Andrew Neyman is an ambitious young jazz drummer, single-minded in his pursuit to rise to the top of his elite East coast music conservatory. Plagued by the failed writing career of his father, Andrew hungers day and night to become one of the greats. Terence Fletcher, an instructor equally known for his teaching talents as for his terrifying methods, leads the top jazz ensemble in the school. Fletcher discovers Andrew and transfers the aspiring drummer...

A curmudgeonly instructor at a New England prep school is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go. Eventually, he forms an unlikely bond with one of them a damaged, brainy troublemaker, and with the school's head cook, who has just lost a son in Vietnam.

When a new friend and co-worker begins a passionate affair with a male student, schoolteacher Barbara Covett decides to keep the affair secret as a means to manipulate her friend.

In a remote Oregon town, a middle-school teacher and her sheriff brother become entangled with her enigmatic student, whose dark secrets lead to horrifying encounters with a legendary ancestral creature who came before them.