The Minivers, an English "middle-class" family experience life in the first months of World War II. While dodging bombs, the Miniver's son courts Lady Beldon's granddaughter. A rose is named after Mrs. Miniver and entered in the competition against Lady Beldon's rose.

Easy-going, gentle college-boy Adam Baker enjoys frat-life, however disgusting the frat-house gets because of his sloppy house-mates Freddie, Ferguson and Munch. Then Adam meets Eve, starts falling in love, but gets jealous of frat-brother Billy, who 'bumps' almost constantly without seeking love, while Eve guards her campus-unique virginity. As even his thrice-divorced dad, an MD, urges Adam to get laid rather then loved, his patience runs out against healthy hormones.

The successful children's writer Claire Holloway is troubled by scary nightmares and is under psychological treatment. While working out watching television, she sees the landscape of the Rose Marsh Farm in the Westmoreland County, and she notes that the farmhouse is linked to her nightmares. She decides to spend her vacation in the farm, which is located nearby a swamp, and she is haunted by the ghosts of a little girl and a teenage boy inside the house. She is befriended by the local publisher and historian Noah Pitney but after a sequence of disturbing visions, she decides to contact the paranormal consultant Geoffry Hunt. Together, they investigate the mystery and disclose a tragedy that happened in the farm about twenty years ago.

Manipulative police lieutenant Phoebe McNamara is a success as hostage negotiator, but drove ex-husband Roy squires away, so she and their toddler daughter Carly live with her devoted ma Essie. Systematic self-righteous verbal abuse of uniformed cops leads to a grim feud with one of them, cocky Arnie Meeks. Captain David McVee and businessman-philanthropist Duncan Swift, her patient lover, side with her and the assumption Meeks is behind a violence wave targeting her, but that proves dead-wrong.

Adélaïde, Belle, Félicie and Ludovic are young adult siblings who once lived in grandeur until their father's merchant ships were lost at sea. The family is now near ruin, but Adélaïde and Félicie nonetheless still squander away the family money on themselves and keeping beautiful, whereas Belle slaves around the house, doting on her father. Ludovic detests his two spoiled sisters, but is protective of Belle, especially with his friend Avenant, a handsome scoundrel who wants to marry Belle. Crossing the forest one dark and stormy evening, the father gets lost and takes refuge in a fantastical castle. Upon leaving, he steals a blossom off a rose bush, which Belle requested. The castle's resident, an angry beast, sentences him to one of two options for the theft of the rose: his own death, or that of one of his daughters. As she feels she is the cause of her father's predicament (despite her sisters asking for far more lavish gifts)...