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Based on the 1963 novel by Sylvia Plath, a young woman's summer in New York sees her working for a Mademoiselle-like magazine, return home to New England, and subsequent breakdown all amidst the horrors of the fifties, from news of the Rosenbergs' execution to sleazy disc jockeys and predatory college boys.

Florist Gwen is an employee in a flower wholesaler and is ensnared by her likable boss Joey, which the young woman does not mind. They both start an affair. The relationship with her constantly frustrated and stressful mother, Ellen, doesn't look that rosy. Thankfully, there is still her life partner Ron, the down-to-earth calm anchor of the family. While delivering flowers to the cemetery, Gwen falls into an open grave and passes out. When she wakes up again, an attractive and caring man bends over her. It is emergency doctor Lennard, a single widower with a lively teenage daughter whose wife was killed in a traffic accident a year ago. An ex-employee of her flower shop was then convicted. However, the circumstances remain mysterious. When the flower seller find out about this, she initially keep at distance. But then Gwen finds a red balloon in the garden with a message from the doctor's daughter Lilly to her dead mother, who breaks her heart, because she is a half-orphan herself.

A Jewish woman escaping from a transport helps a family poisoned by carbon monoxide. The young host decides to hide the girl.

Jack Gladney, professor of Hitler studies at The-College-on-the-Hill, husband to Babette, and father to four children/stepchildren, is torn asunder by a chemical spill from a rail car that releases an "Airborne Toxic Event" forcing Jack to confront his biggest fear - his own mortality.

American-born Anna Vorontosov teaches school in a remote, primitive section of northern New Zealand. Her experimental teaching methods have won her the love and affection of her pupils and their parents and the admiration of the unhappily married school inspector, Abercrombie. Her personal life, however, is less secure; frightened of love and sexually inhibited, she has always been aloof with men. Eager to break down this barrier is Englishman Paul Lathrope, a somewhat irrational and immature fellow teacher who aspires to be a singer. Though Anna is attracted to him, she refuses to submit to his advances.

After being brutally murdered, 14-year-old Susie Salmon watches from heaven over her grief-stricken family - and her killer. As she observes their daily lives, she must balance her thirst for revenge with her desire for her family to heal.

A small time thief from Belfast, Gerry Conlon, is falsely implicated in the IRA bombing of a pub that kills several people while he is in London. He and his four friends are coerced by British police into confessing their guilt. Gerry's father and other relatives in London are also implicated in the crime. He spends fifteen years in prison with his father trying to prove his innocence.

The story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who, as a teenager in the late 1950s, had an affair with an older woman, Hanna, who then disappeared only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a concentration camp guard late in the war. He alone realizes that Hanna is illiterate and may be concealing that fact at the expense of her freedom.

When a son and mother move to Seattle in hopes for a better life, the mother meets a seemingly polite man. Things go south when the man turns out to be abusive, endangering their lives. As the mother struggles to maintain hope in an impossible situation, the son has plans to escape.

Cynical British journalist Fowler falls in love with a young Vietnamese woman but is dismayed when a naïve U.S. official also begins vying for her attention. In retaliation, Fowler informs the communists that the American is selling arms to their enemy.