Two American friends escape their vacation in Paris to the French countryside, enjoying a day of fresh air until a Russian waiter and an Austrian remind them of the horrors of war.

A Canadian graduate student and his wife are living in France and often socialize with their peers at concerts and dinner parties. They soon make friends with an established novelist, but as the student continues to meet people he begins to question who he can trust and who his real friends are.

A writer and his student are implicated in a rumor.

An aimless, twenty-two-year-old Californian man questions everything—from his job to his ability to take care of a potted plant—as a heat wave sweeps his town. Just when he's about to spiral, a life-changing act of heroism gives him unexpected clarity.

A rambunctious teenager with an inquisitive mind causes much grief for all his New England family and neighbors when he visits them in the summer of 1914, on the eve of World War I.

A writer finds himself entangled in the lives of his college friends, an ex-literature professor and his wife, decades after they graduate. They pursue love and their literary dreams mind a chaotic New York City of the 1960s.

A working-class mother has held only one hope for her entire life: that one day, her daughter would marry well and wealthy, and take care of her in her old age. When her daughter reveals that the man she loves is not wealthy, her mother's dreams of rest are dashed and divided.

Two women, once the closest of childhood friends, chart diametrically opposite courses through life when scandal drives them apart. Thirty years later, a chance reunion prompts one of them to question everything.

A woman returns home to her family having just slept with another man. At dinner, her son gets into an argument with his father about their privilege. As the narrative moves back to the time they spent abroad in Nigeria, Burma and Ecuador, fractures in the family life are revealed.

A depressed and suicidal middle-aged woman is about to take her own life — when vacuum cleaner salesmen come knocking on her door. Before long, she finds herself knee-deep in a thrilling affair.