The Southerner

For Miranda Wells, moving to New York to live in Dragonwyck Manor with her rich cousin, Nicholas, seems like a dream. However, the situation gradually becomes nightmarish. She observes Nicholas' troubled relationship with his tenant farmers, as well as with his daughter, to whom Miranda serves as governess. Her relationship with Nicholas intensifies after his wife dies, but his mental imbalance threatens any hope of happiness.

Hud Bannon is a ruthless young man who tarnishes everything and everyone he touches. Hud represents the perfect embodiment of alienated youth, out for kicks with no regard for the consequences. There is bitter conflict between the callous Hud and his stern and highly principled father, Homer. Hud's nephew Lon admires Hud's cheating ways, though he soon becomes too aware of Hud's reckless amorality to bear him anymore. In the world of the takers and the taken, Hud is a winner. He's a cheat, but, he explains, "I always say the law was meant to be interpreted in a lenient manner."

High school seniors and best friends, Sonny and Duane, live in a dying Texas town. The handsome Duane is dating a local beauty, while Sonny is having an affair with the coach's wife. As graduation nears and both boys contemplate their futures, Duane eyes the army and Sonny takes over a local business. Each struggles to figure out if he can escape this dead-end town and build a better life somewhere else.

Religious fanatics are barricaded in a building and surrounded by police. But they're not going to surrender; they prefer to die.

A new music teacher in a 1955 West Texas home for wayward boys brings new vision and hope for many of the interned boys.

When the skeleton of his murdered predecessor is found, Sheriff Sam Deeds unearths many other long-buried secrets in his Texas border town.

A Texas oil driller schemes to steal millions of dollars in oil.

A New York City couple decide to take a getaway trip to Texas, but unknowingly cross paths with the wrong kind of people.

Farmer Jabez Stone, about to lose his land, agrees to sell his soul to the devil, known as Mr. Scratch, who gives Jabez seven years to enjoy the fruits of his sale before he collects. Over that time, Jabez pays off his debts and helps many neighboring farmers, then becomes an advocate for the upstanding Sen. Daniel Webster. When Jabez's contract with Mr. Scratch concludes, he desperately turns to Webster to represent him in a trial for his soul.

A divorced farmer takes in his troubled teenage daughter for the summer, a summer which changes the lives of the two of them, and their friends and family.

Billy Kuckuck is used to taking unpopular measures. But she is not used to switching off her mind in the process. For this reason, the assignment to collect the debt on a personal loan from the family of a recently deceased farmer leaves her anything but cold. The lender is Mr. Röschke, neighbor of the organic farm and also a farmer. His rigorous demand for repayment threatens to drive farmer Tanja Pohlmann to complete ruin. After the death of her husband, who had taken out the loan without consulting her, the mother is already at the end of her tether and no longer able to run the property. Her son Niklas sacrificially takes care of all the daily chores on the farm. In doing so, he neglects school and jeopardizes his A-levels. And nine-year-old Sophie feels obliged to stand in for her mother in the farm store instead of going to school. Of course, Billy is not indifferent to the fate of the organic farm. She is determined to help the Pohlmann family, but where can she start?