A middle aged upper class woman and her family live in an upscale neighborhood. The family's laughter turns malicious when they cannot distinguish between what is comical and what is horrendous and increasingly find amusement at the expense of others.

A group of working class people run a dangerous path toward a promised Elysium, and those who survive are rewarded with nothing they can appreciate or comprehend.

A woman returns home to her family having just slept with another man. At dinner, her son gets into an argument with his father about their privilege. As the narrative moves back to the time they spent abroad in Nigeria, Burma and Ecuador, fractures in the family life are revealed.

A working class man who wants his children to have everything their rich friends have purchases "Semplica Girls" — girls formerly living in poverty who sign contracts to hang as ornaments in people's yards — for his older daughter's birthday. When his younger daughter frees the Semplica Girls, the family is plunged into financial disaster.

A wealthy man in Chicago suddenly learns about the untimely death of a poor woman he'd been dating. Confronted with her child, whom he'd begun to develop a bond with, he must determine to what extent he will allow his greed to overcome his compassion.

Al Roosten, a local business owner always second-best to his competitor, Larry Donfrey, contemplates returning to an anti-drug charity event to ensure that Donfrey is able to help his disabled daughter.

Two sisters, both Sociology professors, find themselves summering husbandless in their rickety childhood home with their bastion of six children, their ornery mother, and their paralyzed father. They swap between stories of their upbringing and their present task of preparing for a fatal hurricane which will challenge their quaint way of life.

In the early 1970s, a listless radical must decide what to do with his life as his social circle of grassroots activists dwindles.

A wealthy woman's ploy to flaunt her wealth is foiled by her old friend's seeming indifference to opulence - until they part, and the friend asks for money. The afternoon is ruined when the woman realizes that her obsession with money has ruined her outlook on life.

A middle-aged tax consultant who is dissatisfied with life has a night that begins with a wrong address and ends in a liquor-fueled spoken-word poetry party.