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Claudia Gray Interview – Jane Austen and Murder
Author Guest , Interviews / May 4, 2022

Miranda Owen: As soon as I read the description for THE MURDER OF MR. WICKHAM, I was immediately intrigued. I love Jane Austen, and I love mysteries. What inspired you to write this book?    Claudia Gray: Make no mistake – I am a huge PD James fan – but when I first read Death Comes to Pemberley a decade ago, I couldn’t imagine why she cast Denny as the victim. Has anyone ever worried about what happened to Denny? Wickham was right there, being awful, surrounded by people who had very strong motives to loathe the guy. Eventually I decided, maybe I should stop wishing this very good book would be something it isn’t. If I think some novelist should kill off Mr. Wickham, then I’m going to do it myself.    MO: I love the idea of playing around with characters from a classic novel and putting them in different circumstances and mixing characters from different works by the same author. Is this something you’d do again with a different author? Like Charles Dickens? Do you think you stayed true to the essence of the characters while giving them a new spin?    CG: My hope is that…

Stephanie Barron | 20 Questions: JANE AND THE YEAR WITHOUT A SUMMER
Author Guest / February 21, 2022

1–What is the title of your latest release? JANE AND THE YEAR WITHOUT A SUMMER 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? Jane Austen stumbles over a body while vacationing in the spa town of Cheltenham, and solves the murder with the help of dishy painter Raphael West. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? This is the 14th book in the long-running Jane Austen Mystery Series, which follows the famous author’s life. We’ve reached 1816, which has gone down in history as the Year Without a Summer, because a volcanic eruption in Indonesia had a global impact on climate that caused relentless rain and worldwide famine. Eeek! It’s the same summer that Mary Shelley famously wrote Frankenstein because she was stuck indoors with Lord Byron, telling ghost stories around the fire in wretched July weather. Jane took a trip to the party town of Cheltenham in late May, 1816, so I set the book there. 4–Would you hang out with your heroine in real life? Absolutely. I’ve been hanging with Jane for 26 years, now, sending her on all sorts of bloody and intriguing adventures. I love her viciously funny way with words,…

Fresh Pick | PERSUASION by Jane Austen
Fresh Pick / January 30, 2011

Modern Library Classics June 2001 On Sale: June 12, 2001 Featuring: Anne Elliot; Frederick Wentworth 224 pages ISBN: 0375757295 EAN: 9780375757297 Paperback $5.95 Add to Wish List Fiction Buy at Amazon.com Ultimate novel of second chance love Persuasion by Jane Austen Called a ‘perfect novel’ by Harold Bloom, Persuasion was written while Jane Austen was in failing health. She died soon after its completion, and it was published in an edition with Northanger Abbey in 1818. In the novel, Anne Elliot, the heroine Austen called ‘almost too good for me,’ has let herself be persuaded not to marry Frederick Wentworth, a fine and attractive man without means. Eight years later, Captain Wentworth returns from the Napoleonic Wars with a triumphant naval career behind him, a substantial fortune to his name, and an eagerness to wed. Austen explores the complexities of human relationships as they change over time. ‘She is a prose Shakespeare,’ Thomas Macaulay wrote of Austen in 1842. ‘She has given us a multitude of characters, all, in a certain sense, commonplace. Yet they are all as perfectly discriminated from each other as if they were the most eccentric of human beings.’ Persuasion is the last work of one…

Fresh Pick | WRITING JANE AUSTEN by Elizabeth Aston
Fresh Pick / November 3, 2010

April 2010 On Sale: April 13, 2010 Featuring: Georgina Jackson 320 pages ISBN: 141658787X EAN: 9781416587873 Trade Size $15.00 Add to Wish List Women’s Fiction Contemporary Buy at Amazon.com Writing Jane Austen by Elizabeth Aston Critically acclaimed and award-winning—but hardly bestselling—author Georgina Jackson can’t get past the first chapter of her second book. When she receives an urgent email from her agent, Georgina is certain it’s bad news. Shockingly, she’s offered a commission to complete a newly discovered manuscript by a major nineteenth-century author. Skeptical at first about her ability to complete the manuscript, Georgina is horrified to know that the author in question is Jane Austen. Torn between pushing through or fleeing home to America, Georgina relies on the support of her banker-turned-science student roommate, Henry, and his quirky teenage sister, Maud—a serious Janeite. With a sudden financial crisis looming, the only way Georgina can get by is to sign the hugely lucrative contract and finish the book. Excerpt Email from [email protected] To [email protected] Ring me. Henry stood at the door of Georgina’s room, holding a weighty textbook in one hand and marking his place with a finger. He looked at his lodger with concern. “Gina, why the screech…

