In the Glasgow of 1968, young teenager Lex Maclean is torn between the artistic life of his middle brother Alan, and the thuggish world of his older sibling, Bobby.

When a single mother's drinking binge threatens to spoil yet another Christmas, her five children lock her in the sauna to dry out.

Amir, an illegal immigrant, makes his way into Britain buried beneath piles of vegetables, finding refuge in a bleak terraced house with 17 other men in the same situation. Things look up when he gets work at a mill, but then Hussein Shah, the house leader, brings home Mary, an attractive woman with a murky past.

Eunice travels the motorways in a fruitless search for Judith, the only person who has ever understood and loved her. She meets Miriam, who is fascinated by the violent and unpredictable Eunice and follows her, only to find herself an accomplice to multiple murder.

Seeking refuge from a violent husband, Jean secretly moves into the riverside cottage that belonged to her mother to clear out her possessions. Here, she meets a married stonemason - Redfern - with whom she gradually forms an intimate relationship. Both experience feelings of guilt for their inadmissable love for one another, and it isn't long before the couple's quiet affair of the heart is violently and tragically shattered.

Four young police officers are sent undercover to infiltrate a gang of hooligans linked to a London football club, but only total commitment will gain the officers the acceptance they need to do their job.

It's summer 1969 in New York City. Young, gay and full of dreams, Matty Dean arrives on a Greyhound bus and heads downtown. It's the time of the Vietnam War and the Apollo moon walk, but gay people are still being persecuted.