Guests at a posh Berlin hotel struggle through worry, scandal, and heartache.

When Benjamin Steed and Mary Ann Steed relocate their family to upstate New York in the early 1800's, they unwittingly settle in a town divided along religious lines. After their new hired help turns out to be at the center of the uproar, each member of the Steed family must come to terms with their own beliefs in the face of heavy per...

Against a background of war breaking out in Europe and the Mexican fiesta Day of Death, we are taken through one day in the life of Geoffrey Firmin, a British consul living in alcoholic disrepair and obscurity in a small southern Mexican town in 1939. The consul's self-destructive behaviour, perhaps a metaphor for a menaced civilizatio...

A charming racketeer seduces the DA's stepdaughter for revenge, then falls in love.

In the wake of Jamaican emancipation, French colonist Annette Cosway falls into poverty and marries racist Englishman Paul Mason. But when Annette's young son dies in a fire started by former slaves, Mason flees to England, leaving his grief-stricken wife and her Creole daughter Antoinette behind. Soon Antoinette learns she must marry ...