A marriage crisis between a writer and his wife leads her to flee to Germany and eventually return with another man, through whom the writer is going to overcome his writer's block.

Private eye Philip Marlowe and his bride move to a desert town, where he uncovers a land scheme.

When a leak of information in the African section of British Intelligence is discovered, a security man is brought in to investigate.

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

One hot June day, three friends decide there is nothing they would like to do more than to get away from London. A boating holiday with lots of fresh air and exercise would be just the very thing, or so their doctors tell them. So, after debating the merits of hotel or camp beds and what to pack, they set off on their voyage - a trip up the Thames from Henley to Oxford - but very quickly find themselves ill-equipped for the trials of riverbank life.

Barley Scott Blair, a Lisbon-based editor of Russian literature who unexpectedly begins working for British intelligence, is commissioned to investigate the purposes of Dante, a dissident scientist trapped in the decaying Soviet Union that is crumbling under the new open-minded policies.