You think you know the entire story of "Bleak Expectations" but look! Now it"s also a big, fat, juicy book. Like the radio series, but with added jokes, extra bits of story, additional dimensions to characters and masses more paper. Unless you"re reading it as an e-book in which case ...masses more digital information bits. "Bleak Expectations" recounts the remarkable adventures of young Pip Bin as he tries to repair his destroyed family and distinctly damaged life, aided by his best friend Harry Biscuit and definitely not aided by his cruel and ironically named guardian Mr Gently Benevolent and his accomplices, the fearsome Hardthrasher siblings. Weep! As Pip is sent to Britain"s nastiest boarding school, St Bastard"s. Gasp! As the true extent of his despicable guardian"s plan becomes clear. Worry! As our hero is committed to the Workhouse, where he meets the hideous poverty-punishments of the treadmill, the grindstone and the painwheel. Sigh! As Pip finds love with London"s most eligible frail beauty, Miss Flora Dies-Early. Find a tenterhook and sit on it! Grim circumstances, mistaken identities, unlikely inheritances, nightmarish court cases, ridiculous names, convenient coincidences to resolve plot problems, over-sentimental death scenes and lots and lots of adjectives: "Bleak Expectations" is the novel Charles Dickens might have written after drinking far too much gin. Praise for the Radio 4 series: "Mark Evans writes one of the wittiest, most ingenious scripts on the air, a Dickensian pastiche with a slight "Rocky Horror Show" echo". ("Daily Telegraph"). "A freshly minted comedy classic". ("The Guardian"). "Lightly punned and briskly acted, with some excellent sound effects, "Bleak Expectations" is expert stuff, in the manner of Blackadder". (Miranda Sawyer, "The Observer"). "...inspired lunacy". ("The Times").