7-year old Steven Stayner is kidnapped a few days before Christmas by Kenneth Parnell. Under the belief that Parnell has been given legal custody of him, and that his family has moved away, he stays with Parnell for seven years, enduring repetitive sexual abuse the entire time. Finally, at fourteen, he returns home to his family.

Art Leroldi is widowed and fading - a small time Reno barber stuck in a rut of haircuts and horse-books. When he loses his cutting partner of twenty years, he's faced with closing Reno's last man's man barbershop or hiring the last person on earth he'd ever want working there - a woman. More specifically, Gloria MacIntyre, a broke, spit-fire young woman suddenly unable to take no for answer. This is the story two unlikely people, who meet in one unlikely place - The Village Barbershop.

Just before he's to marry Fiona, Roderick Blank receives an anonymous e-mail with 101 names on it; Fiona's is the 29th, the first 28 are women Rod has slept with, and the 30th turns out to be the stripper at his bachelor party. The notion that he will have sex with 70 more people sends Rod into crisis mode, especially after three odd men in an aseptic office confirm that a celestial machine has made an error. They suggest destroying the list, but Rod finds that easier said than done. Working his way through it consumes him, plus he realizes that death may await him after #101. Meanwhile, a femme fatale nicknamed Death Nell is putting men into a coma. Are they fated to meet?