Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas - Being a Jane Austen Mystery

Zusatztext 90530511 Informationen zum Autor Stephanie Barron Klappentext Jane Austen turns sleuth in this delightful murder mystery set over the twelve days of a Regency-Era Christmas party. Christmas Eve, 1814: Jane Austen has been invited to spend the holiday with family and friends at The Vyne, the gorgeous ancestral home of the wealthy and politically prominent Chute family. As the year fades and friends begin to gather beneath the mistletoe for the twelve days of Christmas festivities, Jane and her circle are in a celebratory mood: Mansfield Park is selling nicely; Napoleon has been banished to Elba; British forces have seized Washington, DC; and on Christmas Eve, John Quincy Adams signs the Treaty of Ghent, which will end a war nobody in England really wanted. Jane, however, discovers holiday cheer is fleeting. One of the Yuletide revelers dies in a tragic accident, which Jane immediately views with suspicion. If the accident was in fact murder, the killer is one of Jane's fellow snow-bound guests. With clues scattered amidst cleverly crafted charades, dark secrets coming to light during parlor games, and old friendships returning to haunt the Christmas parties, whom can Jane trust to help her discover the truth and stop the killer from striking again? CHAPTER ONE: Encounter in a Storm Saturday, 24th December 1814 Steventon Parsonage, Hampshire “Jane,” said my mother over the lolling head of the parson slumbering beside her, “be so good as to shift your bandbox and secure my reticule. I cannot manage the hamper with one hand, to be sure.”          “No, indeed.” I pressed my bandbox—already crushed from the confines of the stage, which was crowded beyond bearing—into my friend Martha’s lap, and seized my mother’s purse. She had netted it from silk, an effort demanding considerable invention and time; none of us should hear the end of it if Mrs. Austen’s work were ruined, well before it could be universally admired. I braced my booted feet against the unsteady coach’s floor and cradled the reticule as tenderly as a newborn babe.         My mother’s hamper was a sturdy article, its contents swaddled in linen. She had provided herself with a nuncheon of cold brawn, cheese and bread, and was determined to partake of it when we quitted the coach at Basingstoke. I doubt that any of our party had the stomach for brawn—which is invariably strong in both taste and smell—after swaying together for more than fifteen miles. Martha appeared faint and my sister Cassandra has never borne well with public conveyances since the overturning of our chaise a decade ago in Lyme. For my own part, a medicinal glass of mulled wine seemed in order: My feet were become as insensible as ice, for the interior of the carriage was almost as frigid as the air without.         The odor of pickled boar’s head wafted to my nostrils; Mamma had determined to inspect the hamper’s contents. She was inordinately fond of brawn; it was just such a dish as recalled the festivities of her girlhood, when meals were less elegant and more English. I reflected that the increase in the numbers of French among us—due to the horrors of the guillotine and Buonaparte—has done much to improve the British palate in recent years.         “ Lord ,” whispered Cassandra hurriedly, one gloved hand over her pinched nostrils. She was seated on my left, closer to the hamper than Martha or I.         “Never fear,” I murmured. “A quarter-mile at most shall end the agony.”         We wallowed through the rutted outskirts of Basingstoke, the stage lurching as though at sea. We ought to have been six within, but the coachman’s avarice had persuaded him to add two more to his complement, burly fellows of the prosperous yeoman class. These were snoring within moments of our departure. Their personal cleanliness did not appear remarkable. Martha huddled ag...

Product details

• Authors: Stephanie Barron
• Publisher: Soho Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 27.10.2015
• EAN: 9781616955724
• ISBN: 978-1-61695-572-4
• No. of pages: 352
• Dimensions: 140 mm x 209 mm x 23 mm
• Series: Being A Jane Austen Mystery; Being A Jane Austen Mystery
• Subject: Fiction > Suspense