November 1999. 67-year-old Trond lives in new-found solitude and looks forward to spending New Year's Eve 2000 alone. As winter arrives he discovers he has a neighbor, a man Trond knew back in 1948, the summer he turned 15 and the summer Trond's father prepared him to carry the burden of his forthcoming betrayal and disappearance.
A young woman quits her teaching job to be a private tutor (governess) for a wealthy young heiress who witnessed her parent's tragic death. Shortly after arriving, the girl's degenerate brother is sent home from his boarding school. The tutor has some strange, unexplainable experiences in the house and begins to suspect there is more to their story.
Manny, Joel and Jonah tear their way through childhood and push against the volatile love of their parents. As Manny and Joel grow into versions of their father and Ma dreams of escape, Jonah, the youngest, embraces an imagined world all his own.
Georgia Nicolson is fourteen, lives with nosey parents who don't understand her, an annoying three year old sister and has to wear a beret to school. She would, however, rather be blonde, have a smaller nose and a boyfriend. Revolving around her hilarious journal entries, prepare to be engulfed in the world of the soaring joys and bottomless angst of being a teenager.
Mia Hall, a talented young cellist, thought the most difficult decision she would ever have to make would be whether to pursue her musical dreams at prestigious Juilliard or follow her heart to be with the love of her life, Adam, a rock singer/guitarist. However, a car wreck changes everything in an instant, and now Mia's life hangs in the balance. Suspended between life and death, Mia faces a choice that will decide her future.
Accomplished sailor Charlie St. Cloud has the adoration of his mother Claire and his little brother Sam, as well as a college scholarship that will lead him far from his sleepy Pacific Northwest hometown. But his bright future is cut short when a tragedy strikes and takes his dreams with it. After his high-school classmate Tess returns home unexpectedly, Charlie grows torn between honoring a promise he made four years earlier and moving forward with newfound love. And as he finds the courage to let go of the past for good, Charlie discovers the soul most worth saving is his own.
Garfagnana, Italy, 1347. The handsome servant Masseto, fleeing from his vindictive master, takes shelter in a nunnery where three young nuns, Sister Alessandra, Sister Ginevra and Sister Fernanda, try unsuccessfully to find out what their purpose in life is, a conundrum that each of them faces in different ways…
In April of 1945, Germany stands at the brink of defeat with the Russian Army closing in from the east and the Allied Expeditionary Force attacking from the west. In Berlin, capital of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler proclaims that Germany will still achieve victory and orders his generals and advisers to fight to the last man. When the end finally does come, and Hitler lies dead by his own hand, what is left of his military must find a way to end the killing that is the Battle of Berlin, and lay down their arms in surrender.