Flora Poste (Beckinsale) is recently orphaned and yearns for material for a novel. Ignoring the advice of her mentor Mrs. Smiley (Lumley), she moves to the country to live on a decrepit, cursed old farm with her eccentric relatives, the Starkadders. Along the way, Flora encounters a humorously odd collection of characters that are perfect material for her novel; she brings order, light and laughter to their decidedly disordered world.
