are looters. After explaining their story, Henry decides to give Tom their boat so he can return to the armored truck. When he resurfaces from the now submerged truck, he finds Jim and the gang holding the elderly couple hostage. Tom forces Jim to let them go so he'll show them where the money is. On the way to the cemetery, Jim reveals to Tom that the National Guard were never coming because Charlie was actually calling the gang, and was in an alliance with them. He was only killed because Kenny was never told Charlie was on their side. Jim then sends Tom to retrieve the money but finds it has gone. When the gang are about to shoot him in anger, they are all ambushed by the Sheriff and his Deputies, who have now found Karen. The Sheriff now doesn't care any more about justice and intends to keep the money for himself, Wayne, Phil and Hank, who has now joined them from the dam. Mr Mehlor and Ray are killed in the shoot out, and Jim and Tom escape in a boat, finding sanctuary in the church. Wayne takes Karen back to her house, with an intention of raping her. The others try to force Tom and Jim out by throwing petrol bombs on the roof, but instead are forced to drive through the stained glassed windows. At Karen's house, Karen manages to stab Wayne with her penknife, killing him. In the church, a shoot out occurs where at one point Tom and Phil come face to face, but Phil cannot bring himself to shoot him. Hank then shoots Phil, thinking he's a coward. The alarm from the dam saying it is overflowed suddenly sounds. Offering a deal, the Sheriff says Tom and Jim should let Hank and him go with a couple of the moneybags. Tom agrees, yet Jim does not. Instead, Tom then leaves to try and save Karen, before the Sheriff shoots Jim with a revolver he was hiding, although he isn't badly hurt. The Sheriff and Hank escape in a boat and, when they are forced to go faster to avoid the wave engulfing the town, the Sheriff pushes Hank out of the boat. He then dies after being caught in a gas explosion. Tom arrives at Karen's house, to find her handcuffed to the banister. He first tries to free her with a saw, but then uses Wayne's gun. The water is so high now they have to get onto the roof and are then caught by the Sheriff. Jim, who managed to escape from the church, comes from behind them in a boat. The Sheriff shoots at him, disabling the steering, forcing him to go over the roof. As he does so, the engine breaks off and collides with the Sheriff, knocking him into the water. However, he is not dead and tries to shoot Karen as he grabs a moneybag, but Tom and Jim manage to shoot him dead. Tom tells Jim he should leave, just as the State Police arrive. Jim picks up the Sheriff's moneybag and rows away, as Tom tells Karen the fire damage to her church wasn't too bad, and "was probably why they felt safe enough to drive their boats through the stained glass windows".

In the first incarnation, which appears to be a caveman, a man's family is taken from him by raiders due to his cowardice and hesitation. Before his wife is taken away, she says, "Don't lose the children!" The next incarnation is in Ancient Rome in which he, Hector, is a slave to a "foolish master" who loses his fortune and is compelled to kill himself by his creditors and orders Hector to join him. Hector longs to be free to find the children and wife he had before he became a slave, but he has fallen in love with another slave and forgets his waiting family. Third incarnation: He is a Scottish crusader on his way home to his children. The master from his life in Rome as a slave is now a crusader trying to decide whether to become a priest. They travel together until Hector finds his soul mate from the life in Rome. She is a widow and wishes Hector to join her family, but his duties to the children in Scotland pull at him. Fourth incarnation: Hector is finally forced to confront his capacity for cowardly indecision. He is a Portuguese man in The Renaissance shipwrecked on the coast of Africa. He is the master in this life, his wife from the first incarnation shipwrecked with him as his spurned lover, and the raider who spirited her away is her steadfast friend. Fifth incarnation: He is a modern man in New York, paying the consequences of cowardly indecision and gaining the strength to address the children he lost lifetimes ago. He is joined in this life by his master/slave/friend/soul mate, and former wife Janet and her husband/raider from lifetimes past. They support him but are people who are trying to find their own way, just as in the past lives.

The title character is Ralph Newton, the nephew of Squire Gregory Newton of Newton Priory. The squire has never married; he has an illegitimate son, also named Ralph Newton, whom he loves dearly. However, the estate is entailed, and after his death will go to his nephew Ralph; he cannot leave it to his natural son. Ralph the heir is a spendthrift, and has run himself deep into debt. There are two ways in which he can extricate himself: by raising money on his future interest in the Newton estate, or by marrying Polly Neefit, the daughter of a wealthy breeches-maker who is one of his major creditors. Neither choice is a good one for him: the first might lead to the estate's being seized by his creditors upon the old squire's death; the second would mean allying himself to a family of a much lower social class, thus putting his own social standing at risk. The squire, anxious to obtain full possession of the estate so that he can pass it to his son, offers to buy the heir's reversion. Ralph vacillates, hesitatingly proposes to and is rejected twice by Polly Neefit, and eventually accepts his uncle's offer. However, before the transaction can be completed, the squire is killed in a hunting accident and his nephew comes into full possession of the property and its large income. Now safe from his creditors, the new squire is nevertheless harassed by Polly Neefit's father, who threatens him with legal action and embarrassing publicity if he does not continue seeking his daughter's hand. The matter is eventually resolved by Polly, who accepts the oft-repeated proposals of Ontario Moggs, son of a prosperous bootmaker, and induces her father to consent to the marriage despite his preference for the squire. In the meantime, Ralph the squire has proposed to and been rejected by Mary Bonner, the beautiful niece and ward of Sir Thomas Underwood; soon after this, she accepts an offer of marriage from the illegitimate Ralph. The novel also describes a Parliamentary election in the fictional borough of Percycross, in which Sir Thomas, a Conservative, and Moggs, a Radical, are two of the four candidates for the two available seats. Both are eager that the election be conducted fairly and honestly. The other two candidates, one a Conservative and one a Liberal, are the incumbents; they see nothing wrong with the buying and selling of votes that has been traditional at Percycross. Sir Thomas and his fellow Conservative win the election, but it is annulled on petition, and the borough is disfranchised by Parliament because of its pervasive corruption.

