Ryevsk, Russia, 1870. Tensions abound in the Karamazov family. Fyodor is a wealthy libertine who holds his purse strings tightly. His four grown sons include Dmitri, the eldest, an elegant officer, always broke and at odds with his father, betrothed to Katya, herself lovely and rich. The other brothers include a sterile aesthete, a factotum who is a bastard, and a monk. Family tensions erupt when Dmitri falls in love with one of his father's mistresses, the coquette Grushenka. Two brothers see Dmitri's jealousy of their father as an opportunity to inherit sooner. Acts of violence lead to the story's conclusion: trials of honor, conscience, forgiveness, and redemption.
Charles Lindbergh struggles to finance and design an airplane that will make his 1927 New York to Paris flight the first solo trans-Atlantic crossing.
A young Army nurse, Lt Ruth McGara, newly assigned to the 66th MASH during the Korean War, attracts the sexual attention of the unit's commander Dr. (MAJ) Jed Webbe. Webbe, who has a drinking problem, at first wants a "no strings" relationship. McGara is warned by the other nurses of Webbe's womanizing ways. Despite these initial handicaps, their love flourishes against a background of war, enemy attacks, death and injury. The relationship deepens and uplifts both characters.
A single father falls in love with his son's schoolteacher.
When a large forest fire breaks out in the mountains of Montana, a squad of 'Smoke Jumpers', the paratroop-corps of fire-fighters in the U. S. Forest Service, is flown to the scene from their regional headquarters in Missoula, Montana. The Forest Rangers, under Cliff Mason, put out the blaze, but several of the fire-fighters are killed. Ed Miller, son of one of the dead rangers, thinks he died because Mason was a coward, and sets out to prove it.
Successful and well-liked, Dr. Noah Praetorius becomes the victim of a witchhunt at the hands of Professor Elwell, who disdains Praetorius's unorthodox medical views and also questions his relationship with the mysterious, ever-present Mr. Shunderson.
Two hoodlum brothers are brought into a hospital for gunshot wounds, and when one of them dies the other accuses their black doctor of murder.
Nick Garcos comes back from his tour of duty in World War II planning to settle down with his girlfriend, Polly Faber. He learns, however, that his father was recently beaten and burglarized by mob-connected trucker Mike Figlia, and Nick resolves to get even. He partners with prostitute Rica, and together they go after Mike, all the while getting pulled further into the local crime underworld.
Gino Monetti is a ruthless Italian-American banker who is engaged in a number of criminal activities. Three of his four grown sons refuse to help their father stay out of prison after he's arrested for his questionable business practices. Three of the sons take over the business but kick their father out. Max, a lawyer, is the only son that stays loyal to his father.