When ten-year-old Adine's mother has a new baby, eccentric Aunt Irene comes to stay and shares Adine's bedroom--an event which requires a great deal of adjustment.
Fourteen-year-old Jerry Luna, mute since her mother's disappearance, is sent to her great-great-aunt Constanza's house, where she discovers a trunk that draws her into the world of her ancestors during the Spanish Inquisition.
After her mother's death, Julie goes to live with Aunt Cordelia, a spinster schoolteacher, where she experiences many emotions and changes as she grows from seven to eighteen.
Rather than go to a spiritual retreat in Oregon with her mother and brother, eleven-year-old Frances insists on staying in Ohio with her odd aunt, but she soon begins to worry that the retreat may really be a cult.
High school sophomore Bridget Raynes has to decide whether or not to accept her powers of witchcraft, or abandon them and try to fit in as an ordinary teenager.
Twelve-year-old Pearl feels hurt, confused, and unwanted when her wild, irresponsible mother leaves her with Aunt Ivy in a little country house in Georgia and then disappears.
In 1948, while spending the summer with her aunt in West Virginia to find her family roots, Tilara begins visiting the "colored" old folks' home called McKendree, makes new friends, and learns to love herself.
Nine-year-old Beth's attitude about a visit to her eccentric Aunt Evelyn's house changes when she is told that she and Evelyn are fairies and need to rescue the missing Feather of Hope from a house of gremlins--a mission for which Beth enlists the help of her dog, Peanut.
