Distraught over her stalled academic career, Alba is walking through Cambridge, England, when she 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. This is no ordinary house. Past residents -- including Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Parker -- have hung around to help newcomers... literally, in talking portraits on the walls.