Roger Cobb, a divorced horror novelist coming to terms with the disappearance of his young son, inherits an old mansion home to malevolent supernatural residents.

Shortly after David Abbott moves into his new San Francisco digs, he has an unwelcome visitor on his hands: winsome Elizabeth Martinson, who asserts that the apartment is hers -- and promptly vanishes. When she starts appearing and disappearing at will, David thinks she's a ghost, while Elizabeth is convinced she's alive.

It is 1967, and Larry Gopnik, a physics professor at a quiet Midwestern university, has just been informed by his wife Judith that she is leaving him. She has fallen in love with one of his more pompous acquaintances Sy Ableman.

A woman, pregnant after a one-night stand with her neighbor, sleeps with a businessman to pass off the baby as his.

Attractive and sexy 1960's era suburban housewives, all dressed in mid-century modern pitch-perfect styles, are hell bent on one-upping each other as "Hostess with the Mostess." They hold dinner parties that become increasingly boozy, flirtatious and wild -- and soon more than recipes get swapped.