In the Seventeenth Century, while Hungary is fighting the Turks, the population of a small village in the Carpathian Mountains faces the evil Countess Elizabeth Bathory, accused of drinking and bathing in blood of virgin women. Count Thurzo imprisons the Countess in the tower of a monastery and brings her daughter to live with him. In the present days, Keith is writing a book about Countess Elizabeth Bathory and traveling through Hungary with his friends J.J. and Kim researching her life. While trying to find the monastery, he meets the gorgeous and seductive Elizabeth, who guides the trio to the place. Keith and Elizabeth fall in love for each other, and after a car accident, they have a supernatural journey with revelations and fatalities.

A Taliban member who lives in Afghanistan is taken captive by the Americans after killing three American soldiers. He is transferred to Europe for interrogation but manages to escape from his captors and becomes an escaped convict on a continent he does not know.

The story follows an underground weapons manufacturer in Belgrade during WWII and evolves into fairly surreal situations. A black marketeer who smuggles the weapons to partisans doesn't mention to the workers that the war is over, and they keep producing. Years later, they break out of their underground "shelter" --- only to convince themselves that the war is still going on.

András, the struggling screenwriter one day wakes up to find his girlfriend replaced by a different girl, who acts like nothing happened.

After Olly Pickering and his youth friend and dorm mate Murray graduate, Olly, a promising author, gets a contract and advance, which somehow kills his nerve, even about using urinals. Writer's block forces him to move into professionally successful Murray's Soho (London) spare room and take a crappy job as publishing research assistant. Asked as New York trip friend James's London wedding best man, Oly falls in love at the bachelor party. Alas the flirt turns out to be bride Sarah. Olly would graciously walk away, but sassy Murray keeps arranging, resourcefully, for them to meet and in the process gets on with her bitchy sister. Olly's moral reserve is reconsidered when James admits he isn't monogamous.