In a Napoleonic era insane asylum, an inmate, the irrepressible Marquis De Sade, fights a battle of wills against a tyrannically prudish doctor.

Two anthropologists married to each other go to an island off of Papua New Guinea for field research in pre-World War II. Eventually the war breaks out and many lives are disrupted and complicated.

A young woman escapes her wildly eccentric family in search for a life of normalcy.

Simon is an outcast from his Jewish community because he claims that the devil talks to him and he has the ability to put curses on crops. When Dovid asks the 'Squire' to sell him some land so he can build a railway station, a ruthless businessman from the neighbouring gentile community uses Simon to find out who wants to buy the land so he can 'persuade' him otherwise

Passion concentrates on Grainger's unusual relationship with his mother and his sexual peculiarities (especially his obsessive self-flagellation, though homosexuality is also hinted at) which affect his relationship with a woman who comes to love him. It is set mainly in London in 1914, when Grainger's mother Rose was ill (she would later jump to her death in New York, upset by ill-founded rumours of incest with her son).

Still nursing wounds from a breakup, a woman is forced by her sister into a blind date that turns into a nightmare.