Coleman Silk is a worldly and admired professor who loses his job after unwittingly making a racial slur. To clear his name, Silk writes a book about the events with his friend and colleague Nathan Zuckerman, who in the process discovers a dark secret Silk has hidden his whole life. All the while, Silk engages in an affair with Faunia Farley, a younger woman whose tormented past threatens to unravel the layers of deception Silk has constructed.

Hairdresser Nadine Hightower wants to retrieve the risqué photos she once posed for, but when she visits the photographer at his office, he's murdered by an intruder. Nadine talks her estranged husband, Vernon, into going along when she returns to the office, where they stumble across plans for a less than legal construction project. But when Vernon tries to turn the documents into a cash windfall, he and Nadine are pursued by goons with guns.

In the year 1935, a teen named Billy Bathgate finds first love while becoming the protégé of fledgling gangster Dutch Schultz.

Over-the-hill gumshoe in Los Angeles seeks to avenge the killing of an old pal, another detective who was involved in a case concerning a murdered broad, stolen stamps, a nickel-plated handgun, a cheating dolly, and a kidnapped pussycat.

A retired detective accepts a simple task, unaware that it will tear open old, forgotten, but deadly wounds.

When one of his patients is found murdered, psychiatrist Dr. Sam Rice is visited by the investigating officer but refuses to give up any information. He's then visited by the patient's mistress, Brooke Reynolds, whom he quickly falls for despite her being a likely murder suspect. As the police pressure on him intensifies, Rice decides to attempt solving the case on his own and soon discovers that someone is trying to kill him as well.

After Drew Dixon, an upright young man, is sent west by his religious family to avoid being drafted into the Civil War, he drifts across the land with a loose confederation of young vagrants.

In 1935 rural Texas, recently widowed Edna Spaulding struggles to survive with two small children, a farm to run, and very little money in the bank - not to mention a deadly tornado and the unwelcome presence of the Ku Klux Klan. Edna is aided by her beautician sister, Margaret; a blind boarder, Mr. Will; and a would-be thief, Moze, who decides to teach Edna how to plant and harvest cotton.

A rascally nearing-retirement man juggles a workers' compensation suit while secretly working for his nemesis and flirting with his nemesis' young wife. As his estranged son returns, he faces new family responsibilities, while a banker plots to evict him from his home.

Ted Kramer is a career man for whom his work comes before his family. His wife Joanna cannot take this anymore, so she decides to leave him. Ted is now faced with the tasks of housekeeping and taking care of himself and their young son Billy.