The Allure of Tears

A young woman who is determined to maintain her independence finds herself at odds with her family who wants her to tame her wild side and get married.

Captives of the very relationships that define and sustain them, nine women resiliently meet the travails and disappointments of life.

Wang Tiemei, a single mother, loses her job and moves, befriending neighbor Xiaoye who appears cheerful but is depressed. Their bond grows as Tiemei navigates relationships with her ex-husband causing trouble.

A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.

In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.

In order to be reinstated to the bar and recover custody of her daughter, a hotshot lawyer, now in recovery and on probation, must take on the appeal of a woman wrongfully convicted of murder.

The life of Tao, and those close to her, is explored in three different time periods: 1999, 2014, and 2025.

In Chengdu, China, a retired female opera singer named Master Chang takes in a trio of young tenants into her boarding home. The tenants include a rock singer and a college student who has run away from home.

This sequel to Flowers in the Attic picks up 10 years after Cathy, Chris and Carrie managed to escape Foxworth Hall.

Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.

Tala, a London-based Palestinian, is preparing for her elaborate Middle Eastern wedding when she meets Leyla, a young British Indian woman who is dating her best friend. Spirited Christian Tala and shy Muslim Leyla could not be more different from each other, but the attraction is immediate and goes deeper than friendship. But Tala is not ready to accept the implications of the choice her heart has made for her and escapes back to Jordan, while Leyla tries to move on with her new-found life, to the shock of her tradition-loving parents. As Tala's wedding day approaches, simmering tensions come to boiling point and the pressure mounts for Tala to be true to herself.

A car accident and shifting affections test the bond between a married couple.