Agnes Grey is the daughter of Mr. Grey, a minister of modest means, and Mrs. Grey, a woman who left her wealthy family and married purely out of love. Mr. Grey tries to increase the family's financial standing, but the merchant he entrusts his money to dies in a wreck, and the lost investment plunges the family into debt. Agnes, her sister Mary, and their mother all try to keep expenses low and bring in extra money, but Agnes is frustrated that everyone treats her like a child. To prove herself and to earn money, she is determined to get a position as a governess. Eventually, she obtains a recommendation from a well-placed acquaintance, is offered a position, and secures her parents' permission. With some misgivings, she travels to Wellwood house to work for the Bloomfield family. The Bloomfields are rich and much crueller than Agnes had expected. Mrs. Bloomfield spoils her children while Mr. Bloomfield constantly finds fault with Agnes's work. The children are unruly and Agnes is held accountable for them despite being given no real authority over them. Tom, the oldest Bloomfield child, is particularly abusive and even tortures small animals. In less than a year, Agnes is relieved of her position, since Mrs. Bloomfield thinks that her children are not learning quickly enough. Agnes returns home. She then begs her mother to help her find a new situation. Agnes advertises and is given a position in an even wealthier family – the Murrays. The two boys, John and Charles, are both sent to school soon after her arrival, but the girls Rosalie and Matilda remain her charges. Matilda is a tomboy, prone to lying. Rosalie is a flirt. Both girls are selfish and sometimes unpleasant, and although Agnes's position is slightly better than it was at Wellwood house, she is frequently ignored or used in the girls' schemes. Agnes begins to visit Nancy Brown, an old woman with poor eyesight who needs help reading the Bible; there Agnes meets the new parson, Mr. Edward Weston. The next day while on a walk Agnes is surprised by Mr. Weston, who picks some wild violets for her. Agnes later saves the flowers in her Bible. She learns that his mother has died not long ago. This new friendship is noticed by Rosalie Murray, who has now entered into society and is a favorite with nearly all suitors in the county. Rosalie becomes engaged to Lord Ashby, a wealthy baronet from Ashby Park. She tells Agnes, but makes her promise to keep silent, as she is still going to flirt with other men before she is married. One day, she and Agnes go on a walk and meet Mr. Weston. Rosalie begins to flirt with him, much to Agnes's chagrin. Agnes receives a note from her sister Mary, who is now married to Mr. Richardson, a parson of a rectory near their home. Mary warns that their father is dying and begs Agnes to come. Agnes arrives too late to see her father alive. After his funeral, Agnes opens a small school with her mother, leaving behind the Murrays and Mr. Weston. She receives a letter from Rosalie who is very unhappy in her marriage and asks Agnes to come for a visit. Agnes is shocked by the change in Rosalie from a merry girl to an unhappy young woman. Rosalie confides that she despises Lord Ashby (and her mother-in-law), and claims he only left London because he was jealous of all the gentlemen she was attracting. Agnes also hears that Mr. Weston has left the area, and she grieves, believing she will not be able to see him again. Agnes leaves Ashby Park and returns home. The day after she arrives, she goes for a walk on the sea shore and encounters Mr. Weston, who had been looking for her since he moved to the nearby parsonage. He is introduced to Agnes's mother, and they forge a bond. Agnes finds her attraction to him growing, and she accepts when he proposes marriage. In the end, Agnes is very happy having married Edward Weston, and they have three children together.

The Frogs tells the story of the god Dionysus, who, despairing of the state of Athens' tragedians, travels to Hades (the underworld) to bring the playwright Euripides back from the dead. (Euripides had died the year before, in 406 BC). He brings along his slave Xanthias, who is smarter and braver than Dionysus. As the play opens, Xanthias and Dionysus argue over what kind of jokes Xanthias can use to open the play. For the first half of the play, Dionysus routinely makes critical errors, forcing Xanthias to improvise in order to protect his master and prevent Dionysus from looking incompetent—but this only allows Dionysus to continue to make mistakes with no consequence. To find a reliable path to Hades, Dionysus seeks advice from his half-brother Heracles, who had been there before in order to retrieve the hell hound Cerberus. Dionysus shows up at his doorstep dressed in a lion-hide and carrying a club. Heracles, upon seeing the effeminate Dionysus dressed up like himself, can't help laughing. When asked which road is the quickest to get to Hades, Heracles replies that you can hang yourself, drink poison, or jump off a tower. Dionysus opts for the longer journey, which Heracles himself had taken, across a lake (possibly Lake Acheron). When Dionysus arrives at the lake, Charon ferries him across. Xanthias, being a slave, is not allowed in the boat, and has to walk around it, while Dionysus is made to help row the boat. This is the point of the first choral interlude (parodos), sung by the eponymous chorus of frogs (the only scene in which frogs feature in the play). Their croaking refrain – Brekekekèx-koàx-koáx (Greek: Βρεκεκεκὲξ κοὰξ κοάξ) – greatly annoys Dionysus, who engages in a mocking debate (agon) with the frogs. When he arrives at the shore, Dionysus meets up with Xanthias, who teases him by claiming to see the frightening monster Empusa. A second chorus composed of spirits of Dionysian Mystics soon appear. The next encounter is with Aeacus, who mistakes Dionysus for Heracles due to his attire. Still angry over Heracles' theft of Cerberus, Aeacus threatens to unleash several monsters on him in revenge. Frightened, Dionysus trades clothes with Xanthias. A maid then arrives and is happy to see Heracles. She invites him to a feast with virgin dancing girls, and Xanthias is more than happy to oblige. But Dionysus quickly wants to trade back the clothes. Dionysus, back in the Heracles lion-skin, encounters more people angry at Heracles, and so he makes Xanthias trade a third time. When Aeacus returns to confront the alleged Heracles (i.e., Xanthias), Xanthias offers him his "slave" (Dionysus) for torturing, to obtain the truth as to whether or not he is really a thief. The terrified Dionysus tells the truth that he is a god. After each is whipped, Dionysus is brought before Aeacus' masters, and the truth is verified. The maid then catches Xanthias and chats him up, interrupted by preparations for the contest scene. The maid describes the Euripides-Aeschylus conflict. Euripides, who had only just recently died, is challenging the great Aeschylus for the seat of "Best Tragic Poet" at the dinner table of Pluto, the ruler of the underworld. A contest is held with Dionysus as judge. The two playwrights take turns quoting verses from their plays and making fun of the other. Euripides argues the characters in his plays are better because they are more true to life and logical, whereas Aeschylus believes his idealized characters are better as they are heroic and models for virtue. Aeschylus mocks Euripides' verse as predictable and formulaic by having Euripides quote lines from many of his prologues, each time interrupting the declamation with the same phrase "ληκύθιον ἀπώλεσεν" ("... lost his little flask of oil"). (The passage has given rise to the term lekythion, literally 'oil-flask', for this type of rhythmic group in poetry.) Euripides counters by demonstrating the alleged monotony of Aeschylus' choral songs, parodying excerpts from his works and having each citation end in the same refrain ἰὴ κόπον οὐ πελάθεις ἐπ᾽ ἀρωγάν; ("oh, what a stroke, won't you come to the rescue?", from Aeschylus' lost play Myrmidons). Aeschylus retorts to this by mocking Euripides' choral meters and lyric monodies with castanets. During the contest, Dionysus redeems himself for his earlier role as the butt of every joke. He now rules the stage, adjudicating the contestants' squabbles fairly, breaking up their prolonged rants, and applying a deep understanding of Greek tragedy. To end the debate, a balance is brought in and each are told to tell a few lines into it. Whoever's lines have the most "weight" will cause the balance to tip in their favor. Euripides produces verses of his that mention, in turn, the ship Argo, Persuasion, and a mace. Aeschylus responds with the river Spercheios, Death, and two crashed chariots and two dead charioteers. Since the latter verses refer to "heavier" objects, Aeschylus wins, but Dionysus is still unable to decide whom he will revive. He finally decides to take the poet who gives the best advice about how to save the city. Euripides gives cleverly worded but essentially meaningless answers while Aeschylus provides more practical advice, and Dionysus decides to take Aeschylus back instead of Euripides. Pluto allows Aeschylus to return to life so that Athens may be succoured in her hour of need, and invites everyone to a round of farewell drinks. Before leaving, Aeschylus proclaims that Sophocles should have his chair while he is gone, not Euripides.

