When a young poet hires a marketing company to turn his suicide into a mass-media spectacle, he finds that his subversive intentions are quickly diluted into a reactionary gesture.

When the superintendent of the Canadian insane asylum, Dr. Maurice Bucke, meets poet Walt Whitman, his life and that of his wife and patients is radically changed. Like Dr. Bucke, Whitman has avant-garde ideas on the subject of mental illness. "Dreamers" is based on true events. Dr. Bucke became an important biographer of Walt Whitman.

A boy's careless childhood is interrupted when he finds out about his parents' decision to divorce.

A divorce case involving a landowner and his young wife spirals into something darker, drawing Mr. Whicher into the heart of the English countryside where he uncovers the most disturbing and destructive of secrets.

Quentin and Antoine are 18-year-old twins. Without their father knowing it, they set out on a voyage to Spain, where their mother's funeral is to take place. The two brothers barely knew their mother. Their hitchhiking journey is full of encounters, arguments, reconciliations, and experiences. Their time on the road also reveals their differences, the splits in their attractions, and the confusion of their feelings.

France, on the eve of the French Revolution. Henriette and Louise have been raised together as sisters. When the plague that takes their parents' lives causes Louise's blindness, they decide to travel to Paris in search of a cure, but they separate when a lustful aristocrat crosses their path.

A broken man attempts to win back the love of his wife by recreating the events of their first wedding anniversary.

A recently divorced man and an emotionally devastated widow begin a love affair.

In Alexandria, in 1938, Darley, a young British schoolmaster and poet, makes friends through Pursewarden, the British consular officer, with Justine, the beautiful and mysterious wife of a Coptic banker. He observes the affairs of her heart and incidentally discovers that she is involved in a plot against the British, meant to arm the Jewish underground in Palestine. The plot finally fails, Justine is sent to jail and Darley decides to return to England.

A young painter battling depression finds solace in her art and alcohol, but her inner thoughts eventually surface, forcing her to confront them. Through this introspection, she undergoes a transformative journey.

The oldest son of a loving and strong family of black sharecroppers comes of age in the Depression-era South after his father is imprisoned for stealing food.

King Lear is a proud man who solicits praise from his three daughters in return for inheritance of the kingdom. Daughters Goneril and Regan profess their affection vehemently. Cordelia, who does not respect the process her father has chosen, does not humor him. Lear's perceived rejection from Cordelia leads to her banishment, thus splitting the kingdom between the other two. This hasty decision becomes his fatal error.