Sophie the spider makes wondrous webs, but the residents of Beekman's Boarding House do not appreciate her until at last, old and tired, she weaves her final masterpiece.

In 1934 Kit finds that she has hard lessons to learn about the Depression both at home, where she is helping her mother run a boarding house while her father looks for a new job, and at school, where a fight spoils the preparations for the Thanksgiving pageant.

In a time of drought and economic depression in 1934, Ella Barron runs her boardinghouse in Texas while caring for her son, Solly, and responds to the calm influence of one of her boarders, David Rainwater, while facing the tension and uncertainty around her.

Teenage Bina runs away to New York City's Catherine House, a young women's residence in Greenwich Village with a tragic history and dark secrets, where she is drawn to her mysterious downstairs neighbor Monet.

Laura Marshall fills her home with down-and-out boarders. Laura's shy teenage son, Ben, lands a job tending to self-proclaimed "Dame" Evie Walton, an over-the-hill actress with the mouth of a drunken sailor and an insatiable lust for life.

In 1934, during the Depression, Kit's cantankerous uncle comes to live in the Cincinnati boardinghouse run by her parents, enlisting her aid in transcribing his complaining letters to the editor of the local newspaper and inspiring her to write a different kind of letter of her own.

After the frightful events of last autumn, seventeen-year-old Louisa Ditton has settled into her role as a maid at Coldthistle House, but she has not settled into what that means for her humanity. As Louisa struggles to figure out whether she is worthy of redemption, the devilish Mr. Morningside plans a fete- one that will bring new guests to Coldthistle House. From wicked humans to Upworlders, angelic beings who look down upon Mr. Morningside's monstrous...

Some guests have come for a holiday, others for hidden reasons of their own.... When their father's death leaves them impoverished, Sarah Summers and her genteel sisters fear they will be forced to sell the house and separate to earn livelihoods as governesses or companions. Determined to stay together, Sarah convinces them to open their seaside home to guests to make ends meet and provide for their ailing mother. Instead of the elderly invalids they...

When tragedy befalls the townspeople of Candlewood and Emma Garrett opens her boarding house to those in need, tensions arise when two siblings' disagreeable nature puts them at odds with the other guests.

Just when his doctor put him on a strict diet, Qwilleran 's assignment at the newspaper was to write a regular column on the enjoyment of good food and wine, but before long, it's more than Qwilleran's pounds that are disappearing and reporter and felines seem to have a murder on their hands and paws.