In 1950s Ireland and New York, young Eilis Lacey has to choose between two men and two countries.
An immigrant in search of the American dream is forced to take a room in a boarding house and soon finds herself in a nightmare from which she can't escape.
Mary Surratt is the lone female charged as a co-conspirator in the assassination trial of Abraham Lincoln. As the whole nation turns against her, she is forced to rely on her reluctant lawyer to uncover the truth and save her life.
Afflicted with a terminal illness John Bernard Books, the last of the legendary gunfighters, quietly returns to Carson City for medical attention from his old friend Dr. Hostetler. Aware that his days are numbered, the troubled man seeks solace and peace in a boarding house run by a widow and her son. However, it is not Books' fate to die in peace, as he becomes embroiled in one last valiant battle.
After her sister leaves home, Tari fights to protect her mother from her father's abuse and joins a support group where she meets a new lifelong friend.
A prototype enhanced human, on the run from Chinese-hired hit men, hooks up with a dread-locked bystander, and the two of them elude their pursuers narrowly each time.
Martin Durnley is a young man with an infantilizing mother, resentful stepfather and an institutionalized brother with Down's syndrome. To cope, he retreats into an alternate child personality he calls Georgie. After being caught during a theft attempt at a department store, he befriends a female customer who is sympathetic to him, but his friendship soon turns into obsession.
Jung-suk's wife runs a boarding house and he helps by cooking, doing laundry, and cleaning. He's under his wife's control, but he doesn't give up his dream of becoming an actor and eventually passes an audition. Sun-mi and Hyun-jung from the boarding house overhear him practice and mistake him for a wealthy man. They seduce him for his money and he falls for them...
After crooked nightclub owner murders a police informant, he blackmails his piano player to allow him to stay at his eccentric mother's boarding house.
Jane is young, French, pregnant and unmarried. Bucking convention, she is uninterested in settling with her baby's father or getting an abortion. After renting a room in a dingy London boarding house, Jane befriends the odd group of inhabitants and starts an affair with one boarder, Toby. As Jane's pregnancy threatens her new relationship, and the reality of single motherhood approaches, she is forced to decide what to do about both her baby and her budding romance.
The ups and downs in the lives and careers of a group of ambitious young actresses and show girls from disparate backgrounds brought together in a theatrical hostel. Centres particularly on the conflict and growing friendship between Terry Randall, a rich girl confident in her talent and ability to make it to the top on the stage, and Jean Maitland, a world weary and cynical trouper who has taken the hard knocks of the ruthless and over-populated world of the Broadway apprentice.
The Great McGonigle and his troupe of third-rate vaudevillians manage to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors and the sheriff.
Paris, France. Commissaire Wens follows the lead of a ruthless murderer to an unexpected place.
Aston, a quiet, reserved man, lives alone in a top-floor cluttered room of a small abandoned house in a poor London district. He befriends and takes in Mac Davies, an old derelict who has been fired from a menial job in a café. In time Aston offers him a job as caretaker of the house. Aston's brother, Mick - a taunting, quasi-sadist - harasses the derelict when his brother is away, countermanding his orders...
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.
A maid has romances with a two-timer, a boozing millionaire and the master of the house.
The tenants of an old London boarding house spend their time in petty bickering and sniping until a mysterious stranger arrives at their door.
An ex-con trying to go clean ends up working for a crooked trucking company swindling money.
A young man who steals valuable Oriental objects for a crooked antique dealer is hunted down by the police after his latest Chinatown robbery turns violent.
Min, the owner of a dockside hotel, is forced to make difficult decisions about the future of Nancy, the young woman she took in as an infant.