Esther, the beautiful queen of Persia, intervenes to save the Jewish people from a bloody massacre.

Workaholic reporter, Jack Elgin takes his family on a working trip to India, but their aircraft is hijacked in Cyprus by a previously-unknown terrorist movement, and his wife and daughter are among the slaughtered. With western governments suppressing key facts and unwilling to go after the terrorists, Jack uses his contacts and snooping skill to seek the truth himself.

Bess, a lonely, trailer park teen, steals a car and makes a desperate journey from Kansas to Vegas in search of a father she never knew. Her trip takes her deep into the seedy underbelly of America where she encounters an array of lost-souls, deadbeats and con men, and learns that family can be found in the oddest of places.

In 1998 former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet visits Britain for medical treatment. On being tipped off, Amnesty International seize the chance to bring to justice a man they insist is guilty of multiple human rights violations. The newly-elected Labour government is initially amenable, and soon Pinochet is under house arrest (albeit in a detached house in leafy suburbia) and awaiting extradition to Spain. However, Amnesty are up against the complexities of British law, the vacillations of Home Secretary Jack Straw, Pinochet's former ally Margaret Thatcher - and the Senator's own vast reserves of cunning.

A single mother returns to her home town after fifteen years of unhappy marriage and fights to make a better life for herself and her children.

Stephen Lawrence was a black London teenager murdered by white racists in 1993. His parents fought to have the crime properly investigated, culminating in a judicial enquiry into the event itself and also the inadequacies of the ensuing investigation by the London Metropolitan Police.

Unemployed Anthony announces he is joining the police, much to the horror of his girlfriend and friends.

Richard is assigned public service after crashing his homemade aircraft, leading him to meet Jane, a young woman dying of motor neuron disease. After they strike up a friendship, Jane asks Richard to help fulfill her deepest wish: to lose her virginity before her death.

Dido Elizabeth Bell, the illegitimate, mixed-race daughter of a Royal Navy admiral, plays an important role in the campaign to abolish slavery in England.

Three friends persecute a gang of criminals from Harlem to the parties of the High Society of London.