A young Jane Austen adventure to uncover the mystery and solve the crimes.

‘A real treat for bookworms.’ – Lucy Strange, children’s author of The Ghost of Gosswater Join young, budding detective Jane Austen in her second investigation to uncover a devious diamond thief at the glitziest, most scandalous ball of the year! Inspired by Sense and Sensibility. When the headmistress invites her past favourite pupil to attend their end of term ball, Cassandra brings her younger sister, Jane, along too. Cassandra plunges into the feverish excitement of preparing for the biggest event of the year – the dresses, the dances and the boys expected from the neighbouring school. Feeling rather excluded, sharp-witted Jane unearths the reason for the fuss – the headteacher wants to impress a rich family returned from India as the school is at risk of going bankrupt. Jane also befriends the dancing master’s assistant, a former slave, called Brandon, who is as quick to notice things as she. At the ball, a diamond necklace is stolen from a locked room and they are propelled into a race to uncover the burglar and save Brandon from gaol. With the ever-present Austen spirit, Jane with notebook in hand, boldly overcomes the obstacles to finding the truth.

The first book to investigate Jane Austen's popular significance today, Everybody's Jane considers why Austen matters to amateur readers, how they make use of her novels, what they gain from visiting places associated with her, and why they create works of fiction and nonfiction inspired by her novels and life.The voices of everyday readers emerge from both published and unpublished sources, including interviews conducted with literary tourists and archival research into the founding of the Jane Austen Society of North America and the exceptional Austen collection of Alberta Hirshheimer Burke of Baltimore.Additional topics include new Austen portraits; portrayals of Austen, and of Austen fans, in film and fiction; and hybrid works that infuse Austen's writings with horror, erotica, or explicit Christianity.Everybody's Jane will appeal to all those who care about Austen and will change how we think about the importance of literature and reading today.

ECPA award winner 2023 - Best fiction cover Set in the early industrial revolution and the great canal building age, a young Jane Austen takes on the role of detective as she seeks to solve the mysterious events at the Oxford canal terminus. Nearing completion, convicts work on completing the wharf overseen by the charming secretary Mr George, who shows Jane around. A rude convict Gardiner does not make a good impression though. When Gardiner goes missing and canal funds turn up short, an exciting manhunt ensues but Jane begins to expect something suspicious about the secretary and the reasons why Gardiner was in prison. Were Jane's first impressions very wrong about the relative merits of the convict and the secretary? With the ever-present Austen spirit, Jane with notebook in hand, boldly overcomes the obstacles to finding the truth and exposes some intriguing secrets. Inspired by Austen's third novel Pride and Prejudice.

No other author uses abstract nouns as extensively as Jane Austen. Three of her six novels even draw on such words for their titles: Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion. Terms like 'elegance', 'gentility' and 'propriety' seem to define her well-ordered, judgemental world. In making the fine moral, psychological and social discriminations on which her plots depend, Jane Austen draws on the vocabulary of her age, which is both more abstract and more fixed than that of today. But as this study shows, she was capable of subtlety and even ambiguity in her deployment of such key concepts. Here, Maggie Lane, acclaimed author of many Jane Austen books, turns her attention to the fascinating nuances of Austen's language and the way it embodies her most profound beliefs about human conduct and character.

In 1807, genteel, Bermuda-born Fanny Palmer (1789-1814) married Jane Austen's youngest brother, Captain Charles Austen, and was thrust into a demanding life within the world of the British navy. Experiencing adventure and adversity in wartime conditions both at sea and onshore, the spirited and resilient Fanny travelled between and lived in Bermuda, Halifax, Nova Scotia, and England. After crossing the Atlantic in 1811, she ingeniously made a home for Charles and their daughters aboard a working naval vessel, and developed a supportive friendship with his sister, Jane. In Jane Austen’s Transatlantic Sister, Fanny’s articulate and informative letters – transcribed in full for the first time and situated in their meticulously researched historical context – disclose her quest for personal identity and autonomy, her maturation as a wife and mother, and the domestic, cultural, and social milieu she inhabited. Sheila Johnson Kindred also investigates how Fanny was a source of naval knowledge for Jane, and how much she was an inspiration for Austen’s literary invention, especially for the female naval characters in Persuasion. Although she died young, Fanny’s story is a compelling record of female naval life that contributes significantly to our limited knowledge of women’s roles in the Napoleonic Wars. Enhanced by rarely seen illustrations, Fanny’s life story is a rich new source for Jane Austen scholars and fans of her fiction as well as for those interested in biography, women’s letters, and history of the family.

"Like a modern-day Agatha Christie bestowed with a hefty dollop of Jane Austen."—Laura Childs, #1 New York Times bestselling author Jane Austen meets reality TV and murder in this quirky cozy mystery—the first in a new series! Phaedra Brighton is perfectly content with her life of lecturing college students, gossiping with her best friends, and dreaming of Mr. Darcy. As a young, respected (if somewhat peculiar) English professor, her expertise lies in all things Jane Austen—but she knows that the closest she'll ever get to being a real-life Elizabeth Bennet is in her dreams. When Who Wants to Marry Mr. Darcy, a new reality TV show, starts filming at her best friend Charlene's estate, Phaedra is intrigued. And when the producer asks her to lend her Austenian knowledge as a consultant on the show, she's over the moon. But on the first day of filming, when Charlene's new husband is found electrocuted and Charlene herself is accused of the crime, Phaedra comes crashing back to reality. With murder on the syllabus and her best friend in dire straits, there's no Mr. Darcy around to help Phaedra—she'll have to get to the bottom of this mystery herself.