Amy Van Nostrand
Hoping to reclaim who she was before marriage and children, an empty nester retreats to Cape Cod where she embarks upon a quest to set herself free.
Manhattan fireman Mark Decker visits, for the first time, his Steven in his ex Emma's new apartment in one of her dad Donald Richardson's development estates, at the foot of Diamand-back Mountain. But Don's ambitious executive Stewart Hancock, who dreams of his own firm, has been cutting too many corners, at the expense of safety, causing a landslide. Mark gets trapped with Steven and the new concierge Harold, who knows everything about an additional danger: rattlesnakes awoken early from hibernation. Now Mark discovers artistic, nerdy Steven only did 'manly' stuff in the city because dad-son time is so rare. While they soldier on, landscape architect Emma discovers the truth and counters Stewart's plan B to literally cover it up.
Jesse is charming, romantic, and he knows how to pop the question; he just can't face marriage. So, when he and Hannah split up during the same week that a former fiancée dies, he decides to figure things out. He visits each woman about whom he's been serious to ask what went wrong. His teen flame, an independent woman who sometimes sleeps with him, and a group of lesbians give him advice, as does Anabeth, dead but lively in his dreams. One ex remains furious, but with the help of her inventive colleague, the level-headed insomniac Laura, Jesse even gets to talk to her. It's on to Anabeth's funeral, where he'll see Hannah, and maybe grasp what has been eluding him.
The story of an assassin who killed a mayor in the 1970's in what was known as the "Twinkie Defense".
A cop begins to turn to booze and cocaine during a tough undercover assignment. When a big drug-buy goes sour and the cop ends up with a million in cash, he decides to take off with the money. The drug dealer catches up with him, but he dies before revealing where he stashed the cash. Months later, the drug dealer finds the cop's wife and seduces her, in an effort to find his missing million. In the process, he falls in love with her and alienates his former partners in crime.
In rural Comfort, Texas, the strict protestant Horizon Bible church community holds its annual, pretty strictly supervised summer camp, with mandatory prayer sessions, for fraternizing teens from all over the States. The day before their departure, storm weather is announced, the busses even ride early to keep ahead, but the wind makes a river rise too fast: the busses are caught, everybody must run on foot. As TV reporters see from their helicopter, the rising water is too fast for one bus after choosing the wrong way, children and staff must climb in trees but can't cling on very long.
