"Late October. After midnight. You're waiting up for your seventeen-year-old son. He's past curfew. As you watch from the window, he emerges, and you realize he isn't alone: he's walking toward a man, and he's armed. You can't believe it when you see him do it: your funny, happy teenage son, he kills a stranger, right there on the street outside your house. You don't know who. You don't know why. You only know your son is now in custody, his future...

Katie Wilkinson has found the perfect man at last-but one day, he disappears from her life, leaving behind only a diary for her to read. The diary is written by a woman named Suzanne and is addressed to her new baby boy, Nicholas. In it she pours out her heart about the joy he has brought her. As Katie reads this moving story, she realizes that the man she's fallen in love with is Suzanne's husband, Nicholas' father. She reads on, filled with terror...

It’s 2011, and Samuel Andresen-Anderson — college professor, stalled writer — has a Nix of his own: his mother, Faye. He hasn’t seen her in decades, not since she abandoned the family when he was a boy. Now she’s re-appeared, having committed an absurd crime that electrifies the nightly news, beguiles the internet, and inflames a politically divided country. The media paints Faye as a radical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel...

One morning, Deming Guo's mother, Polly, an undocumented Chinese immigrant, goes to her job at a nail salon -- and never comes home. No one can find any trace of her. With his mother gone, eleven-year-old Deming is left mystified and bereft. Eventually adopted by a pair of well-meaning white professors, Deming is moved from the Bronx to a small town upstate and renamed Daniel Wilkinson. But far from all he's ever known, Daniel struggles to reconcile...

Mary Beth Latham is first and foremost a mother, whose three teenaged children come first, before her career as a landscape gardener, or even her life as the wife of a doctor. Caring for her family and preserving their everyday life is paramount. And so, when one of her sons, Max, becomes depressed, Mary Beth becomes focused on him, and is blindsided by a shocking act of violence.

Froggy is afraid of the water until his mother, along with his flippers, snorkle, and mask, help him learn to swim.

A mother relates some of the many things that she loves about her young son.

Little Bear's four adventures include taking a trip to the moon and having a birthday party.

Winnie and friends help little Roo to make a special valentine for his mother, Kanga.

A multitude of family snapshots, Super-8 home movies, old answering machine messages, video diaries, early short films, snippets of '80s pop culture, and dramatic reenactments are used to create an epic portrait of an American family travesty. Begins in 2003 when Jonathan learns that his schizophrenic mother, Renee, overdoses on her lithium medication. He is shot back into his real and horrifying family legacy of rape, abandonment, promiscuity, drug...