The novel tells the story of Jude Fawley, who lives in a village in southern England (part of Hardy's fictional county of Wessex), who yearns to be a scholar at "Christminster", a city modelled on Oxford. As a youth, Jude teaches himself Classical Greek and Latin in his spare time, while working first in his great-aunt's bakery, with the hope of entering university. But before he can try to do this the na誰ve Jude is seduced by Arabella Donn, a rather coarse and superficial local girl who traps him into marriage by pretending to be pregnant. The marriage is a failure, and they separate by mutual agreement, and Arabella later emigrates to Australia, where she enters into a bigamous marriage. By this time, Jude has abandoned his classical studies. After Arabella leaves him, Jude moves to Christminster and supports himself as a mason while studying alone, hoping to be able to enter the university later. There, he meets and falls in love with his free-spirited cousin, Sue Bridehead. But, shortly after this, Jude introduces Sue to his former schoolteacher, Mr. Phillotson, whom she eventually marries. However, she soon regrets this, because in addition to being in love with Jude, she is physically disgusted by her husband, and, apparently, by sex in general. Sue soon leaves Phillotson for Jude. Because of the scandal Phillotson has to give up his career as a schoolmaster. Sue and Jude spend some time living together without any sexual relationship, because of Sue's dislike both of sex and the institution of marriage. Soon after, Arabella reappears and this complicates matters. But Arabella and Jude divorce and she legally marries her bigamous husband, and Sue also is divorced. However, following this, Arabella reveals that she had a child of Jude's, eight months after they separated, and subsequently sends this child to his father. He is named Jude and nicknamed "Little Father Time" because of his intense seriousness and moroseness. Jude eventually convinces Sue to sleep with him and, over the years, they have two children together and expect the third. But Jude and Sue are socially ostracised for living together unmarried, especially after the children are born. Jude's employers dismiss him because of the illicit relationship, and the family is forced into a nomadic lifestyle, moving from town to town across Wessex seeking employment and housing before eventually returning to Christminster. Their socially troubled boy, "Little Father Time", comes to believe that he and his half-siblings are the source of the family's woes. The morning after their arrival in Christminster, he murders Sue's two children and commits suicide by hanging. He leaves behind a note that simply reads, "Done because we are too menny." Shortly thereafter, Sue has a miscarriage. Beside herself with grief and blaming herself for "Little Father Time"'s actions, Sue turns to the church that she has rebelled against and comes to believe that the children's deaths were divine retribution for her relationship with Jude. Although horrified at the thought of resuming her marriage with Phillotson, she becomes convinced that, for religious reasons, she should never have left him. Arabella discovers Sue's feelings and informs Phillotson, who soon proposes they remarry. This results in Sue leaving Jude once again for Phillotson. Jude is devastated and remarries Arabella after she plies him with alcohol to once again trick him into marriage. After one final, desperate visit to Sue in freezing weather, Jude becomes seriously ill and dies within the year. It is revealed that Sue has grown "staid and worn" with Phillotson. Arabella fails to mourn Jude's passing, instead setting the stage to ensnare her next suitor. The events of Jude the Obscure occur over a 19-year period, but no dates are specifically given in the novel. Aged 11 at the beginning of the novel, by the time of his death, Jude seems much older than his thirty years, for he has experienced so much disappointment and grief in his total life experience. It would seem that his burdens exceeded his sheer ability to survive, much less to triumph.

As told through interviews and footage through the film, Truman Burbank is the unsuspecting star of The Truman Show, a reality television program which is broadcast live around the clock and across the globe. His entire life has taken place within a giant arcological dome in Hollywood, fashioned to create the seaside town of Seahaven, Florida, and equipped with thousands of cameras to monitor all aspects of Truman's life. All of Seahaven's residents are actors. Creator and executive producer Christof wants to capture Truman's real emotion and human behavior. The producers have discouraged Truman from wanting to travel beyond Seahaven by instilling him with aquaphobia through the "death" of his TV father in a boating accident, and by constantly broadcasting and printing messages of the dangers of travelling. Despite Christof's control, Truman manages to act in unexpected ways. During his college years, Truman was set to fall in love and marry co-student Meryl, but fell in love with another actress, Sylvia. Sylvia managed to bring Truman out of the sight of cameras long enough to warn him that his reality is fake before she was taken away and off-set, with her "father" claiming they are traveling to Fiji. While Truman went on to marry Meryl, he continues to fantasize about Sylvia, using scraps from magazines to recreate her face in secret, and seeks travel to Fiji. Outside of the show, Sylvia has become part of a "Free Truman" campaign that demands the end of the show. The film begins during the thirtieth year of the show. During the day, Truman notices strange occurrences all seem centered on him (a falling spotlight, rain that only falls on himself). Truman spots a disheveled man and recognizes him as his father, who had snuck back into the set, but the actors quickly drag the man away. Despite efforts by Meryl and Truman's best friend Marlon to reassure Truman, Truman becomes even more suspicious about his life. One day, he takes Meryl by surprise by going on an impromptu road trip, but their way is blocked by apparent emergencies created by Christof. Meryl begins to break down from the stress, and during an argument with Truman, breaks character and is later taken off the show. Truman, depressed and confused, is consoled by Marlon, and Christof uses the opportunity to re-introduce Truman's father to the show proper, hoping to bring Truman back to some emotional stability. Truman seems to recover, but the next day, the producers find Truman sleeping in his basement. Marlon is sent to check on Truman, only to find he has disappeared through a makeshift tunnel. Marlon breaks character, and Christof orders the first transmission cut of the show's history while a city-wide search for Truman is launched. Audiences around the world are drawn to this sudden change. Truman is found sailing out of Seahaven, having conquered his fear of water, and Christof resumes the broadcast as he sends a man-made lightning storm to try to capsize the boat. Network executives fear that Truman may die on live television, but Truman manages to persist. Realizing he cannot dissuade Truman any further, Christof ends the storm. Truman continues to sail until his boat punctures the wall of the dome, to his surprise, and finds an exit door. Christof, speaking directly to Truman through a speaker system, tries to convince him to stay by stating that there is "no more truth" out in the real world and that by staying in his artificial world, he would have nothing to fear. Truman considers this, then states: "In case I don't see you... good afternoon, good evening, and good night", takes a bow, and leaves. Sylvia races to go meet Truman while audiences celebrate. Christof's supervisors end the show for the last time, much to Christof's dismay, as audiences now start looking for something else to watch.

