In 1984 East Berlin, dedicated Stasi officer Gerd Wiesler begins spying on a famous playwright and his actress-lover Christa-Maria. Wiesler becomes unexpectedly sympathetic to the couple, and faces conflicting loyalties when his superior takes a liking to Christa-Maria.

After his wife is murdered Karl loses his fire and disappears into underground Munich. He resurfaces as a hired snoop for Earth Now, a radical ecology group. Enter the beautiful and mysterious Petra Schmitt. She hires Karl to find her missing sister and Karl soon finds himself drawn into a world of half-truths and lies as his simple missing-person case develops into a murder case that quickly becomes international in scope. Petra and Karl must work together in order to thwart Petrov, a cold-blooded gangster who will kill anyone who gets in his way. While fighting to save themselves, they must prevent Petrov from getting a stolen computer chip containing the international banking codes for the new Euro.

Sabrina Wellington has been running a small, romantic hotel on the south coast of England since the tragic death of her husband in an accident. Due to the urgent need for investment and the poor booking situation, all financial reserves have been used up and Sabrina urgently needs another loan from her bank to avert the threat of bankruptcy. On her way to London, she unexpectedly meets her childhood friend Lisa, who left her home country some time ago and until recently worked in a law firm in London. She has now resigned because she has realized that her boss Vince Stevens appreciates her as an employee but has no other ambitions. The two spontaneously decide to swap their "lives" for a short time: Lisa takes over the management of the hotel in Sabrina's place and Sabrina moves into Lisa's apartment in London and tries to reorganize her life.

Dominik Graf relocates the story of the same name by Henry James from the 19th century to the year 2001.