Mel Edison has just lost his job after many years and now has to cope with being unemployed at middle age during an intense NYC heat wave.

Young Al Capone catches the eye of Johnny Torrio, a criminal visiting New York from Chicago. Torrio invites Capone to move to Illinois to help run his Prohibition-era alcohol sales operation. Capone rises through the ranks of Torrio's gang and eventually takes over. On top, he works to consolidate his power by eliminating his enemies, fixing elections to his advantage and getting rich. In his spare time, Capone courts the principled Iris Crawford.

In the rail yards of Queens, contractors repair and rebuild the city's subway cars. These contracts are lucrative, so graft and corruption are rife. When Leo Handler gets out of prison, he finds his aunt married to Frank Olchin, one of the big contractors; he's battling with a minority-owned firm for contracts.

When retired racket boss John Sarto tries to reclaim his place and former friends try to kill him, he finds solace in a monastery and reinvents himself as a pious monk.

A psychiatrist comes to the aid of a compulsive gambler and is led by a smooth-talking grifter into the shadowy but compelling world of stings, scams, and con men.

Young Jeremiah lives in a stable environment with loving foster parents until the day his troubled mother, Sarah, returns to claim him. Jeremiah becomes swept up in his mother's dangerous world of drugs, seedy hotels, strip joints and revolving lovers. Salvation comes in the form of the boy's ultrareligious grandparents, but soon Jeremiah's mother returns. Maternal love binds the pair together on the road until Sarah's desperate and depraved lifestyle finally consumes her.

John Smith, a middle-aged married man, is made redundant by his employer; at a loss and despairing, his friend Harry Jones suggests applying to the Embankment Fellowship Centre, a charity that provides hostelling, retraining and help finding work for men in his position.

Having both lost their jobs, two strangers become unlikely friends after a run in with a would be robber, who is actually a hitman with a grudge against the two.

Malcolm is a chronically shy mechanical genius, who has just been fired for building his own tram. He gets Frank, who has just been released from jail, to move in to help pay the bills. With Frank's help, Malcolm turns to a life of crime.

After being laid off and humiliated by a ruthless job market, a veteran paper mill manager descends into violence in a desperate bid to reclaim his dignity.

A young man from rural Turkey arrives in Istanbul with dreams of working on a ship and stays with a cousin while he searches for work. Over time, the former’s struggles to find employment and the latter’s troubles and disappointments strain their relationship and living situation.

Follows the lives of an unemployed drunk and his son as they struggle to adapt to each other.