Fresh Pick | ACCORDING TO JANE by Marilyn Brant
Fresh Pick / October 24, 2009

October 2009On Sale: October 1, 2009Featuring: Ellie Barnett; Sam Blaine352 pages ISBN: 0758234619EAN: 9780758234612Paperback$14.00 Romance Contemporary Buy at Amazon.com According To Jane by Marilyn Brant It begins one day in sophomore English class, just as Ellie Barnett’s teacher is assigning Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”. From nowhere comes a quiet ‘tsk’ of displeasure. The target: Sam Blaine, the cute bad boy who’s teasing Ellie mercilessly, just as he has since kindergarten. Entirely unbidden, as Jane might say, the author’s ghost has taken up residence in Ellie’s mind, and seems determined to stay there. Jane’s wise and witty advice guides Ellie through the hell of adolescence and beyond, serving as the voice she trusts, usually far more than her own. Years and boyfriends come and go – sometimes a little too quickly, sometimes not nearly fast enough. But Jane’s counsel is constant, and on the subject of Sam, quite insistent. Stay away, Jane demands. He is your Mr. Wickham. Still, everyone has something to learn about love – perhaps even Jane herself. And lately, the voice in Ellie’s head is being drowned out by another, urging her to look beyond everything she thought she knew and seek out her very own,…

Fresh Pick | RUDE AWAKENINGS OF A JANE AUSTEN ADDICT by Laurie Viera Rigler
Fresh Pick / October 23, 2009

July 2009On Sale: June 25, 2009Featuring: Jane Mansfield; Wes304 pages ISBN: 0525950761EAN: 9780525950769Hardcover$25.95 Romance Historical, Romance Paranormal Buy at Amazon.com Rude Awakenings Of A Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler The eagerly anticipated sequel to Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict Laurie Viera Rigler’s debut novel, Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, was a hit with fans and critics, and a BookSense and Los Angeles Times bestseller. Its open-to-interpretation ending left readers begging for more—and Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict delivers. While Confessions took twenty-first-century free spirit Courtney Stone into the social confines of Jane Austen’s era, Rude Awakenings tells the parallel story of Jane Mansfield, a gentleman’s daughter from Regency England who inexplicably awakens in Courtney’s overly wired and morally confused L.A. life. For Jane, the modern world is not wholly disagreeable. Her apartment may be smaller than a dressing closet, but it is fitted up with lights that burn without candles, machines that wash bodies and clothes, and a glossy rectangle in which tiny people perform scenes from her favorite book, Pride and Prejudice. Granted, if she wants to travel she may have to drive a formidable metal carriage, but she may do so without…

Fresh Pick | THE INDEPENDENCE OF MISS MARY BENNET by Colleen McCullough
Fresh Pick / October 19, 2009

January 2009On Sale: December 30, 2008Featuring: Mary Bennet352 pages ISBN: 1416596488EAN: 9781416596486Hardcover$26.00 Historical Buy at Amazon.com The Independence Of Miss Mary Bennet by Colleen McCullough Everyone knows the story of Elizabeth and Jane Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. But what about their sister Mary? At the conclusion of Jane Austen’s classic novel, Mary, bookish, awkward, and by all accounts, unmarriageable, is sentenced to a dull, provincial existence in the backwaters of Britain. Now, master storyteller Colleen McCullough rescues Mary from her dreary fate with The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet, a page-turning sequel set twenty years after Austen’s novel closes. The story begins as the neglected Bennet sister is released from the stultifying duty of caring for her insufferable mother. Though many would call a woman of Mary’s age a spinster, she has blossomed into a beauty to rival that of her famed sisters. Her violet eyes and perfect figure bewitch the eligible men in the neighborhood, but though her family urges her to marry, romance and frippery hold no attraction. Instead, she is determined to set off on an adventure of her own. Fired with zeal by the newspaper letters of the mysterious Argus, she resolves to publish a…

Monica Fairview | When Caroline Bingley Spoke…I Listened
Uncategorized / October 16, 2009

On what must have been an ordinary day in my life, I woke up with a strange idea. I ignored it, got on with my usual routine, and hoped it would go away. But it didn’t. So on that perfectly ordinary day, I made a fateful decision: I was going to write about Caroline Bingley. Yes, Caroline Bingley, the woman in Pride and Prejudice that everyone loves to hate. Surely not? I really had someone rather different in my mind for my next novel. I’d finished An Improper Suitor, a regency romance, and I’d had such a wonderful time writing it that I was all geared up to continue with one of the characters. But Caroline had wormed herself into my mind, and she refused to go away. The thing is, I was probably one of the few people on the planet that didn’t really dislike her. Which is probably why she’d come to me to plead her case. To read more about the conversation between Ms. Fairview and Ms. Bingley please click here. Visit FreshFiction.com to learn more about books and authors.