Samantha Whipple - a young American woman - is the last remaining descendent of the famous Brontë family of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre fame.

After losing her father, a brilliant author in his own right, Samantha travels to Oxford in search of a mysterious family inheritance, described to her in her father's will only as 'the warnings of experience'.

While at Oxford, Samantha studies under Professor J. Timothy Orville III, a disarmingly handsome tutor who seems nothing but annoyed by her family heritage. With Orville as her tempestuous sidekick, Samantha sets out on a mission to piece together her family's history - which, it turns out, may also be literature's greatest buried secret.