An impoverished thirteen-year-old boy growing up during the Great Depression gets into a serious fight with an older man over a fifty-cent coin.

After the death of their father, two brothers move in with their unfamiliar aunt and uncle in Harlan, Kentucky, but a bullying incident at school threatens to separate the family.

An afternoon at the park takes an unexpected turn for a mother and her son as the well-established families that they admire turn out to be unhappy people who secretly enjoy the misery of others. As the day progresses, the mother is surprised to learn that she and her son share many negative qualities with those families.

Two competitive female leads of a Broadway revue in the 1930s meet with a press agent and separately reflect on petty digs they have thrown at each other in an effort to maintain dominance over the show. Each wishes to prove herself to be the superior performer, but together, they react in an unexpected way when the cameras turns upon them.

An American visits an Israeli friend from his past who had recently emigrated to Maine and gotten remarried. They discuss the hostage situation in the Middle East and she reflects on where her loyalties lie.

A woman tries to convince her husband to quit his exhausting job as a traveling salesman. She reflects on the impossibility of having everything that she wants.

The Eavesdropper, a human-alien hybrid woman, moves through a sentient spaceship full of comatose humans whose memories she absorbs and processes through mind reading.

Two reluctant passengers on a Caribbean cruise clash with the experienced Tour Director, and their conflict indirectly leads to the entire trip becoming a resounding failure.

A lesbian woman living far from home becomes combative and hostile when a man she thought was her friend passes judgment on her family and choice to become a mother. At the same time, her partner pushes her to understand that it is still possible to live a happy life with their daughter, even while homophobia lingers in many of their interactions with others.

A party traveling west to California experiences unspeakable horror when they become trapped on an impassable trail in the winter.