When 28-year-old Agnes Blythe, the contented bifocals-wearing half of an academic power couple, is jilted by her professor boyfriend for the town Pilates instructor, her future is suddenly less than certain. So when her glamorous, eccentric Great Aunt Effie arrives in town and offers a job helping to salvage the condemned Stagecoach Inn, what does Agnes have to lose? But work at the inn has barely begun when the unlikely duo find the body of manipulative...

Talkative, ten-year-old Rebecca goes to live with her spinster aunts, one harsh and demanding, the other soft and sentimental, with whom she spends seven difficult but rewarding years growing up.

Asiya loves to visit Nanu's house and rummage through her katha chest filled with quilts that tell stories about the bold and brave women in Asiya's family.

"Paige Watts is the ultimate stage mother. The daughter of Hollywood royalty, Paige channels her own acting dreams into making her daughter, Emma, a star. By the age of nine, Emma is playing a central role in a hit TV show. Then everything is shattered by unforeseeable tragedy. Now Emma is living with her aunt Whitney, who had chosen a very different path than her sister. Whitney was always the studious older sister, hating the cult of celebrity that...

When Zora grows up, she wants to be just like Aunt Bea. Aunt Bea is the best storyteller she knows! Every day after school, Zora heads to her aunt's house, where they take out their family book and turn Aunt Bea's kitchen into their stage. They raid Aunt Bea's costume chest, filled with colorful garments from her acting days, and even do special voices to tell the stories of swimming coaches, Sunday preachers, World War II pilots, and more--all real...

Francie plunges into her senior year of high school near Minnesota's Enchantment Lake, but when her long-lost brother, Theo, turns up, so does a dead body, and Francie is drawn into another mystery.

Eight-year-old Rebecca Winstead is a confident, self-reliant little girl, a natural performer who wins a nation-wide talent contest. In order to take advantage of this opportunity to become a radio star, she must win the approval of her severe Aunt Miranda, who wants her to remain on Sunnybrook Farm.

When her father goes away, eleven-year-old California "Callie" Poppy winds up with her eccentric Great-Aunt Monica and their ancestor - the once-famous etiquette expert Eleanor Fontaine, now a hypersensitive ghost.

Although Aunt Arlene tries to interest her in clothing and growing up, ten-year-old Mildred is entirely focused on growing a pumpkin big enough to win the annual Circleville, Ohio, contest, as her mother dreamed of doing before she died.

Very definite in her likes and dislikes, seven (nearly eight)-year-old Violet Bing goes to stay with her unusual Great-aunt Astrid in the Grand House.