Author: Natalie Jenner
Genre: Historical Fiction
Rating:★★★★☆
This historical fiction novel is a must for any Janeite who has every visited Chawton and Jane Austen’s House museum and Chawton House. It tells the story of the Jane Austen Society forming to secure and protect artifacts from her family. Its very genteel. Sweetly written characters. I enjoyed it very much.
Author: Various; Anthology Genre: Fiction Rating: ★★★★★ Ladies in Waiting: Jane Austen’s Unsung Characters is a delightful collection built on a clever, readerly question: what if Austen’s overlooked secondary women were given the fuller lives they deserved? The pieces feel like affectionate “afterstories,” imagining futures, choices, and small rebellions for characters who were often constrained…
Author: Lauren Edmondson Genre: Fiction Rating: ★★★★★ Lauren Edmondson’s Wedding of the Season centers on Cass, who returns to Newport, Rhode Island, hoping to recover from emotional wounds left by a trip gone terribly wrong. Instead of the quiet reset she expects, she finds herself pulled back into the complicated orbit of her family just as her sister’s…
Author: Louise Miller Genre: Fiction Rating: ★★★★★ Louise Miller’s The City Baker’s Guide to Country Living begins when Livvie Rawlings’s carefully built life in Boston goes down in flames, sending her retreating to Guthrie, Vermont, the small town where her best friend lives. What begins as a temporary escape slowly turns into something deeper as Livvie finds herself…
Author: Simon Sebag Montefiore Genre: History; Biography Rating: ★★★★★ Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Jerusalem: A Biography delivers the kind of expansive, meticulously researched history readers have come to expect from him. Moving across thousands of years, Montefiore traces the rise, destruction, and rebuilding of Jerusalem through empires, prophets, kings, conquerors, and pilgrims. The city emerges not just as a…
Author: Various Authors Genre: Anthology Rating: ★★★★☆ Encounters with Jane Austen: Celebrating 250 Years is a wonderfully diverse tribute—part essay collection, part poetry portfolio, part short-story gathering—assembled as a celebration of Austen’s enduring pull on readers and writers across generations. What I appreciated most is the range: scholars bring insight, popular authors bring warmth and immediacy,…
Author: Julia Whelan Genre: WOMEN’S FICTION Rating: ★★★★☆ Julia Whelan’s Thank You for Listening follows Sewanee Chester, a once-promising actress whose career and confidence were shattered by a tragic accident, leaving her physically scarred and emotionally guarded. Now working as an audiobook narrator, Sewanee survives by “faking it till she makes it,” convinced she’ll never fully heal…