Sherman McCoy (Tom Hanks) is a Wall Street investor who makes millions while enjoying the good life and the sexual favors of Maria Ruskin (Melanie Griffith), a Southern belle gold digger. Sherman and Maria are driving back to Maria's apartment from JFK Airport when they take a wrong turn on the expressway and the two find themselves in the "war-zone" of the South Bronx. They are approached by two suspicious black youths after Sherman gets out of the car to move a tire placed purposely in the middle of the road. Sherman jumps back into the car and Maria guns the engine in reverse, running over one of the teenagers and putting him in a coma. The two drive away and decide not to report the accident to the police. Meanwhile, indigent alcoholic journalist Peter Fallow (Bruce Willis), anxious for a story to make good with his editor, comes upon the hit-and-run case as a rallying point for the black community calling upon Jewish district attorney Abe Weiss (F. Murray Abraham), who is the Bronx District Attorney seeking re-election. According to Judge Leonard White (Morgan Freeman), almost all of DA Weiss' prosecutions end up with black and Puerto Rican defendants going to prison and Weiss is seeking a white defendant for purposes of convincing the minority-majority community that he is worth re-electing. Weiss recognizes the press coverage inherent in prosecuting the callow Sherman, who has been discovered as the hit-and-run driver, in order to cultivate the image as an avenger for the minorities and be propelled to the mayorship of New York City. As Sherman is brought to his knees, New York City fragments into different factions who use the case to suit their own cynical purposes. Finally, Sherman is left without any allies to support him except for the sympathetic Judge Leonard White and the remorseful Fallow. Fallow gains a tremendous advantage and insight into the case when he is dating a woman who is the sub-letting landlady of Maria's apartment, and knows of secret recordings of conversations in the apartment made by the authorities to prove that the woman is not in fact living in the rent-controlled apartment herself. She discovers information about the McCoy case (where Maria states she was driving the car), which she gives to Fallow, who in turn covertly supplies it to Sherman McCoy's defense lawyer. Sherman gets his hands on a tape and plays the recording in court, where it reveals Maria directly contradicting the evidence she has just given, showing she has been perjuring herself and causing her to faint. Sherman plays the tape in a tape recorder inside his briefcase connected to a small loudspeaker that he holds on the desk. When the judge orders that he approach the bench with this evidence, he asserts that the tape is all his (making it admissible evidence and it is technically truthful since it refers only to the dummy tape he was holding and ignores the real tape that is hidden which is not his), resulting in his acquittal. The people in the court go into an uproar, to which Judge White launches into a tirade that they have no right to act self-righteous and smarmy, or that they are above Sherman, considering Reverend Bacon (John Hancock) claims to help disadvantaged New Yorkers but actually engages in race baiting, or that the District Attorney Weiss pushed this case not in the interest of justice but in the interest of appealing to minority voters to further his political career by appealing to their desire to "get even". After the Judge made his point, he begs the people to be decent and change their ways, letting Sherman go. The film ends as it begins, where there is a large audience applauding Peter Fallow's premiere of his book. Fallow says that Sherman McCoy has moved away from New York City to an unknown destination, presumably to live in obscurity.

Mike Peters is a struggling actor who left New York to find success in L.A. six months prior. The move precipitated a break up between him and his girlfriend of six years and left him feeling alone and heartbroken. In the opening scenes of the film, Mike talks about his situation with his friend Rob, another thespian from back east. Mike feels miserable about their conclusions. Afterwards, while on the phone, Mike is coaxed into an impromptu Las Vegas trip by his new best friend, and also actor, Trent to help Mike get over his ex. The trip starts out on a high note with excitement and anticipation but soon takes a turn for the worse when Mike crashes and burns at the casino. Soon after, the guys manage to meet some ladies and just when it seems as if Mike can make some progress and salvage the trip, it all falls apart again and this time Trent goes down with him. On the ride home, Trent gets Mike to feel better about himself and to look at the positive side of things. Mike promises to try his best to move on. Now back in L.A., Mike and Rob get together for some golf and to talk shop. Later that night, Mike and Trent are getting ready to hit the Hollywood hills, at their actor friend Sue's apartment. With the vibes feeling right and things going well, Mike and Rob meet up with Mike's pal Charles, yet another starving actor, at a local bar where they admire the beautiful women. Soon afterward they rendezvous with the others and they all finally make it to a party where Mike makes an ill-fated attempt to get back into the game, while Trent gives the guys a lesson in how to handle the opposite sex. The guys agree to head to their favorite after hours spot and, after watching Trent and Sue effortlessly meet some girls, Mike is clearly shown feeling lower than ever but not yet defeated. Trent and Sue convince Mike that he is in control so he finally makes his move like he's got nothing to lose and he actually meets Nikki and gets her phone number. Success at last, or so he hopes. The swingers leave the lounge and narrowly miss getting into a brawl in the parking lot, caused by Sue's temper yet averted by Sue pulling a gun which no one else was aware was even a part of his attire. The group splits up but not before angry words are exchanged among friends. Mike is left feeling desolate once again. To make himself feel better, Mike decides to call Nikki but he blows any chance he has with her when he leaves a series of increasingly awkward and desperate messages. Now he feels as if he has truly hit bottom and he sits alone in his apartment, missing his ex more than ever and contemplating a move back to New York. Rob comes over to console him and, after some serious talk, he feels like it's time to get back in the saddle again. Mike meets up with the guys at Sue's, where he discovers that he has missed some changes in the group dynamic. That aside, apologies are exchanged and the nightlife once again awaits them. The next stop is a Hollywood night club for swing night. The guys enter through a makeshift VIP entrance in a style that pays homage to Director/Writer/Producer Martin Scorsese. Once inside, the guys let the good times roll and Mike spots a beautiful woman whom he decides he wants to meet. He gathers all his courage and approaches her confidently. He finds himself in an actual interesting conversation with the young and single Lorraine. They are soon swing dancing and the chemistry between them is incredible. The night ends well and Mike, Trent and Sue head to an after-hours meal to discuss the particulars. Mike finally appears to be on his way to moving on and feeling good about himself. The following morning Mike receives a phone call from his ex. She wants to talk about their state of affairs, but when Mike decides to answer another incoming call, he is greeted by Lorraine. He has to make an immediate decision as to which path he wants to go down and in a moment that solidifies his regained self-esteem, he puts his past behind him and chooses to take a chance on someone new. This moment parallels Rob's advice to Mike that he gives in the opening scene where he states that girls never call back until you have forgotten about them. In the closing scene, Mike meets Trent for coffee and they enjoy one more good heart-to-heart while Trent is brought down to earth by a reminder that even when you have got it, you cannot win them all.

