At the height of the October Revolution during the 1919 allied intervention in Arkhangelsk, the exploits of one-legged Canadian soldier Lt. John Boles are told, after he is taken in from the cold by a dysfunctional Russian family and mistakes a local woman for his presumed dead lover.

Filling the cups of classmates with a kettle is the only work 11-year-old Dong-ku, who is mentally retarded, can do in his school life. However, even this small connection with the outside world breaks as one day a new water purifier replaces the kettle in his classroom. Disappointed badly by losing his only hope to survive in a regular school, he finds that every freshman in the junior baseball team is required to supply drinking water to other members with a kettle. Though knows nothing about baseball, Dong-ku decides to join the team while his father, Jin-kyu, is struggling to save his kid’s only shelter, their chicken bar.

Sanae is left a widow after her prestigious husband dies, but holds the proceeds of a million yen insurance policy. Being childless, her former in-laws have no objection to her return to her own family.

Mira lives for the sport of ice hockey and leads her team as captain with a strong determination. It’s a challenge to reconcile this with her role in the family vineyard: with her mother and her adventurous but increasingly demented grandfather, she runs the farm – with all its responsibilities. The new player Theresa completely unsettles her with her nonchalance and openness. And when Mira’s missing brother Paul also turns up and all three get lost in late-night Vienna, Mira discovers the freedom it means to break rules, to reinvent herself – and that you can only love if you let go.

In this Buddhist sci-fi mystery, a teenage orphan in the slums of Phnom Penh, Cambodia investigates her friend’s past-life visions, uncovering a conspiracy of scientific reincarnation.

When an NBA team suddenly announces open tryouts, a high school janitor gets a second chance at both love and life.

A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.

Samantha Hughes, a teenaged Kentucky girl, never knew her father, who died in Vietnam before her birth. Samantha lives with her uncle Emmett, who also served in Vietnam. Emmett hangs around with Tom, Earl, and Pete, three other Vietnam vets who, like Emmett, all have problems of one kind or another that relate to their war experiences. Samantha becomes obsessed with finding out about her father.

A 19-year-old is coming out of prison and trying to build a new life but he can’t deal with his guilt.

The poet moves to Washington to care for injured Civil War soldiers but is disillusioned by the Gilded Age after the war. He recovers from a debilitating stroke to live out his days in Camden NJ, where he continues to write poetry.

The story of how 22 year old writer Tony Warren conceived, wrote and fought for the record breaking UK TV series Coronation Street.

An ornithologist battles a family of bird poachers in the Florida Everglades.