Beth, who lap dances to make ends meet, leaves Florida for Las Vegas hoping to be a cocktail waitress. She meets two women who introduce her to Dink, a gambler with a system. He hires her - she's good with numbers - and she promptly falls for him, even though he's married to a woman who seems to do nothing but spend his money. Beth tries to entice Dink whose wife, Tulip, tells him to choose; he does and promptly goes on a losing streak. The repercussions of his choice play out with a heavy gambler who has a parole officer, a cheesy bookmaker in Curaçao, Beth's desire to keep a friend out of prison, and help from an unlikely source.

An earthquake triggers a giant spider attack on the city of New Orleans.

Virginia small town local Ford Sawyer, a comics artist, takes an instant liking to his new neighbor, Cilla McGowan, a former child TV starlet who moves from L.A. to renovate her Hollywood celebrity grandmother Janet's rural last residence and start a career after passing the local contractors exam. Grumpy old neighbor Carl Hennessy is suspected of the vandalism on her garden, garage and home, even knocking friendly ex Steve Chensky. Seeking comfort and security, Cilla comes to depend on Ford, who elected her as model for his next hammer-swinging Celtic comic heroin, and they fall in love. Janet's stuff yields intriguing information which proves relevant for the present aggression, with unexpected ramifications.

Upon hearing of her mother's death, jaded teenage loner Purslane Hominy Will returns to New Orleans for the first time in years, ready to reclaim her childhood home. Expecting to find her late mother's house abandoned, Pursy is shocked to discover that it is inhabited by two of her mother's friends: Bobby Long, a former literature professor, and his young protégé, Lawson Pines. These broken men, whose lives took a wrong turn years before, have been firmly rooted in the dilapidated house for years, encouraged only by Lawson's faltering ambitions to write a novel about Bobby Long's life. Having no intention of leaving, Pursy, Bobby Long and Lawson are all forced to live together. Yet as time passes, their tenuous, makeshift arrangement unearths a series of buried personal secrets that challenges their bonds, and reveals just how inextricably their lives are intertwined.