A young woman who comes to Rome and soon drifts into de facto prostitution in order to survive. She meets a misanthropic doctor and would-be poet, but soon falls in love with another man. Murder ensues and she soon finds herself being blackmailed, sexually and financially, by her husband's shady driver, who saw something he shouldn't have.

Noon is a gunfighter who has become amnesiac. Helped by Rimes, an outlaw who has befriended him, he tries to figure out who he is actually. It gradually appears that his wife and kid have been murdered. As time goes by, Noon also recalls a fortune hidden somewhere. Niland, a scheming judge, and Peg Cullane, a greedy will do everything to prevent Noon and Rimes from achieving their end while Fan Davidge, a woman living in a ghost town, will support them.

Five O. Henry stories, each separate. The primary one from the critics' acclaim was "The Cop and the Anthem". Soapy tells fellow bum Horace that he is going to get arrested so he can spend the winter in a nice jail cell. He fails. He can't even accost a woman; she turns out to be a streetwalker. The other stories are "The Clarion Call", "The Last Leaf", "The Ransom of Red Chief", and "The Gift of the Magi".

During a heated argument with her sister Joan, Gail discovers the shocking news that she is adopted. With the reluctant support of her adoptive parents and baby sister Penny, Gail goes in search of her biological mother and true identity.

To make an honest woman of his pregnant sister, Rosalie, callous New York mobster Phil Regal intimidates witnesses and bribes a store clerk to get Rosalie’s condemned boyfriend, Nicky Bradna, out of prison. But Regal’s meddling deeds soon backfire.

Vlassov is a Soviet spy who defects in France. He is whisked to the U.S, where Allan Davies takes over the case. After polygraph tests and cross-examinations, Vlassov names several Western European agents who are also spying for the Soviets. Davies wants to take the listed agents into custody; meanwhile, those on the list start dying under mysterious circumstances.

A newspaper reporter's life is endangered when she is assigned to investigate a political assassination.

A priest sets out to catch the man who killed one of his colleagues.

Haunted by the drowning death of his own daughter, a police investigator embarks on an obsessive 10-year hunt for the identity of a dead boy, to the detriment of his family life.

A struggling young father-to-be gives in to temptation and impulsively steals an envelope of money from the office of a corrupt attorney. Instead of a few hundred dollars, it contains $30,000. When he decides to return the money, things go wrong - and that is only the beginning of his troubles.