A lawyer finds himself defending Santa Claus in the biggest trial in history.

In New York City, Kasdan Cresswell Academy is the outcome of a just happened merger between an all girls' school with an all boys' school into a coed school. By the start of Kasdan Creswell's first academic term, not all aspects of the merger have been ironed-out. In what was already a threatened music program at both schools, Kasdan's director of music Diana Thiessen and Creswell's director of music Ken Stoddard still have music teaching jobs in the merger running parallel music programs, it not being clear what will happen to either of their jobs based on monetary issues, with the likelihood that both will have jobs by the end of the completed merger low. Diana and Ken already do not see eye to eye on anything music-related, Diana who teaches in an academic fashion primarily of the classics, while Ken wants his students to have free expression of music, his musical teaching bent toward the popular. The easily-stressed school principal, Jessica Gedler, suggests that the two submit their own individual entries to a television sponsored high school Christmas carol contest, the outcome of the contest which would go a long way to convincing the decision makers on who should be the school's music director. The contest is to be a duo singing any Christmas carol in any arrangement. Diana's two female students and Ken's two male students are a disparate bunch: Liz Strait, the girl most like to...; extremely shy Amy Barnes, whose shyness is due to being overprotected by her parents in an effort to shield her from any emotional pain; Billy Warren, the golden boy with an ego large enough to fill a football field; and Carlo, an academically bright student new to the school who is having trouble knowing where to fit in due to being confined to a wheelchair. Because of their differences, it is difficult enough to bring each team together as a cohesive unit, that is until the students learn through the grapevine that their respective teacher's job may be on the line based on the outcome, which leads to the view that the other team is the sworn enemy. Through it all, Diana and Ken are each going through personal issues of their own, specifically in not having an active social life. As hard as they try, they seem not to be able to avoid each other socially, that want to avoid based on most of their conversations ending in a philosophical argument.

A wealthy and successful career woman gets a second chance in life when a magical wish transports her back in time eight years to when she walked away from her fiance to lead a business life in New York.

In the small town of Heward, Pennsylvania, charismatic Reverend Ted Wendell and his wife of twenty years Emily Wendell are the well-respected power couple behind the Heward Community Church and its associated ministry empire, which currently includes a radio show. Although Emily loves her husband, small signs demonstrate to her that he is slowly pulling away from her, at least professionally, as he starts to make decisions about the ministry without consulting her, at a crucial time where they have been working on moving from the radio show into television. That television deal is now in the works with Ted needing to make a good impression on the decision makers for it to happen. Another unilateral decision Ted makes is to take in and hire a young drifter named Luke McElroy as a handyman, Luke who Ted allows to stay in a room in the church basement. Although Emily doesn't disagree with Ted about not turning away a "lost sheep" as they both see Luke, Emily, unlike Ted who works on instinct, and her intuition don't fully trust Luke because he doesn't talk about himself, which to her means that he's hiding something. However, like most of the female parishioners, Emily cannot deny Luke's own charisma due to his smoldering good looks. Despite Luke knowing that Emily doesn't fully trust him, the two embark on an affair, on Luke's side it eventually turning into love. Emily knows that the affair could spell disaster for her marriage, Ted, the ministry and the possible television deal if they are discovered. Emily's feelings for Luke and their affair may change as Luke slowly starts to expose bits and pieces from his past, most specifically the reason he figuratively showed up on their doorstep, and as issues from Emily's own past associated with what she and Luke are doing start to surface affecting her psyche and religious faith.

A woman witnesses the murder of a prosecutor by a criminal he is trying to convict. She informs the FBI, who then places her and her family in Witness Protection. And their lives are turned upside down. The agent tries to get the criminal but it seems he has someone in the FBI helping him. And when her daughter calls her boyfriend, it places her family in danger.

In Los Angeles, psychologist Wendy Brown witnessed her abusive brother-in-law beat up her sister, who eventually died from her injuries. During that incident, Wendy shot him dead in self-defense. To get away from that nightmare, she has moved to the small town of Corinth, Oregon, located in an emerging ski area. In Corinth, she has temporarily opened up her home, which she calls Comfort House, as a refuge for battered women, while she builds a more permanent Comfort House on her acreage. She has found that there is a culture of wife beating in Corinth, especially among the hyper-masculine hunting crowd. The police do nothing about reports of abuse as the sheriff, "Bear" Trapp, is included within that hunting crowd, his friends who are among the accused wife beaters, most of that crowd's wives who are currently residing at Comfort House. When one of those husbands is found shot dead in his home, Sheriff Trapp, taking the path of least resistance, rules the death a suicide, and refuses to follow-up. However, his deputy, a man named Curtis who has just started dating Wendy, believes it was murder. Curtis' murder theory gains greater plausibility when another husband of a Comfort House resident is found dead. At the same time, Wendy notices that she is being stalked by someone driving a dark colored pickup truck, she believing her stalker's end goal being to implicate her as the murderer. Wendy and Curtis try to find out who is killing the husbands, and whether more are targeted in order to protect Wendy both from her stalker and from Trapp, who already does not like Wendy and will use whatever excuse to charge her. If Wendy and Curtis do discover the truth, they will find a plot more complicated than they first imagined.