Emma Woodhouse, aged 20 at the start of the novel, is a young, beautiful, witty, and privileged woman in Regency England. She lives on the fictional estate of Hartfield in Surrey in the village of Highbury with her elderly widowed father, a hypochondriac who is excessively concerned for the health and safety of his loved ones. Emma's friend and only critic is the gentlemanly George Knightley, her neighbour from the adjacent estate of Donwell, and the brother of her elder sister Isabella's husband, John. As the novel opens, Emma has just attended the wedding of Miss Taylor, her best friend and former governess. Having introduced Miss Taylor to her future husband, Mr. Weston, Emma takes credit for their marriage, and decides that she rather likes matchmaking.

The story follows the main character Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education, and marriage in the society of the landed gentry of early 19th-century England. Elizabeth is the second of five daughters of a country gentleman living near the fictional town of Meryton in Hertfordshire, near London.

It is Flora's 15th birthday and she is given the strangest gift of her life. Since the age of 6, Flora had only ever known the facade walls of the Lab and its inhabitants. She had been told numerous times of the stories of the horrors of the outside world. Now, things are beginning to unravel for her. She's going outside. But why is everyone wearing the same brown jumpsuit, marching in the same fashion and are living in utter silence? Where is the honesty of the human mind, the trickery, cruelty and instincts of human behavior? Little does Flora know that a secret is being hidden from her; something to do with why she was sent away for 9 years.