Australia, 1958. When a nine year old white girl is found murdered, police are quick to arrest illiterate Aborigine, Max Stuart. Under interrogation Max admits to the killing. With a legal system compromised by intimidation tactics, the skills of his two gifted but naïve defense lawyers are put to the test.

With help from a new friend, a misfit at a fancy private school secretly enrolls at a public school as a foreign exchange student.

Diane Lane is intelligent and ambitious. When she is elected to Parliament her idealism and commitment give her unpopular party a boost. Everyone, including the Prime Minister, is eager to share her limelight. Diane’s ambition is not satisfied with her new position. Diane’s married lover, Barry Robbins, the Minister for Health, is unaware of Diane’s ultimate plan. Her closest friend, Louise Parker, a political journalist, is a bit more realistic about what women can achieve; she too has a higher goal in mind.

Rosie returns to her home city on the death of her father, a former policeman. His diaries hint at corruption, and she also receives hints and veiled threats which support her suspicions. Rosie puzzles about who he was, and about her early life and relationship to him.

A grieving single mother and her child fall into a deep well of paranoia when an eerie children's book manifests in their home.

After the death of his mother, teenage Danny visits his father Matt Malloy on a lonesome farm in Australia, where he lives with a girlfriend and her daughter Stevie. The farm has been going bad lately, so Matt starts smuggling Marijuana for a drug connection. When Danny joins him on one of his flights, the two-seater crashes in the middle of nowhere. Since his father is wounded, he has to conquer the jungle alone in search for help.

In 1917 when the British forces are bogged down in front of the Turkish and German lines in Palestine they rely on the Australian light horse regiment to break the deadlock.