Here are all the extremes of wealth and want, prudery and lust, charity and callousness, in an enthralling saga of two passionate families. Here is all the striving and triumph of the rich and the ruthless in the first flush of England's glorious Victorian age.

At a time when fabulous fortunes could be made through the will of a strong man or the wiles of a beautiful woman, John Stevenson's genius as a builder and his wife Nora's clear-eyed, brilliant cunning promise to make the one of England's richest couples. But their fate becomes more and more entwined with that of their friends the Thorntons - repressed and pious Arabella, secretive, sex-obsessed Walter - as whispers of scandal and disgrace threaten to bring them all to ruin...



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