A recent widow invites her husband's troubled best friend to live with her and her two children. As he gradually turns his life around, he helps the family cope and confront their loss.
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.
Marshall Jed Cooper survives a hanging, vowing revenge on the lynch mob that left him dangling. To carry out his oath for vengeance, he returns to his former job as a lawman. Before long, he's caught up with the nine men on his hit list and starts dispensing his own brand of Wild West justice.
The story of the widow of Lee Harvey Oswald, the man accused of shooting President Kennedy. Via flashbacks, the story traces the woman's life from her days in Russia, the turmoil following the assassination, raising her family, and coming to grips with the fact that she too may have been a pawn in a grand conspiracy.
Dentist Bertram Pincus is a man whose people skills leave much to be desired. When he dies unexpectedly, but is miraculously revived after seven minutes, Pincus wakes up to discover that he now has the annoying ability to see ghosts.
Clay is a young man in a small town who witnesses his friend, Earl kill himself because of the ongoing affair that Clay was having with the man's wife, Amanda. Feeling guilty, Clay now resists the widow when she presses him to continue with their sexual affairs. Clay inadvertently befriends a serial killer named Lester Long, who murders the widow in an attempt to "help" his "fishing buddy."
Gilbert Grape is a small-town young man with a lot of responsibility. Chief among his concerns are his mother, who is so overweight that she can't leave the house, and his mentally impaired younger brother, Arnie, who has a knack for finding trouble. Settled into a job at a grocery store and an ongoing affair with local woman Betty Carver, Gilbert finally has his life shaken up by the free-spirited Becky.