Secrets, poverty, a kind guardian and an unkind one, smallpox, disfigurement, an illegitimate child, a court case that drags on for years,  love, death, a half-mad woman, spontaneous human combustion, a prodigal son, renunciation, comedy, tragedy, strange characters with stranger names, (Guppy, Snagsby, Jellyby)  loyalty, suspicion, drama, murder. Bleak House by Charles Dickens has it all. Bleak House is considered one of Dickens’ best works and the reason is clear.  He takes a vast array of characters, plots and sub-plots and weaves them into a cohesive whole, in the process creating a book that is hard to put down.  The novel revolves around a court case, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, that…