A man is mistaken as a spy by the CIA when he arrives at the airport with one red shoe.
Emma, a divorced single mother seeking to start her life over, moves to a small town in Arizona. She befriends Murphy, the older local pharmacist, but things turn complicated when her ex-husband shows up.
An artist fails a test and is required to direct traffic in New York City's Holland Tunnel. He winds up falling in love with a beautiful woman, who takes him to the moon on a Lunar Cruiser.
A Washington waitress saves the Emir of Ohtar's life, launching her diplomatic career and a scandal.
Rachel is a 35-year-old school teacher who has no man in her life and lives with her mother. When a man from the big city returns and asks her out, she begins to have to make decisions about her life and where she wants it to go.
A poet-astronaut is shot through an area of space called the Chronosynclastic Infundibulum. He is duplicated into infinite copies of himself, each of whom finds himself in a bizarre situations on a different world.
Martha Beck, an obese nurse who is desperately lonely, joins a "correspondence club" and finds a romantic pen pal in Ray Fernandez. Martha falls hard for Ray, and is intent on sticking with him even when she discovers he's a con man who seduces lonely single women, kills them and then takes their money. She poses as Ray's sister and joins Ray on a wild killing spree, fueled by her lingering concern that Ray will leave her for one of his marks.
To a family whose children are traumatized by the death of their mother, help comes in a most bizarre way. They receive three pieces, that when joined together, give a recording for an offer for an electric grandmother. They go to a bizarre factory, where they customize their new grandmother, and within a short time, she arrives. The android is equipped with everything needed as a parent and the boys are charmed. The daughter, however, still misses her mother and she bears no welcome for this interloper.
An illiterate cook at a company cafeteria tries for the attention of a newly widowed woman. As they get to know one another, she discovers his inability to read. When he is fired, she takes on trying to teach him to read in her kitchen each night.
"Roseland" is made up of three stories, sometimes connecting, all set in the famed New York City dance palace, and all having the same theme: finding the right dance partner.