When Emily achieves her goal of becoming a city vet she expects to settle into the life of a sophisticated professional. Nowhere in her plans is a derelict gang house filling up with misfits and former criminals.

How is she to cope with a half-mad English professor, a talented troubled girl, and demanding men?

As her new life unfolds, Emily fights against an increasingly sinister descent into the former life of 23 Grimshaw Street.

But things are not as they seem. Although Emily and her home are confronted by the past, she learns to distinguish enemy from friend, admirer from threat, and finds that she can give and receive love and respect.

There is a solution to this madcap existence and Emily and her strange housemates will find a way through.

It is not just the inhabitants who must rebuild their lives. Twenty-three Grimshaw Street will find a positive future.