Lancashire, 1930s. When her mother dies, leaving her an old sewing box and a clue to her father's identity, 22-year-old Maisie Bassett is determined to make a fresh start. Changing her name and moving to the small town of Rivenshaw, she finds a respectable job in a grocery store. But unwanted attentions from a man at her new church make life increasingly difficult - until the shy, handsome Gabriel Harte comes to her rescue. Then she receives an inheritance...

Lancashire, 1936. With her son Gabriel finally married, and her youngest following his dreams of becoming a doctor, Gwynneth Harte finds herself with an empty nest - until a fire forces her to move in with Gabriel and his wife Maisie at their home on Daisy Street. Arthur Chapman has been at a low ebb ever since the death of his wife. Turning to drink in his grief, he lost both his job and contact with his grandchild, Beatie - but now the inheritance...

'Bleak House', Dickens's most daring experiment in the narration of a complex plot, challenges the reader to make connections - between the fashionable & the outcast, the beautiful & the ugly, the powerful & the victims. Nowhere in Dickens's later novels is his attack on an uncaring society more imaginatively embodied.