A college student is shot in Central Park on July 4, 2003. The investigation connects a series of mysterious citywide fires, the downtown music scene, and a wealthy uptown real estate family fraying under the strain of the many secrets they keep.

When a young woman meets an aspiring saxophonist in her father’s record shop in 1950s Harlem, their love ignites a sweeping romance that transcends changing times, geography, and professional success.

A young servant fleeing from his master takes refuge at a convent full of emotionally unstable nuns in the middle ages.

A teenage boy’s infatuation with a woman he sees on the bus further complicates his already tumultuous adolescence.

Two strangers are drawn to a mysterious pharmaceutical trial that will, they’re assured, with no complications or side-effects whatsoever, solve all of their problems, permanently. Things do not go as planned.

Once considered a teen prodigy, a recovering addict sobers up and tries to get her writing career back on track. She begins a relationship with a rising author known for his wartime memoirs.

A wanna-be author feels pressured to move beyond her meandering writing career and get a more stable job. She decides to organize a Shakespeare festival, a plan that could have tricky ramifications for her marriage.

After graduating from film school, Aura returns to New York to live with her photographer mother, Siri, and her sister, Nadine, who has just finished high school. Aura is directionless and wonders where to go next in her career and her life. She takes a job in a restaurant and tries unsuccessfully to develop relationships with men, including Keith, a chef where she works, and cult Internet star Jed.

The assorted humiliations, disasters and rare triumphs of four very different twenty-something girls: Hannah, an aspiring writer; Marnie, an art gallery assistant and cousins Jessa and Shoshanna.