Aibileen Clark is a middle-aged African-American maid who has spent her life raising white children and has recently lost her only son; Minny Jackson is an African-American maid who has often offended her employers despite her family's struggles with money and her desperate need for jobs; and Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan is a young white woman who has recently moved back home after graduating college to find out her childhood maid has mysteriously disappeared. These three stories intertwine to explain how life in Jackson, Mississippi revolves around "the help"; yet they are always kept at a certain distance because of racial lines.

In 1850s Louisiana, the willfulness of a tempestuous Southern belle threatens to destroy all who care for her.

An aging, reclusive Southern belle plagued by a horrifying family secret descends into madness after the arrival of a lost relative.

Virginia Tregan returns to her home in the U.S. Deep South from a sojourn in Paris only to discover that her family plantation and its holdings have been lost. She determines to recoup her family's fortune.

Living in Kentucky prior to the Civil War, Amantha Starr is a privileged young woman. Her widowed father, a wealthy plantation owner, dotes on her and sends her to the best schools. When he dies suddenly Amantha's world is turned upside down. She learns that her father had been living on borrowed money and that her mother was actually a slave and her father's mistress.

A Southern belle's flirtation with a working man leads to tragedy.

The coquettish granddaughter of a respected small-town judge is stranded at a bootleggers’ hide-out, subjected to an act of nightmarish sexual violence, and plunged into a criminal underworld that threatens to swallow her up completely.

An aging Southern Belle makes life horrible for her ambitious son and crippled daughter because of her dreams of what life should be.

Femme fatale Flora marries a titled European to save the family planation. Her husband and a rival fall to their deaths in a glacier. Next Flora weds her sister Margaret's love Admah. She bleeds him dry, until he goes to prison.

After tragedy, a young girl falls for a boy from a powerful political dynasty. But the opposition that's current, and secrets they hold in the past threaten to destroy them and unravel the city of New Orleans.

A short story of paralysis and waste set in Colfax, Louisiana.