The Griddle House

After her adoptive mother dies, Hortense, a successful black optometrist, seeks out her birth mother. She's shocked when her research leads her to Cynthia, a working class white woman.

After a convivial holiday dinner party, things begin to unravel when a husband and wife address some prickly issues concerning their marriage.

A three-year-old boy disappears during his mother's high school reunion. Nine years later, by chance, he turns up in the town in which the family has just relocated.

Desmond Doyle is devastated when his wife abandons their family on the day after Christmas. His unemployment, and the fact that there is no woman in the house to care for the children—Evelyn, Dermot and Maurice—make it clear to the authorities this is an untenable situation. The Catholic Church and the Irish courts decide to put the Doyle children into Church-run orphanages.

Jackie Foster, a dynamic Assistant District Attorney and single mom, is looking forward to wrapping up her latest case and spending Christmas with Gracie, her adorable and precocious, eight-year old daughter. But when Jackie’s estranged dad, Jack , a gruff retired police officer, unexpectedly shows up at her door, they will be forced to confront old wounds.

Young Cedric Errol and his widowed mother live in genteel poverty in 1880s Brooklyn after the death of his father. Cedric's grandfather, the Earl of Dorincourt, has long ago disowned his son for marrying an American. But after the death of the Earl's remaining son, he decides to accept Cedric as his heir.