Keiko Furukura had always been considered a strange child, and her parents always worried how she would get on in the real world, so when she takes on a job in a convenience store while at university, they are delighted for her. For her part, in the convenience store she finds a predictable world mandated by the store manual, which dictates how the workers should act and what they should say, and she copies her coworkers' style of dress and speech...

"When thirty-four-year-old Ms. Shibata gets a new job in Tokyo to escape sexual harassment at her old one, she finds that, as the only woman at her new workplace-a company that manufactures cardboard tubes-she is expected to do all the menial tasks. One day she announces that she can't clear away her colleagues' dirty cups-because she's pregnant and the smell nauseates her. The only thing is . . . Ms. Shibata is not pregnant. Pregnant Ms. Shibata...

"Brody Ellis is down on his luck. His mom walked out when he was a kid, his father recently committed suicide, he's behind on his rent, and now he needs medication for his sister, Molly, who has cerebral palsy. In a desperate bid for some fast cash, Brody robs a convenience store, but he bumps into a young woman as he makes his escape, and realizes too late that he dropped his wallet at the scene of the crime. Just when he expects the police to break...

The likeable, magnetic, bodega owner Usnavi saves every penny from his daily grind as he hopes, imagines, and sings about a better life. Meanwhile, his tight-knit community faces the challenge of gentrification, losing their homes while trying to better themselves and hold on to their cultures.

Two women from very different backgrounds find themselves in an unexpected love affair in 1950s New York. As conventional norms of the time challenge their undeniable attraction, an honest story emerges to reveal the resilience of the heart in the face of change. A young woman in her twenties, Therese is a clerk working in a Manhattan department store and dreaming of a more fulfilling life when she meets Carol, an alluring woman trapped in a loveless,...

Furukura Keiko, 36 and single, lives a quiet life. She never found formal employment, and has been working in a convenience store for 18 years. She's never had a boyfriend. She eats convenience store food every day and can work the register in her sleep; she falls peacefully asleep each night thinking of the store's tidy scenery and the staff's cries of "Welcome!" One day a new male employee, himself looking to get married, tells her that her "convenience...