Jane and the Year Without a Summer

Informationen zum Autor Stephanie Barron was born in Binghamton, New York, the last of six girls. She attended Princeton and Stanford Universities, where she studied history, before going on to work as an intelligence analyst at the CIA. She wrote her first book in 1992 and left the Agency a year later. Since then, she has written twenty-nine books, including the critically acclaimed Merry Folger series, which she writes under the name Francine Mathews. She lives and works in Denver, Colorado Klappentext "May 1816: Jane Austen is feeling unwell, with an uneasy stomach, constant fatigue, rashes, fevers and aches. She attributes her poor condition to the stress of family burdens, which even the drafting of her latest manuscript-about a baronet's daughter nursing a broken heart for a daring naval captain-cannot alleviate. Her apothecary recommends a trial of the curative waters at Cheltenham Spa, in Gloucestershire. Jane decides to use some of the profits earned from her last novel, Emma, and treat herself to a period of rest and reflection at the spa, in the company of her sister, Cassandra. Cheltenham Spa hardly turns out to be the relaxing sojourn Jane and Cassandra envisaged, however. It is immediately obvious that other boarders at the guest house where the Misses Austen are staying have come to Cheltenham with stresses of their own-some of them deadly. But perhaps with Jane's interference a terrible crime might be prevented. Set during the Year without a Summer, when the eruption of Mount Tambora in the South Pacific caused a volcanic winter that shrouded the entire planet for sixteen months, this fourteenth installment in Stephanie Barron's critically acclaimed series brings a forgotten moment of Regency history to life"-- Leseprobe 1 Consulting the Apothecary Monday, 20th May, 1816 Chawton “Aunt Jane!”      I closed the door of Mr. Curtis’s apothecary shop behind me and glanced along the Alton High Street in search of my niece Cassie’s slight figure. I found her instantly, gloved hand swinging from Fanny’s elegant one, as the two picked their way through the fresh puddles that dotted the paving. Cassie, at seven years the eldest of my brother Charles’s three motherless girls, gloried in the undivided attention of her fashionable and much-older cousin, and her cheeks were flushed with pleasure. The young woman by her side appeared unconscious of the child’s admiration—having such a number of younger brothers and sisters, Fanny is well accustomed to adoration. At three-and-twenty, she retains her freshness of countenance, aligned with a genius for millinery, that must beguile every eye. A number of heads turned to follow the two bright countenances along the country-town street; but even in London, I suspect, Fanny would not pass unnoticed.      “She has been spoiling the child again,” my sister Cassandra observed indulgently; and indeed, Cassie clutched in her free hand a twisted bit of brown paper fresh from the local confectioner’s. A few boiled sweets, perhaps, purchased with the pennies Fanny had pressed into her palm while The Aunts, as both girls call us, conducted our business with Mr. Curtis. Harmless enough; the Lord knows that treats come only rarely in poor Cassie’s way. With my brother Charles presently at sea, his daughters have been consigned to the care of his late wife’s sister in London. I am sure that Miss Palmer is a very good sort of woman, who loves Charles’s children as her own; but her serviceable charms cannot equal in Cassie’s estimation the superior claims of Miss Fanny Austen Knight, of Godmersham Park in Kent—handsome, clever, and rich—who saunters with such ease down Alton’s modest streets, a frivolous silk parasol dangling from her hand.      Fanny and her father, my brother Edward, have been visiting us at Chawton Cottage this past fortnight, and Cassie this past month;...

Product details

• Authors: Stephanie Barron
• Publisher: Soho Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 17.01.2023
• EAN: 9781641294096
• ISBN: 978-1-64129-409-6
• No. of pages: 336
• Dimensions: 141 mm x 210 mm x 23 mm
• Series: Being A Jane Austen Mystery
• Subject: Fiction > Suspense