Sex is currency. It commands power and can instill fear. Tom, a young man with a troubled past finds himself sucked into a seedy underworld by George Norris, a now super villain with a sadistic streak. A helpless pawn in one of Norris's narcotic scams with a bent cop, Dunston, Tom is dragged deeper into a vicious circle of blood money, vice and ruthless violence from which their seems no way out. Until fate gives Tom a glimmer of hope. When Norris is killed in his apartment, Tom seizes his chance to escape. Terrified and covered in Norris's blood, Tom heads downstairs to his neighbors, Max and Nikki his new friends in the city. With going to the police out of the question, Max and Nikki speed Tom to their desolate cottage deep in the Welsh countryside. With the luxury of space, Tom begins to realize a long-forgotten dream; a return to happier times before his innocence was shattered. Suppressed emotion flood back provoked by Tom's attraction to Nikki...

A fool-proof formula for picking winning horses on a computer disc is the Maguffin sought by Cleveland and others.

In the summer of 1816, Percy Shelley, his mistress Mary, and her stepsister Claire visit Lord Byron at Lake Geneva. Byron challenges each to write a horror story, and Mary begins her novel, Frankenstein. She imagines the monster becoming real, and for the next six years, as tragedy befalls those around her, she believes the personification of her imagination is the cause. Against this backdrop, Claire has Byron's baby then is estranged from him and barred from her daughter. Byron and Percy continue their friendship, the one self-centered and decadent, the other wildly idealistic. The Shelleys take up residence near Pisa.

10 May 1968. In Paris the barricades are about to burst into flames as students and police clash. In London the fashionable Left are having a dialogue.