Distraught over her stalled academic career, Alba is walking through Cambridge, England, and finds herself in front of 11 Hope Street. A beautiful older woman named Peggy greets Alba and invites her to stay, on the house?s usual conditions: she has ninety-nine nights to turn her life around. But this is no ordinary house. Past residents ? including Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Parker ? have hung around to help newcomers . . . literally, in portraits on the walls.