"From Poverty Row came a movie that, perhaps more than any other, epitomizes the dark fatalism at the heart of film noir. As he hitchhikes his way from New York to Los Angeles, a down-on-his-luck nightclub pianist (Tom Neal) finds himself with a dead body on his hands and nowhere to run--a waking nightmare that goes from bad to worse when he picks up the most vicious femme fatale in cinema history, Ann Savage's snarling, monstrously conniving drifter...

"Ethan Domani had planned the perfect graduation trip before tragedy put his life on hold. Smothered by survivor's guilt and his close-knit family, he makes a break for the open road. He doesn't know what he's looking for, but he's got the whole summer to figure out who he misses more: his boyfriend, or the person he thought he was. It's just him and his memories . . . until he almost runs over a hitchhiker. Nick Hamilton made some mistakes after...

An example of film noir which recounts the story of a man whose pursuit of the woman he loves is blocked by fate and another woman.

Law student and all around good guy Harper suspects his stepdad Vincent of causing the car crash that landed his mother in a coma. Drowning his sorrows in a seedy LA whisky bar Harper ends up drinking with Johnny Ray, a tough redneck who offers to 'take care' of Vincent for a cool twenty grand. In the cold light of day, Johnny Ray is more threatening and he won't take no for an answer when Harper protests that it was the whiskey talking.

Seventeen-year-old Livvy Flynn, a bestselling author of YA fiction, is kidnapped by a woman and her apparently manic daughter who have no intention of letting her go.

"Sometimes it takes everything going wrong to make you see how right things are. Dana Gottfried is a stressed-out Jewish lesbian who's just quit her job and wants to get home to see her grandmother. When her car breaks down in Indiana on Christmas Eve, Dana is stranded--until she's rescued by Charlie, a pig farmer who doesn't identify as male or female. Although they come from different worlds, Dana is intrigued by Charlie's sense of humor and kindness....

The Alden siblings continue their mission to return lost artifacts around the world by visiting the Great Wall of China and an elephant reserve in Thailand, among other sites, but halfway around the world trouble seems closer than ever.