It is 1957. J.C. Cullen is a young man from a small town, with a talent for winning at craps, who leaves for the big city to work as a professional gambler. While there, he breaks the bank at a private craps game at the Gem Club, owned by George Cole, and falls in love with two women, one of them Cole's wife.
Johnnie Cooper served time for an armed robbery that also his father and brother participated in. When he's released from jail he's determined to live a normal life and gets work at a gas station. But soon his brother pays a visit.
Hector is a star basketball player for the College basketball team he plays for, the Leopards. His girlfriend, Olive, doesn't know whether to stay with him or leave him. And his friend, Gabriel, who may have dropped out from school and become a protestor, wants desperately not to get drafted for Vietnam.
Having lived his entire life under the watchful eye of his overbearing mother, Albert must fend for himself when an unidentified automobile suddenly kills her. Free for the first time, Albert quickly responds to the bait dangling in front of him, putting his aggressors against one another in a race for his trust. Using his skills that make him a gifted fisherman, Albert turns the tables on his seemingly doomed fate, capturing the heart of the woman most eager to deceive him, and fooling the man most intent on destroying him.
During the Battle of the Bulge, an anachronistic count shelters a ragtag squad of Americans in his isolated castle hoping they will defend it against the advancing Germans.
Jenny, a deaf runaway who has just arrived in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district to find her long-lost brother, a mysterious bearded sculptor known around town as The Seeker. She falls in with a psychedelic band, Mumblin' Jim, whose members include Stoney, Ben, and Elwood. They hide her from the fuzz in their crash pad, a Victorian house crowded with love beads and necking couples. Mumblin' Jim's truth-seeking friend Dave considers the band's pursuit of success "playing games," but he agrees to help Jennie anyway.
After the parents of Ruby and her younger brother, Rhett, are killed in a car crash, their parents' best friends, Erin and Terry Glass, become their guardians. The children hear promises of a world of opulence and California fun -- all they have to do is move into the Glasses' gated house. Before very long, though, Ruby suspects that Erin and Terry may not be the ideal guardians they seemed to be.
Claire, happily married to famed artist Richard, notices changes in her husband’s behaviour as his final art show approaches. When Richard is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, Claire and her husband find their bonds thoroughly tested. Her husband’s struggle to stay connected to who he once was is frightening, heartbreaking, and inspiring.
Two high school misfits join forces in an attempt to overtake the local school board. Guided by their families, they enter the perilous word of politics and, in the process, learn a thing or two about love.