The Next Best Thing

A Pennsylvania band scores a hit in 1964 and rides the star-making machinery as long as it can, with lots of help from its manager.

Jeff Marx wants to study medicine and become a physician. However, his grades are far from enough to get him into an American medical school. But instead he gets a chance to study medicine abroad, in a small Latin American dictatorship, governed by Ramon Madera, who falls in love with Jeff's girlfriend, also a medical student.

Estranged half-brothers Jonny and James reunite after their father's mysterious death. As they search for the truth, buried secrets reveal a conspiracy threatening to tear their family apart.

Harvard educated lawyer Lucy Kelson, following in the footsteps of her lawyer parents, uses her career for social activism. She hides any sense of femininity behind her work. George Wade is the suave public face of the Manhattan-based Wade Corporation, a development firm that Lucy routinely opposes and whose true head is George's profit-oriented brother, Howard Wade. George, who has a reputation as a lady's man, has had as his legal counsel a series of beautiful female lawyers with questionable credentials, they who have more primarily acted as his casual sex partners. Needing a real lawyer, he offers Lucy the job of his legal counsel on a chance meeting. Despite warnings from her parents in working for the "enemy", Lucy, who has no intention of being the latest in his bed partners, accepts the job as she feels she can do more good from the inside, and as George, as part of the job offer, promises not to demolish a community center in a heritage building as part of a development project near her childhood Coney Island home where her parents still live. Although Lucy is able to effect the type of change she wanted from this position, she finds she cannot deal with George's expectations of her, namely being his primary confidante and advisor at all hours of the day and night, mostly about issues she considers frivolous. As such, she gives him two weeks notice, although she promises to help George find her replacement. As Lucy begins to review resumes, George himself unilaterally decides to hire June Carver, a fellow Harvardite, but who seems to have her sights set on George as both a boss and personal partner. As June begins to replace Lucy in seemingly all aspects of George's life, Lucy begins to realize that she herself has fallen for George. However, Lucy's feelings for George and her attempts to re-ingratiate herself into George's life are placed into jeopardy when she learns of a Wade Corporation decision against her basic sensibilities.

In morte veritas. Georgia Byrd clerks at a New Orleans department store. She defers pleasure: cooks gourmet meals, eats Lean Cuisine; likes a co-worker in silence; has savings, but hasn't left Louisiana. All that changes when a CT Scan discloses she has three weeks to live. She cashes her savings and heads to Grandhotel Pupp in the Czech Republic, where Chef Didier presides. She checks into the Presidential Suite, orders everything on the menu, snowboards, and comes to the attention of the chef and the hotel's powerful American guests: a Congressman, a Senator, a retail magnate, and his mistress. She has nothing to lose, so she tells them what she thinks. Will the truth set them free?

For three years, Andrew Paxton has slaved as the assistant to Margaret Tate, hard-driving editor at a New York publisher. When Margaret, a Canadian, faces deportation for an expired visa, she hatches a scheme to marry Andrew, and he agrees if she will promise him a promotion. A skeptical INS agent vows to test the couple about each other the next Monday. Andrew had plans to fly home that weekend for his grandma's 90th, so Margaret goes with him--to Sitka, Alaska, where Mom, Dad, and Grandma await. Family dynamics take over: tensions between Andrew and his dad, an ex-girlfriend, Andrew's dislike of Margaret, and Margaret's past color the next few days, with the INS ready to charge Andrew with fraud.