Miss Polly decides to spend a few months with her wealthy spinster aunt as a traveling companion. While in Singapore her aunt's demise leaves her alone to pursue her freedom and explore an arm's length romance with a local boy.

If you were a famous English novelist doing a whistle stop tour of the United States to promote your books, wouldn't you welcome with open arms the chance of a quiet weekend away from it all in a remote corner of Long Island? Of course you would. Well, let what happened to Evan Lorrimer be an awful warning....

Lorraine Barrie, a fading but brilliant actress with a penchant for manipulating every theatrical endeavour to her best advantage, meets her match when she must trust her success to an equally willful stage director.

While holding a séance for skeptical novelist Charles Condomine, self-proclaimed 'spiritualist medium' Madame Arcati inadvertently summons the spirit of his deceased first wife Elvira, leading to an increasingly complex love triangle with Ruth, his current wife of five years.