Small-town bartender Owen Peadman goes to Los Angeles to raise money to help save his father's Minnesota restaurant. He tries to find a way into Hollywood society, where he meets socialite Lisa and her uptight actor boyfriend. Can he balance his growing feelings for Lisa with surviving the sordid lifestyles of the Hollywood elite?

When an alien abduction nightmare is revealed to have been much more than a dream, a skeptical grad student studying the "modern mythology" of UFOs and ETs finds himself confronting an impossible reality involving shape-shifting extraterrestrials, implanted objects, organ harvesting and humans possessed by a malevolent alien presence unlike anything he has ever heard about. All while dealing with a growing suspicion that he is somehow the center of the aliens' plan.

Mike McBride is a curmudgeon with a heart of gold. He takes cases based on their merit rather than on their monetary value, which often leads to terse notices from bill collectors. A disillusioned member of the LAPD, McBride left the force after twelve years and went back to school to become a lawyer. With the aid of his ever-present sidekick, Phil Newberry, and his former girlfriend, Detective Roberta Hansen, McBride and his team solve crimes the old-fashioned way.