Rose Loomis and her older, gloomier husband, George, are vacationing at a cabin in Niagara Falls. The couple befriend Polly and Ray Cutler, who are honeymooning in the area.
Bart Tare is an ex-Army man who has a lifelong fixation with guns, he meets a kindred spirit in sharpshooter Annie Starr and goes to work at a carnival.
A group of men are on safari. One of the party refuses to give a gift to a tribe they encounter. The tribe is offended, seizes the party, and one-by-one, kills all but one of the safari members in various creative and horrifying ways.
When a kindly priest is murdered while waiting at a street corner in a quiet Connecticut town, the citizens are horrified and demand action from the police.
The tranquility of a small town is marred only by sheriff Tod Shaw's unsuccessful courtship of widow Ellen Benson, a pacifist who can't abide guns and those who use them.
A woman impressed by news reports about flying saucers, gets hit on the head by a vase, passes out and dreams that she is the 'Queen of Mars', from where she sends an expedition to Earth in order to bring back Rio's Carnaval to the planet.
A young woman welcomes a stranger into her home who pretends to have an accident. After a fleeting romance, the two marry and she immediately inherits a fortune due to the death of her uncle.
Murders, with victims dying from spines broken by brute strength, erupt in the city and the killers, when encountered, walk away unharmed by police bullets which strike them.