Grand dreams turn dark when Tim and Sophie Becker buy a run-down brownstone in Brooklyn to renovate into their dream home. After a deadly confrontation, Tim and Sophie make a fateful decision that calls into question everything they thought stood for, threatening their marriage and their future.

Long separated from his teenaged son and daughter, Michael Fields comes into contact with them in a most unexpected fashion. He is appointed headmaster of the exclusive New England private school where they both are enrolled.

When a spoiled English girl living in 19th century India loses both parents in a cholera epidemic, she is sent back to England to live in a country mansion. The lord is a strange old man-- frail and deformed, immensely kind but so melancholy. She wishes to discover what has caused him so much sorrow and to bring joy back to the household. It all must have something to do with the screams and wails which echo through the house at night and no one wants to talk about.

Allie Fox, an American inventor exhausted by the perceived danger and degradation of modern society, decides to escape with his wife and children to Belize. In the jungle, he tries with mad determination to create a utopian community with disastrous results.