Sixteen-year-old Mattie, determined to attend college and be a writer against the wishes of her father and boyfriend, takes a job at a hotel in 1906 where the death of a guest renews her determination to live her own life.
High school freshman Willa holds fundraising events at her family's Cape Cod inn to save the local library and to hook up romantically with JFK (Joseph Frances Kennelly).
While staying at the remote and reputedly haunted Maine inn run by her father and pregnant stepmother, sixteen-year-old Cynda feels increasingly isolated from her father's new family and finds solace in the attentions of a charming but mysterious guest.
Weaves together two separate stories with one about an eleven-year-old girl who seeks refuge at a dilapidated hotel and the other about a father who promises his daughter he'll be home for her eleventh birthday but is killed in an accident.
During the Depression, a young Memphis boy trains his pet duck to do tricks in the fountain of a grand hotel and ends up becoming the Duck Master of the Peabody Hotel.
Tyler Yu, school bully, is convinced that there is a ghost stealing things at Abracadabra Hotel, and he enlists the help of Charlie Hitchcock to solve the mystery.