At Messina, a messenger brings news that Don Pedro, a prince from Aragon, will return that night from a successful battle, Claudio being among his soldiers. Beatrice, Leonato's niece, asks the messenger about Benedick, and makes sarcastic remarks about his ineptitude as a soldier. Leonato explains that "There is a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her." Upon the arrival of the soldiers, Leonato welcomes Don Pedro and invites him to stay for a month, Benedick and Beatrice resume their "merry war," and Pedro's illegitimate brother Don John is introduced. Claudio's feelings for Hero, Leonato's only daughter, are rekindled upon seeing her, and Claudio soon announces to Benedick his intention to court her. Benedick, who openly despises marriage, tries to dissuade his friend but Don Pedro encourages the marriage. Benedick swears that he will never get married. Don Pedro laughs at him and tells him that when he has found the right person he shall get married. A masquerade ball is planned in celebration of the end of the war, giving a disguised Don Pedro the opportunity to woo Hero on Claudio's behalf. Don John uses this situation to get revenge on his brother Don Pedro by telling young Claudio that Don Pedro is wooing Hero for himself. A furious Claudio confronts Don Pedro, but the misunderstanding is quickly resolved and Claudio wins Hero's hand in marriage. Meanwhile, Benedick disguises himself and dances with Beatrice. Beatrice proceeds to tell this "mystery man" that Benedick is "the prince's jester, a very dull fool." Benedick, enraged by her words, swears he will have revenge. Don Pedro and his men, bored at the prospect of waiting a week for the wedding, harbour a plan to match-make between Benedick and Beatrice. They arrange for Benedick to overhear a conversation in which they declare that Beatrice is madly in love with him but afraid to tell him; that their pride is the main impediment to their courtship. Meanwhile, Hero and her maid Ursula ensure Beatrice overhears them discuss Benedick's undying love for her. The tricks have the desired effect: both Benedick and Beatrice are delighted to think they are the object of unrequited love, and both accordingly resolve to mend their faults and reconcile. Meanwhile, Don Pedro's brother Don John, the "bastard prince", plots to prevent the wedding, embarrass his brother, and wreak misery on Leonato and Claudio. He informs Don Pedro and Claudio that Hero is unfaithful, and arranges for them to see John's associate Borachio enter her bedchamber where he has an amorous liaison (actually with Margaret, Hero's chambermaid). Claudio and Don Pedro are taken in, and Claudio vows to humiliate Hero publicly. At the wedding the next day, Claudio denounces Hero before the stunned guests and storms off with Don Pedro. Hero faints. Her humiliated father Leonato expresses the wish that she would die. The presiding friar intervenes, believing Hero to be innocent. He suggests the family fake Hero's death in order to extract the truth and Claudio's remorse. Prompted by the day's harrowing events, Benedick and Beatrice confess their love for each other. Beatrice then asks Benedick to slay Claudio as proof of his devotion, since he has slandered her kinswoman. Benedick is horrified and at first denies her request. Leonato and his brother Antonio blame Claudio for Hero's apparent death and challenge him to a duel. Benedick then does the same. Luckily, on the night of Don John's treachery, the local Watch apprehended Borachio and his ally Conrade. Despite the comic ineptness of the Watch (headed by constable Dogberry, a master of malapropisms), they have overheard the duo discussing their evil plans. The Watch arrest the villains and eventually obtain a confession, informing Leonato of Hero's innocence. Though Don John has fled the city, a force is sent to capture him. Claudio, stricken with remorse at Hero's supposed death, agrees to her father's demand that he marry Antonio's daughter, "almost the copy of my child that's dead" and carry on the family name. At the wedding, the bride is revealed to be Hero, still living. Claudio is overjoyed. Beatrice and Benedick, prompted by their friends' interference, finally and publicly confess their love for each other. As the play draws to a close, a messenger arrives with news of Don John's capture – but Benedick proposes to postpone his punishment to another day so that the couples can enjoy their new-found happiness. Don Pedro is lonely, because he hasn't found love. Thus Benedick gives him the advice "Get thee a wife."

Following the bombing of an American military installation in the Middle East (the film shows footage from the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing), the U.S. government orchestrates the capture of the mastermind believed to be behind the attack, Sheikh Ahmed bin Talal. In New York City FBI Special Agent Anthony Hubbard (Washington) and his Lebanese-American partner Frank Haddad (Shalhoub) are told of a hijacked bus, fully loaded with passengers and containing an explosive device. The bomb turns out to be a paint bomb and the terrorists manage to escape. The FBI receives demands to release the sheikh. Hubbard eventually comes into conflict with CIA agent Elise Kraft (Bening). Hubbard takes a terrorist suspect into custody and arrests Kraft. Afterwards another terrorist threat is made and an MTA bus is bombed, though the children on-board are permitted to leave before the bus is destroyed. When the FBI captures a person of interest named Samir Nazhde he admits to signing the visa application of one of the suicide bombers in the course of signing many applications for student visas in his job as a lecturer. However, Kraft insists that Samir is not a terrorist and that his continued freedom is vital to the investigation. The FBI eventually identifies and storms a safehouse belonging to terrorists who are associated with the bombings. However, days later, new terror cells launch more devastating attacks, starting with the bombing of the New Victory Theater in Times Square during an evening performance. This is followed days later by a hostage situation at an elementary school (which is resolved when Hubbard shoots the hostage taker). Shortly after this, a suicide bomber drives a van full of explosives into the lobby of 1 Federal Plaza, the location of the FBI's New York City field office, resulting in over 600 fatalities. In spite of objections, the President of the United States declares martial law and armored vehicles and elements of the U.S. Army's 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, under Major General William Devereaux (Willis), occupies and seals off Brooklyn in an effort to find the remaining terrorist cells. Subsequently all young males of Arab descent, including Haddad's son Frank, Jr., are rounded up and detained in Downing Stadium. Haddad resigns in protest. New Yorkers stage violent demonstrations against the army and the racial profiling of the Arabs and the Army fights to maintain control. There are reports of Army killings. When pressed by the White House Chief of Staff (Chip Zien) if the United States is holding the Sheikh, General Devereaux denies it. Hubbard and Kraft, now revealed to be an agent named Sharon Bridger, continue their investigation and capture a suspect, Tariq Husseini. Using torture, Devereaux shoots and kills Husseini (off screen) in the course of the interrogation. Afterward, Bridger tells Hubbard that Husseini knew nothing of value because of the principle of compartmentalized information and, sickened, she finally tells Hubbard what she knows. It is revealed that she herself provided training and support to rebels opposed to Saddam Hussein's regime, working with Samir to recruit and train the followers of the Sheikh. After the United States cut their funding and left them exposed, she took pity on the few of them who had not yet been slaughtered by Hussein's forces, and arranged for them to escape to the United States, ultimately leading to the present situation as they turn their covert and bomb making skills on the country that now holds their Sheikh. She and Hubbard compel Samir to arrange a meeting with the final terrorist cell. In a discreet meeting with the White House Chief of Staff Hubbard is finally informed of the Sheikh's apprehension, which was carried out at General Devereaux's personal initiative. Hubbard convinces Haddad that he needs his help, and Haddad returns to the FBI. A multi-ethnic peace march demonstrates against the occupation of Brooklyn. As the march is getting under way Hubbard and Haddad arrive at the meeting place, but Bridger and Samir have already left. Samir reveals to Bridger that he constitutes the final cell while in another sense he says, "there will never be a last cell." He straps a bomb to his body which he intends to detonate among the marchers. Hubbard and Haddad arrive in time to stop him from leaving, but Samir shoots Bridger in the heart as she struggles to stop him. Hubbard kills Samir, but despite their best efforts he and Haddad can only watch as Bridger succumbs to her wounds after managing to recite certain lines of the second half of The Lord's Prayer and concluding with "Insha'Allah" – the Arabic phrase "God Willing." Hubbard, Haddad, and other FBI agents raid Devereaux's headquarters to arrest him for the torture and murder of Husseini, as well as his role in kidnapping the Sheikh in violation of the Logan Act. Devereaux insists that under the War Powers Resolution the authority vested in him by the President supersedes that of the court which issued the arrest warrant. He then commands his soldiers to aim their guns at the agents, resulting in a tense standoff. Hubbard reminds Devereaux that the civil liberties and human rights which he took from Husseini are what all his predecessors have fought and died for. Devereaux finally submits and is arrested. Martial law ends, and the detainees, including Haddad's son, are freed.

