Xiao Xiao is sold into arranged marriage with a 2 year old boy, who she must raise as his nanny until he is old enough to marry her. She is expected to honour tradition and to toe the line so far as social proprieties are concerned, but the young girl rebels against the edicts of her elders until at 16, she falls in love with another man.
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We are taken care of when we are children and we do not know as much as when we are older. There is less to worry about. But it does not mean the things that are important to us as children have less significance. You see, for Scruffy, despite that she is from a poor family of the countryside, it is very important to study well, because she will become an asthma doctor. The doctor said her dad will die but she has decided – she will grow up and cure her father. Equally important is to run away from her grandmother, who almost always is lurking around in the dark corners of the house with a comb to fix her messy hair. Death is too abstract to understand, war is a word one hears on the radio that grownups sometimes listen to. Yet, as Scruffy lives through her days full of happiness and misery at full steam, the most tumultuous years of Iran become unveiled on the background, as we are introduced to the Revolution and the Iran-Iraqi war through the eyes of a child.
After college graduation, Grover’s girlfriend Jane tells him she’s moving to Prague to study writing. Grover declines to accompany her, deciding instead to move in with several friends, all of whom can’t quite work up the inertia to escape their university’s pull. Nobody wants to make any big decisions that would radically alter his life, yet none of them wants to end up like Chet, the professional student who tends bar and is in his tenth year of university studies.
In the middle of the Mojave desert rests an abandoned phone booth, riddled with bullet holes, graffiti, its windows broken, but otherwise functioning. Its identity was born on the Internet and for years, travelers would make the trek down a lonely dirt road and camp next to the booth, in the hopes that it might suddenly ring, and they could connect with a stranger (often from another country) on the other end of the line. This is the story of four disparate people whose lives intersect with this mystical outpost, and the comfort they seek from a stranger’s voice: There is Beth, a troubled woman facing dilemmas with her love-life and a recurring, baffling crime; Mary, a young South African, who is contemplating selling her body for the funds to escape her dreadful existence; Alex, a woman who is losing her lover, Glory, to the belief she is plagued by aliens, and Richard, driven into desperation by a separation from his wife, who happens upon the booth after his failed suicide attempt.
A thriller set in New York City during the winter of 1981, statistically one of the most violent years in the city’s history, and centered on a the lives of an immigrant and his family trying to expand their business and capitalize on opportunities as the rampant violence, decay, and corruption of the day drag them in and threaten to destroy all they have built.
A high school boy must follow in his shaman grandfather’s footsteps to become the beacon of light he was meant to be.
Inga, a 17 year-old, is sent to live with a scheming aunt who wants her to become mistress of her rich neighbour. She falls for a common young man instead.
The city of Chicago is plagued by gang violence on both sides of the city in this modern retelling of the classic Romeo and Juliet story. In the midst of their chaos, two young lovers must navigate their dangerous circumstances to escape their affiliations.
A town busybody is poisoned at a busy reception in the home of famous film star Marina Gregg. The poisoned drink seemed intended for Marina, but Miss Marple is not so sure. She sets out to discover the true identity of the killer before he or she can strike again.
Kiroku boards with a Roman Catholic family and falls for the daughter Michiko. He ignores his feelings, joins a gang, gets in fights and, eventually, becomes involved with the radical Kita Ikki group.
Harry has been partying for 48 hours when he meets Johannes on the dance floor of a club in Berlin. With 15 hours until his flight home, Johannes offers to help him print his boarding pass. This mundane task leads to a day together wandering the city. The contrasts in their lives and values force each one to confront their own truths.
