After financial improprieties are discovered at the Eastern trading company where he works, Peter Willems flees the resulting disgrace and criminal charges. He persuades the man who gave him his start in life, the merchant ship captain Lingard, to bring him to a trading post on a remote Indonesian island where he can hide out.

The son of a working-class British mining family has dreams of pursuing an art career, but when he strikes up an affair with an older, married woman from the town it enrages his kind but possessive mother.

A luxury liner carries Jewish refugees from Hitler's Germany in a desperate fight for survival.

Egyptologist Robin Ellis and American reporter Eva Marie Saint uncover King Tut's burial site but wealthy profiteer Raymond Burr tries to make sure that the valuable artifacts in its chambers never leave the country.

A penniless middle-aged spinster scrapes by giving piano lessons in the Dublin of the 1950s. She makes a sad last bid for love with a fellow resident of her rundown boarding house, who imagines she has the money to bankroll the business he hopes to open.

Julian Berniers returns from Illinois with his young bride Lily Prine to the family in New Orleans. His spinster sisters Carrie and Anna welcome the couple, who arrive with expensive gifts. The sisters hope Julian will help with their expenses, and he tells them that while his profitable factory went out of business, he did manage to save money. It turns out that Julian pulled off a real estate scam and took off with the money. Carrie is obsessed with her brother. Her jealousy of Lily pushes her to discover the shady land deal for herself and she does everything she can to wreck their marriage.

A group of potential heirs gather in a forbidding old house to learn which of them will inherit a fortune. Later, they learn that a flesh-rending maniac is loose.

The lives of a disparate group of unfulfilled people converge at a small, seaside English hotel.

An ailing barrister is thrust back into the courtroom in what becomes one of the most unusual and eventful murder cases of the lawyer's career when he finds himself defending a man being tried for the murder of a socialite.