A recent coal mining accident has killed several miners and left the small town community scarred and traumatized. The wealthy mining executive responsible for the accident, Bill Doyle, wants to pretend that it never happened, referring to the mining families as "trailer trash". His wife Diana and son JT know better, though. Diana is drowning in guilt and feels socially awkward around the other rich snobs she used to be friends with. She copes with it by having an affair with Amos, the lone survivor of the mining accident who now walks with a limp and lives with his dying father. JT is worried that his father will go to prison, and takes out his anger on the mining families' children, especially Owen Briggs. Owen is a young boy who lost his father in the disaster. He lives with his bad-tempered aunt, his grieving mother, and his little brother James, who has Down's Syndrome. One day Owen is in the woods with James, and he gets into a fight with JT, accidentally going too far...

An intelligent but feral girl's boyfriend leaves unexpectedly causing her to search for him at his estranged mother's home. The two women begin to bond, finding supportive friendship in each other's troubled lives, changing their outlook forever.

After an innocent AOL chat turns racy, a Catholic teenager in the early 2000s discovers masturbation and struggles to suppress her new urges in the face of eternal damnation.

As the wavering cry of the foghorn fills the air, the taciturn former lumberjack, Ephraim Winslow, and the grizzled lighthouse keeper, Thomas Wake, set foot in a secluded and perpetually grey islet off the coast of late-19th-century New England. For the following four weeks of back-breaking work and unfavourable conditions, the tight-lipped men will have no one else for company except for each other, forced to endure irritating idiosyncrasies, bottled-up resentment, and burgeoning hatred. Then, amid bad omens, a furious and unending squall maroons the pale beacon's keepers in the already inhospitable volcanic rock, paving the way for a prolonged period of feral hunger; excruciating agony; manic isolation, and horrible booze-addled visions. Now, the eerie stranglehold of insanity tightens. Is there an escape from the wall-less prison of the mind?