Letters of Love & Deception

We Are Pleased to Announce

Letters of Love & Deception 

and other Austenesque Short Stories

has just been released from Girlebooks.com!  Each short story looks into the corners of Jane Austen's novels...or brings all of her novels together!  And each story is bite-sized: perfect for your lunchbreak or just-before-bedtime dose of Austen.

Edited to add: Make sure you read the review and interview at Girlebooks!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I: Heroes & Histories

• Miss Bates' Something Blue (Emma) - Miss Bates was not always destined for spinsterhood.  On the eve of Jane Fairfax and Frank Churchill's wedding, she rediscovers the letters from her own doomed romance.
• Letters of Love and Deception (Northanger Abbey) - Isabella Thorpe is furious: her fiance, James Moreland, had the indecency to be offended when she flirted with Captain Tilney.  And Captain Tilney has spurned her entirely.  What's a villainess to do but enlist the help of her ex-fiance's sister through a somewhat suspect letter....
• None But You (Persuasion) - On board the Laconia, the young Captain Wentworth attempts his first version of the famous Letter.
  
• A Most Persuasive Correspondance (Persuasion) - What was really happening between the treacherous Mr Elliot and the conniving Mrs Clay in Jane Austen's Persuasion?  An epistolary novelette reveals all that Austen missed!

PART II: Types & Trifles

• It Was a Dark and Stormy Night (Villains) - All the villains engage in an unwitting game of Clue as one of them winds up dead.
• Sigh No More, Ladies (Heroines) -  What's a heroine to do when thwarted in love?  Play the piano loudly, visit or write friends, drink a cup of tea and comfort, and then sigh no more!
• At the Club (Or Dr Boodle's Lovelorn Cure-All) (Heroes) - While the women are commiserating over their unfortunate estates, the gentlemen take to the club for a glass of something stiffer.  Unfortunately, it all leads to fisticuffs between Mr Darcy and Mr Tilney....
• All the King's Men (Baronets) - "To the club!"  That's the rallying cry of Austen's baronets, who seek out a world safe from the silliness of women and all these d--mn romances!
• A Matter of Resolution (Disappointed Foils) - It's New Year's Eve at Sally Jersey's party, and somehow all the wrong sort have gotten in, including the Crawfords.  What begins as a simple quest on the part of Miss Bingley, Miss Elliot and the now-married Isabella Thorpe to ensure a glass of lemonade from the elusive Mr Crawford will end in a night the ton will never forget!
• My Ladies Cat (Dowagers) - What happens when you put all of Austen's matriarchs together?  We're still picking up the pieces, too!
• Pride and Paraliterature (Monster Mash-Up!) - Darcy broods.  Swamp monsters loom.  Miss Bingley is ravished by a vampire.  And it all leads back to Mr Wickham, purveyor of human sacrifices.  It's going to be a long and broody night.