Early 20th century England: while toasting his daughter Catherine's engagement, Arthur Winslow learns the royal naval academy expelled his 14-year-old son, Ronnie, for stealing five shillings. Father asks son if it is true; when the lad denies it, Arthur risks fortune, health, domestic peace, and Catherine's prospects to pursue justice. After defeat in the military court of appeals, Arthur and Catherine go to Sir Robert Morton, a brilliant, cool barrister and M.P., who examines Ronnie and suggests that they take the matter before Parliament to seek permission to sue the Crown. They do, which keeps Ronnie's story on the front page and keeps Catherine in Sir Robert's ken.

In the wonderfully dysfunctional tradition of The Royal Tenenbaums, teenage years are always messy... but for Maude, things couldn't seem more tragic. Within one week just prior to her 18th birthday, she is suspended from school, stranded by her best friend, dumped by the boy she "loves", and Granny just died leaving her an enormous amount of money under one condition: Maude must go to college which she does not want to do and her wildly eccentric family is no help at all. Of course... It's a comedy!

A man in a suit at a Manhattan firm leaves work on Friday; he looks unhappy. He stops at a fortune teller's for a Tarot reading: "You are not where you belong," she tells him. That evening he quits his marriage and walks the streets of New York, passing from a classy bar to a gentleman's club, then to a high-class bordello, a mugging, a pawnshop, and a diner where someone does listen. He shares his insights with her and later with others. Violence, disappointment, and musings entwine as Edmond loses his moorings while believing he's found them. Where does he belong?

Joe Ross is a rising star. He's designed a process that will make his company millions. He wants a bonus for this work, but fears his boss will stiff him. He meets a wealthy stranger, Jimmy Dell, and they strike up an off-kilter friendship. When the boss seems to set Ross up to get nothing, he seeks Dell's help. Then he learns Dell is not what he seems, so he contacts an FBI agent through his tightly-wound assistant, Susan Ricci. The FBI asks him to help entrap Dell. He accepts, a sting is arranged, but suddenly it's he who's been conned out of the process and framed for murder. Bewildered and desperate, he enlists Susan's aid to prove his innocence.

At first fancying himself an "enigmatic poet", twenty something Art gradually realizes that he must take action if he's going to escape his depressed life as a struggling musician in London. A solution comes in the shape of a book titled "It's Not Your Fault". Not content to just draw inspiration from its pages, however, Art invites the elderly author of the book to come live with him and his parents, which quickly becomes a painfully funny journey about dysfunction and growing up.