Tenacious homicide detective Cassie Mayweather and her still-green partner are working a murder case, attempting to profile two malevolently brilliant young men: cold, calculating killers whose dark secrets might explain their crimes.

Psychologist Dr. Brennac is asked by a colleague to help with the case of Claude, a patient on trial for multiple murders. Is Claude really guilty of the crimes, or is he a victim of his own mind?

Back home in Bujumbura with a Parisian diploma in his pocket and expecting to walk into a civil service job, Gito finds himself both unemployed and caught between two women: his current French girlfriend Christine and his local old flame Flora.

Two old friends meet for dinner; as one tells anecdotes detailing his experiences, the other notices their differing worldviews.

During the war a university professor meets a girl and marries her. Very soon however, it is apparent that their needs are not matched. He would much rather be translating Shakespeare than attending to her, and she has a secret in her past - one that results in her sleeping with a great number of men.

George, host of a television show focusing on literature, receives videos shot on the sly that feature his family, along with disturbing drawings that are difficult to interpret. He has no idea who has made and sent him the videos. Progressively, the contents of the videos become more personal, indicating that the sender has known George for a long time.

Ms. Isabel Archer isn't afraid to challenge societal norms. Impressed by her free spirit, her kindhearted cousin writes her into his fatally ill father's will. Suddenly rich and independent, Isabelle ventures into the world, along the way befriending a cynical intellectual and romancing an art enthusiast. However, the advantage of her affluence is called into question when she realizes the extent to which her money colors her relationships.

Pressured by his superiors to disgrace public intellectual Warczewski, a professor and respected writer whom they believe to be a "camouflaged Zionist," rough security-services colonel Rozek enlists his sexy but naive girlfriend, Kamila, to insinuate herself into the distinguished older man's life and report on his every move. Not particularly interested in serving communism but eager to please her domineering lover, Kamila accepts the mission, reporting under the code name "Little Rose." As quick scenes contrast Kamila's crude pleasures with Rozek and her more refined experiences with Warczewski, it becomes clear that the more time the unschooled young woman spends with the professor, the more she comes to have true feelings for him.

The members of a reading group exchange cultural and literary references with such vigor that there’s little room for anything else: an attempt to leave the modern world behind or merely their own solitary existences?

Maggie's plan to have a baby on her own with a sperm donor is derailed when she falls in love with John, an older married professor, destroying his volatile marriage to the brilliant and impossible Georgette. But three years later, married to John with one daughter, Maggie is out of love and in a quandary: what do you do when you suspect your man and his ex-wife are actually perfect for each other?

Melkior Tresic is one of many intellectuals in 1941 Zagreb who is helplessly waiting for the encroaching war.

Mildred must choose between authenticity and safety when the only world she knows is the inside of a Library.