William "Will" Thacker owns an independent book store, The Travel Book Co. in Notting Hill. He is divorced and shares his house with an eccentric, care-free Welshman named Spike. Will encounters Hollywood superstar Anna Scott when she enters his shop. Minutes later, they collide in the street and his drink spills on her clothes. Will offers his house nearby for Anna to change. Before leaving, she impulsively kisses him. Days later, Anna leaves him a message that she is at the Ritz Hotel. Will is mistaken for a journalist—in a panic he claims he works for Horse & Hound, and is made to interview the cast of Anna's new sci-fi film, which he has not seen. Anna calls him back in and says she has cleared her evening for him. Will is exhilarated, before remembering that he is expected at his sister Honey's birthday party; Anna surprises him by saying she will join him. At the house of Max and Bella, Anna feels at home as she share stories with the small group of birthday party guests. She and Will share a moment in a private garden square. The next day they go to a restaurant, where Will overhears Anna being spoken of in salacious terms and defends her. Anna invites Will to her room at the Ritz, but her American boyfriend, film star Jeff King, has arrived unannounced. Will pretends to be a room-service waiter and Jeff is very dismissive towards him. Anna is apologetic and embarrassed; she thought King had broken up with her. Will realizes he must end things with Anna. Over the next six months, Max and Bella set Will up on a series of blind dates (the last with someone who is "perfect, absolutely perfect"), hoping to help him move on from Anna. A distraught Anna appears unexpectedly at Will's doorstep; some pre-stardom nude photos have been published, and she needs a place to hide out. Once she calms down, they spend some time on the rooftop patio rehearsing lines from Anna's next film. Back inside, when she sees a poster of the Marc Chagall painting La Mariée, Anna tells Will that "it feels like how love should be". After an amazing day together, Anna goes to him at night and they make love. The next morning, she makes him breakfast in bed and she asks if she can stay. The doorbell rings and they are horrified to find a horde of reporters, alerted by Spike's careless talk at the pub. Spike re-opens the door to be photographed in only his dirty underwear, exacerbating the situation. While Anna gets dressed, she verbally berates Will for what she views as his desire for publicity. He tries to cheer her up, reminding her that the fame is all nonsense, but she tells him the scandal will follow her forever, departing with the statement that she regrets their time together. Several months and seasons pass. At a dinner with his friends, Will discovers that Anna is back in town to make a Henry James film, which Will had previously suggested to her. He visits her location shoot, where Anna sees him and invites him past security. Given headphones to hear the dialogue, Will leaves when he overhears Anna evading questions from her co-star, stating that Will is no one important. The next day, Anna comes to the bookshop with a present. Anna admits she still has feelings for him, apologises for her behaviour months ago and explains that she now understands his comment, months earlier, that the fame is nonsense. She says she has to leave tomorrow and is wondering if she did not leave, whether he might let her see him a little, or maybe a lot, whether he could like her again after how badly she treated him. When he brings up the conversation she had with her costar on the set she explains that her costar is a notorious gossiper and she was being discreet. Will turns her down, saying he is unable to handle another inevitable break up, especially considering how big of a star she is and that he would be unable to escape seeing her face if the inevitable breakup happens. He says he is from Notting Hill and she from Beverly Hills. She says with teary eyes, "I'm also just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her". She kisses him goodbye and leaves. She leaves Will's present behind, which turns out to be the original La Mariée. Will meets his friends in a restaurant. They take turns supporting his decision to not see her any more and try to make him feel better. Spike enters the restaurant and is told that Will has decided to leave Anna. Spike calls him a daft prick and lambastes him for turning away the woman he loves. His friends race him across London in Max's car to reach her press conference at the Savoy Hotel. Will adopts his Horse & Hound persona to ask two questions that reveal their relationship and his feelings for her, persuading her to stay in the UK "indefinitely". She breaks into a dazzling smile. His friends in the audience hug and kiss. A montage shows the two getting married, at one of Anna's movie premieres, then happily sitting on a garden square bench, where Will reads to a heavily pregnant Anna.

During the time of the Judges when there was a famine, an Israelite family from Bethlehem – Elimelech, his wife Naomi, and their sons Mahlon and Chilion – emigrated to the nearby country of Moab. Elimelech died, and the sons married two Moabite women: Mahlon married Ruth and Chilion married Orpah. After about ten years, the two sons of Naomi also died in Moab (1:4). Naomi decided to return to Bethlehem. She told her daughters-in-law to return to their own mothers and remarry. Orpah reluctantly left; however, Ruth said, "Intreat me not to leave thee, [or] to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people [shall be] my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, [if aught] but death part thee and me." (Ruth 1:16–17 KJV) The two women returned to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest, and in order to support her mother-in-law and herself, Ruth went to the fields to glean. As it happened, the field she went to belonged to a man named Boaz, who was kind to her because he had heard of her loyalty to her mother-in-law. Ruth told Naomi of Boaz's kindness, and she gleaned in his field through the remainder of barley and wheat harvest. Boaz was a close relative of Naomi's husband's family. He was therefore obliged by the Levirate law to marry Mahlon's widow, Ruth, in order to carry on his family's inheritance. Naomi sent Ruth to the threshing floor at night and told her to go where he slept, and "uncover his feet, and lay thee down; and he will tell thee what thou shalt do." (3:4) Ruth did so. At midnight Boaz was afraid and turned to see that a woman lay at his feet. When asked who she was, she replied: "I [am] Ruth thine handmaid: spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaid; for thou [art] a near kinsman." (3:9) Boaz blessed her and agreed to do all that is required, and he noted that, "all the city of my people doth know that thou [art] a virtuous woman." (3:11) He then acknowledged that he was a close relative, but that there was one who was closer, so he deferred to spread his cloak over her at that time, and she remained in submission at his feet until she returned into the city in the morning. Early that day, Boaz discussed the issue with the other male relative, Ploni Almoni ("so-and-so"), before the town elders. The other male relative was unwilling to jeopardize the inheritance of his own estate by marrying Ruth, and so relinquished his right of redemption, thus allowing Boaz to marry Ruth. They transferred the property and redeemed it by the nearer kinsman taking off his shoe and handing it over to Boaz. (Ruth 4:7–18) Boaz and Ruth were married and had a son named Obed: who is "the father of Jesse, the father of David." (4:13–17)

