A remote English village wakes on the morning after harvest, looking forward to enjoying a hard-earned day of rest and feasting. But two mysterious columns of smoke mar the sky, raising alarm and suspicion.

Emma Woodhouse imagines that she dominates those around her in the small town of Highbury, but her inept matchmaking creates problems for herself and others.

"In her comfy cottage nestled in the Derbyshire hills, Rosie Hopkins has good reason to feel a warm blush in her cheeks. With Christmas weeks away, the holiday is being ushered in with England's first glorious snowfall of the season. Her boyfriend Stephen is starting his new job as a teacher in the village school. Her quaint Sweetshop and Confectionery has been restored to its former glory, and she has a loveable mop of a new puppy named Mr. Dog....

A small Armenian village faces tough times after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Hamo is a widower with a small military pension and three useless sons. While making one of his daily visits to his wife's grave he meets Nina and the two begin to date.

"The mayor of the noisy city of La Paz institutes new laws forbidding all singing, but a brave little rooster decides he must sing, despite the progressively severe punishments he receives for continuing to crow. The silenced populace, invigorated by the rooster's bravery, ousts the tyrannical mayor and returns their city to its free and clamorous state"--

The women in a Lebanese village try a variety of tricks to stop their husbands from starting a religious war within the town.

Life in the small English town of Cranford seems very quiet and peaceful. The ladies of Cranford lead tidy, regular lives. They make their visits between the hours of twelve and three, give little evening parties, and worry about their maid-servants. But life is not always smooth - there are little arguments and jealousies, sudden deaths and unexpected marriages... Mrs Gaskell's timeless picture of small-town life in the first half of the nineteenth...

Yankel loves to tell stories, as long as they are someone else's. He does not see the hurt that his stories cause, the way they spread and change. Then the rabbi hands him a bag of feathers and tells him to place one on every doorstep in the village. Yankel is changed by what happens and finds himself with his best story yet, one of his very own.