Aunt Dimity's Good Deed

Thanks to Aunt Dimity, Lori Shepherd was lucky enough to have had a fairy-tale courtship complete with a Handsome Prince and a cozy, honey-colored castle in which he popped the question. It all happened so quickly, so effortlessly, that Lori fell in love with her blue-blooded prince before she really knew who he was. And maybe that's where she made her first mistake. Now married for two years to said prince - Bill Willis, a workaholic lawyer who is, she admits, "honest and scrupulously considerate about his socks" - Lori finds herself inconsolably depressed. She loves Bill dearly but all he does is work, work, work - even their honeymoon was interrupted by a flurry of faxes. And to make her feel even worse, her busybody aunts-in-law keep badgering her about when they will have a new little Willis! But how will that ever happen if she never even sees her husband? Seeking to recapture the romance in her young marriage, Lori plans a second honeymoon at Aunt Dimity's English cottage. But at the last minute, Bill, true to form, can't make it, so Lori's reliable as-the-sunrise father-in-law stands in (how romantic!) - only to disappear minutes after their arrival, with Lori's pink flannel bunny, Reginald, in tow. Inspired by Aunt Dimity and accompanied by her very precocious twelve-year-old friend Nell, Lori packs the car and sets off on a backroads search for Willis, Sr. Nell proves herself a helpful guide (keeping Lori on the right side of the road!) as well as a mistress of disguise, while Lori finds herself aghast at her own unseemly attraction to Bill's dashing English cousin, Gerald. Soon Lori, Nell, and the ghostly Aunt Dimity find themselves at the center of a centuries-old Willis family scandal that, if revealed, could mean the end of life as they know it, for Willises on both sides of the Atlantic.