Khadiga lives in a poor neighborhood with her parents. She tries to save up money so she could marry her sweetheart Taha. Taha buys a lottery ticket in hope of winning a lot of money, but it ends up in Khadiga's religious father's hands who throws it away. The ticket gets picked up by the town's fool, who gets lucky and wins, driving the town into chaos.
A woman aspires to get rich and surrenders to a wealthy old man who will marry her. The wife has a daughter from another man who denies her paternity, and the old man has a son and a daughter from a former wife.
A rough criminal gets a second chance at life thanks to a kindly (and wealthy) lady saloon patron. But he hasn't gone straight yet, as he and a partner attempt to rob the home of a rich homeowner-- whose wife is asleep in the next room.
The son of a working-class British mining family has dreams of pursuing an art career, but when he strikes up an affair with an older, married woman from the town it enrages his kind but possessive mother.
A cardinal is arrested for treason against the state. He is a popular hero of his people, for his resistance against the Nazis during the war and his resistance when his country again fell to a totalitarian conqueror.
After a prank makes Joey Norton believe he killed his older brother, he runs away from home and spends the day at Coney Island while his brother tries to find him before their mother gets home.
Since the capable landlady Maria bears a striking resemblance to the ruler of a miniature state, she is tasked with playing the role of princess during her absence.
Krestan Serbin, a 64-year-old Sorbian farm-worker, considers himself non-political. He owns a few acres, a few pigs and a cow, and intends to pass all this on to his daughter Lena.
Murders, with victims dying from spines broken by brute strength, erupt in the city and the killers, when encountered, walk away unharmed by police bullets which strike them.
A story about Conchita whose mother died, his father remarries so she leaves to start a new life and meets and falls in love with Ruben a trainee who enlists in R.
The main character repeats the destiny of many peasant women of her time. Her personal feelings were completely uninteresting to her parents, indeed they were always chasing after the profit.