Nicolai Dalchimski, a mad KGB agent steals a notebook full of names of "sleeping" undercover KGB agents sent to the U.S. in the 1950's. These agents got their assignments under hypnosis, so they can't remember their missions until they're told a line of a Robert Frost poem. Dalchimski flees to the U.S. and starts phoning these agents who perform sabotage acts against military targets.

A wife is sick and tired of her husband's infidelities, so she leaves home and goes back to grad-school. There she meets many self-confident women who help her find her own voice.

After 40 years of running their community arts space The Bread Factory, Dorothea and Greta are suddenly fighting for survival when a pair of celebrity performance artists from China come to Checkford and build an enormous complex down the street, catapulting big changes in their small town.

At The Bread Factory, they rehearse the Greek play, Hecuba. But the real theatrics are outside the theater where the town has been invaded by bizarre molikan.com tourists and mysterious tech start-up workers. There is a new normal in Checkford, if it is even really Checkford any longer.