During a softball game at an American oil company housing compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, al-Qaeda terrorists set off a bomb, killing Americans and Saudis. While one team hijacks a car and shoots residents, a suicide bomber ( wearing a fake police uniform ) blows himself up, killing everyone near him. Sergeant Haytham (Ali Suliman) of the Saudi State Police kills several of the terrorists. The FBI Legal AttachĂŠ in Saudi Arabia, Special Agent Fran Manner (Kyle Chandler), calls his US colleague, Special Agent Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx), to advise him about the attack. Manner is discussing the situation with DSS Regional Security Officer Special Agent Rex Bura when an ambulance full of explosives is detonated killing Manner, Bura and many others. At FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C., Fleury briefs his rapid deployment team on the attack. Although the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. State Department hinder FBI efforts to investigate the attack, Fleury blackmails the Saudi ambassador into allowing an FBI investigative team into Saudi Arabia. Fleury gathers Special Agent Janet Mayes (Jennifer Garner), a forensic examiner, FBI analyst Adam Leavitt (Jason Bateman), an intelligence analyst, and Special Agent Grant Sykes (Chris Cooper), a bomb technician, go to Saudi Arabia. On arrival they are met by Colonel Faris al-Ghazi (Ashraf Barhom), the commander of the Saudi State Police Force providing security at the compound. The investigation is being run by General Al Abdulmalik (Mahmoud Said) of the Saudi Arabian National Guard (SANG), who does not give Fleury and his team permission to investigate. The FBI team is invited to the palace of Saudi Prince Ahmed bin Khaled (Omar Berdouni) for a dinner. While at the palace, Fleury persuades the Prince that Colonel al-Ghazi is a natural detective and should be allowed to lead the investigation. With this change in leadership, the Americans are allowed hands-on access to the crime scene. While searching for evidence, Sergeant Haytham (Ali Suliman) and Sykes discover the second bomb was detonated in an ambulance. Fleury learns the brother of one of the dead terrorists had access to ambulances and police uniforms. Colonel al-Ghazi orders a SWAT team to raid a house, managing to kill a few heavily armed terrorists. Following the raid, the team discovers clues, including photos of the U.S. and other Western embassies in Riyadh. Soon afterward, the U.S. Embassy Deputy Chief of Mission Damon Schmidt (Jeremy Piven) notifies Fleury and his team that they have been ordered to return to the United States. On their way to King Khalid International Airport, their convoy is attacked and incapacitated. Leavitt is dragged out of the wrecked car and kidnapped by terrorists who flee while Fleury manages to wound one attacker. Al-Ghazi commandeers a civilian vehicle to chase the fourth SUV and the other car holding Leavitt into the dangerous Al-Suwaidi neighborhood of Riyadh. As they pull up, a gunman launches rocket-propelled grenades at them and a fierce firefight starts. FBI analyst Leavitt is tied up inside a complex. While Sykes and Haytham watch the entrance to the complex, al-Ghazi, Fleury, and Mayes follow a blood trail and kill many gunmen inside. Mayes, separated from the others, finds Leavitt and his attackers, preparing an execution video for Leavitt. She kills the remaining insurgents, and al-Ghazi and the team start to leave. Fleury then realizes there is a trail of blood leading to the back of the apartment, and al-Ghazi sees the grandfather and inspects his hand. When the old man gives him his hand, al-Ghazi sees that the man is missing the same fingers as Abu Hamza al-Masri in the terrorist group's many videos and confirms his suspicion that the grandfather is the terrorist leader. Abu Hamza's teenage grandson walks out of the bedroom and shoots al-Ghazi in the neck, then he starts to point his gun at Mayes, prompting Fleury to kill him. Abu Hamza then pulls out an assault rifle and Haytham kills him. As Abu Hamza dies, another grandson hugs him and Abu Hamza whispers something into his ear to calm the child down. Al-Ghazi dies in Fleury's arms. At al-Ghazi's house, Fleury and Haytham meet his family. Fleury tells his son that al-Ghazi was his good friend, mirroring a similar scene earlier in the movie wherein he comforted Special Agent Manner's son. Fleury and his team return to the U.S., where they are commended by FBI Director James Grace (Richard Jenkins) for their outstanding work. Leavitt asked Fleury and Mayes what he had whispered to her to calm her down. The scene cuts to Abu Hamza's daughter asking her own daughter what his grandfather whispered to her as he was dying. The granddaughter tells her mother, "Don't fear them, my child. We are going to kill them all," a similar line Fleury whispered to Mayes, implying that this is a never-ending, vicious cycle.

The book title derives from the Gospel of Matthew (23:26), as quoted early in the novel: "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess." John Hodder is recruited from a small town and congregation somewhere in the East to become rector of the august St. John's Church in a large midwestern city (modeled on St. Louis). Originally built in a rich area of the city, the surrounding area of the church including now-infamous "Dalton Street" has fallen into decay. But the church patrons include the wealthiest of the city, who travel to church on Sunday from their new mansions on the west side of the city, and who desire an "orthodox" minister who will preach a Christianity which will not question the growth of corporate power and the corrupting influence of concentrating wealth in America. Hodder develops a close friendship with Eldon Parr, the most wealthy and powerful man in the church. This is remarkable in that Parr has few close friends. Hodder comes to know of Parr's intense loneliness and unhappiness, being widowed and estranged from his son and daughter. Hodder's failure to move his congregation causes him a spiritual crisis. He meets Josiah Bentley, one of founders of the church who left when financially devastated by Parr, but who has developed a network for helping the poor in the neighborhood surrounding the church. Hodder eventually disregards his "orthodox" views and preaches what he understands to be the core teachings of Jesus - to love and serve mankind. This spawns a huge battle between the old guard at the church and those who are deeply touched by Hodder's message, including Parr's daughter Alison. Though deprived of his salary by the vestry, the bishop is heartened by Hodder's transformation and tells him he will not recommend him for an ecclesiastical trial for heresy.

