Fresh FIction Box Not To Miss
To The Manor Born
History / April 13, 2018

As weather turns toward spring, thoughts turn toward love…and those of us who adore lushly romantic period drama sigh and miss “Downton Abbey” anew. What to do, but search for Downtonesque-books to fill that yearning? We begin in the Victorian era with Meredith Allard’s WHEN IT RAINED AT HEMBRY CASTLE. Wealthy American Daphne accompanies her father Frederick to England to visit his dying father, the 8th Earl of Staton. Discovering after their arrival that her cousin Richard, the earl’s heir, has no interest in either the title or the estate he is to inherit, Daphne’s father feels compelled to remain after his father’s death and run the estate for the unreliable new earl. Daphne is drawn into the aristocratic life by her grandmother, the dowager countess, who wants to turn her into an English lady and wed her to a titled husband. Although Daphne finds Edward Ellis, an enterprising young journalist—and grandson of Hembry Castle’s butler—far more fascinating that the aristocrats her grandmother recommends, Edward doesn’t travel in the same society as the residents of Hembry Castle—and is supposed to marry another girl. Love, duty and destiny clash as Daphne tried to untangle the complex web of conflicting interests and…