Eccentricity defines daily life in Rome, Wisconsin, where the Tin Man from "The wizard of Oz" is murdered, a student brings a severed hand to school for show-and-tell, and a woman runs over her husband with a steam roller pleading "not guilty by reason of menopause." Sheriff Jimmy Brock has seen it all. Indeed, behind the tidy picket fences of this quirky little town lie all the same problems and prejudices found in the big city, except here everyone...

Mass murders, kidnappings and a flasher may be troubling to the residents of Fernwood, Ohio. But pigtailed, gingham-frocked housewife Mary Hartman has a much more serious problem: waxy buildup on her kitchen floor. And while her husband Tom struggles in the bedroom and her best friend, country singer Loretta Haggers, struggles to make it big in Nashville, Mary teeters closer to the edge, desperate to save her marriage, keep her family together and...