The commercial spacecraft Nostromo is on a return trip to Earth with a seven-member crew in stasis: Captain Dallas, Executive Officer Kane, Navigator Lambert, Science Officer Ash, Warrant Officer Ripley, and Engineers Parker and Brett. Detecting a mysterious transmission, possibly a distress signal, from a nearby planetoid, the ship's computer, MUTHR, awakens the crew. Following standard company policy for such situations, the Nostromo lands on the planetoid and Dallas, Kane, and Lambert head out to investigate, damaging their ship upon landing in dust. They discover the signal is coming from a derelict alien spacecraft. Inside, they find the remains of a large alien creature whose ribcage appears to have exploded from the inside. On the Nostromo, Ripley determines that the transmission is not a distress signal but a warning. In the alien ship, Kane discovers a chamber containing hundreds of eggs. As he inspects one, a creature springs out, spits acid through his space helmet and attaches itself to his face. Dallas and Lambert carry the unconscious Kane back to the Nostromo. As acting senior officer, Ripley refuses to let them aboard, citing quarantine regulations, but Ash violates protocol by overriding Ripley's lock and letting them in. The crew are unable to remove the creature from Kane's face, as its grip is strong and its blood is an extremely corrosive acid. It eventually lets go, crawls away, and dies. The crew repair the ship and lift off. Kane awakens and seems healthy, but during the crew's final meal before re-entering stasis, he chokes and convulses in pain before a small alien creature bursts from his chest, killing him, and escapes into the depths of the ship to molt. Since attacking the creature with conventional weapons could result in its corrosive blood breaching the ship's hull, the crew attempts to locate and capture it with motion trackers, nets, electric prods, and flamethrowers. Brett is sent to look for the crew's cat, Jones, and the now fully grown alien attacks him and disappears with his body into the air shafts. After a heated discussion, the group devises a plan to jettison the creature out of the ship. Dallas enters the Nostromo's labyrinthine ventilation shafts, intending to force the alien into an airlock, but it ambushes him. Lambert, realizing the alien is killing the crew one by one, implores the others to escape in the ship's shuttle. Now in command, Ripley explains that the shuttle will not support four people, and recommends that they continue with Dallas' plan of flushing the alien out. Accessing MUTHR, Ripley discovers that Ash has secretly been ordered to return the alien to the crew's employers, who consider the crew expendable. When Ripley confronts Ash, he tries to choke her to death. Parker intervenes and knocks off Ash's head, revealing him to be an android. Parker reanimates Ash's head, and Ripley interrogates him. They learn he was assigned to the Nostromo to convince the crew to capture the creature and return it for analysis, even at the expense of the human personnel. Ash taunts them about their chances of survival against the "perfect organism." Parker turns a flamethrower on Ash. Ripley, Lambert and Parker agree to set the Nostromo to self-destruct and escape in the shuttle. However, Parker and Lambert are ambushed and killed by the alien while gathering life-support supplies. Ripley initiates the self-destruct sequence and heads for the shuttle with Jones, but the alien blocks her path. She retreats and unsuccessfully attempts to abort the self-destruct sequence, then returns to retrieve Jones, finding the alien gone. She narrowly escapes in the shuttle as the Nostromo explodes. As she prepares to enter stasis, Ripley discovers the Alien is aboard the shuttle. She dons a spacesuit and opens the shuttle's airlock, causing explosive decompression which forces the Alien into the shuttle's open doorway. She propels it into space by shooting it with a grappling hook, but the gun catches in the closing door, tethering the alien to the shuttle. Ripley activates the engines, blasting the alien into space. After recording the ship's final log entry, she places herself and Jones into stasis for the voyage home.

In an upscale New York City mansion, wealthy and popular teenager Kathryn Merteuil (Gellar) is discussing her prep school with Mrs. Caldwell (Christine Baranski) and Mrs. Caldwell's daughter Cecile (Selma Blair). Kathryn promises Mrs. Caldwell that she will look out for the sheltered and na誰ve Cecile. Kathryn's step-brother Sebastian (Phillippe) enters the room, whereupon Mrs. Caldwell reacts to him coldly and leaves with Cecile. Kathryn reveals to him that her real intention is to use Cecile to take revenge on her ex-lover Court Reynolds, who had dumped her for Cecile. Kathryn asks Sebastian to seduce Cecile; he refuses as he is planning to seduce Annette Hargrove (Witherspoon), the virgin daughter of their school's new headmaster. Annette is a 'paradigm of chastity and virtue' who recently wrote a published essay about saving herself for marriage and has been temporarily staying with Sebastian's aunt. The two make a wager: if Sebastian fails to bed Annette, Kathryn gets Sebastian's vintage Jaguar XK140; if he succeeds, Kathryn will have sex with him. It is mentioned that Sebastian keeps a journal detailing his conquests. Sebastian's first attempt to seduce Annette fails, as she had already been told of his reputation as a womanizer. He vents to his friend, Blaine Tuttle (Joshua Jackson). Blaine suggests that the informant might be Annette's ex-boyfriend and closeted jock, Greg McConnell (Eric Mabius), revealing to Sebastian that Greg tried to make a pass at him. He uses that to seduce Greg while being secretly filmed by Sebastian. Sebastian confronts Greg with the photographs, but he denies warning Annette. Greg is pressured into investigating who did, and Sebastian also orders him to present him in a good light to Annette. Later, while gushing about Sebastian to Annette, Greg discovers that the culprit is Cecile's mother, Mrs. Caldwell. Wanting revenge on the Caldwells, Sebastian agrees to seduce Cecile. Meanwhile, Cecile's music teacher, Ronald Clifford (Sean Patrick Thomas), is in love with her. Cecile confesses this to Kathryn. Kathryn tells Mrs. Caldwell about Ronald and Cecile's romance and Mrs. Caldwell orders Cecile to end it. Sebastian, in turn, calls Cecile to his house, ostensibly to give her a letter from Ronald. There he blackmails Cecile in order to perform oral sex on her. The next day, Cecile confides in Kathryn, who advises her to learn from Sebastian so that she can make Ronald happy in bed. Sebastian begins to fall in love with Annette, who returns his feelings but still resists him. Sebastian calls her a hypocrite because she claims to be waiting for her one true love, but when her one true love chooses to love her back, she resists. She relents, but Sebastian refuses her, confused about his feelings colliding with his stolid sexuality. Annette flees to the estate of her friend's parents. Sebastian tracks her down, professes his love, and makes love to her. As he has won the bet, Kathryn offers herself to Sebastian the next day, but he refuses; he now only wants Annette. Kathryn taunts him and threatens to ruin Annette's reputation, so Sebastian pretends indifference to Annette and coldly breaks up with her. After Sebastian tells Kathryn that he has broken up with Annette and arranged for Cecile and Ronald to be together, Kathryn reveals that she has known all along that he was truly in love with Annette and manipulated him into giving her up. Sebastian angrily dismisses Kathryn, saying he no longer wants her, and she then rejects him. Sebastian leaves to confront Annette, and Kathryn calls Ronald, telling him that Sebastian slept with Cecile and lying to him that Sebastian hit her. Annette refuses Sebastian's apologies; he sends her his journal, in which he has detailed all of Kathryn's manipulative schemes as well as their bet, and written the true feelings he had for Annette all along. As he heads home, Ronald intercepts him on the street, starting a fight. Annette runs out and tries to stop it, but is accidentally thrown into the way of traffic. Sebastian pushes her to safety, and is hit by a cab. Before he dies, Sebastian and Annette profess their love for each other. Watching this, Ronald realizes that Kathryn lied to him and used him to hurt Sebastian. At Sebastian's funeral, Cecile distributes copies of his journal, made into a book by Annette, titled Cruel Intentions. Kathryn is humiliated and rejected by her former friends, and her reputation is ruined when cocaine is discovered in her rosary. In the final scene, Annette drives away in Sebastian's car with his journal at her side as she remembers the moments they shared.