It's with a heavy heart that Jane Austen takes up a new
residence
at Chawton Cottage in Hampshire. Secretly mourning the lost
love of her
life, she's stunned to learn that the late Lord Harold
Trowbridge has
made her heir to an extraordinary bequest: a Bengal chest
filled with
his diaries, letters, and most intimate correspondence. From
these,
Jane is expected to write a memoir of the Gentleman Rogue
for
posterity. But before she can put pen to paper on this labor
of love,
she discovers a corpse in the cellar of her new
home.
The dead
man was a common laborer, and a subsequent coroner's
examination shows
he was murdered elsewhere and transported to Chawton
Cottage. Suddenly
Jane and her family are thrust into the center of a brewing
scandal in
this provincial village that doesn't take kindly to
outsiders in
general--and to Austens in particular.
And just as
Jane glimpses
a connection between the murder and the shattering truth
concealed
somewhere in Lord Harold's papers, violent death strikes yet
another
unsuspecting vicitim. Suddenly there are suspects and
motives
everywhere Jane looks--local burglaries, thwarted passions,
would-be
knights, and members of the royal family itself who want
Lord Harold
hushed . . . even in death. As the tale of one man's
illustrious life
unfolds--a life that runs a parallel course to the history
of two
continents--Jane races against time to catch a cunning
killer before
more innocent lives are taken. But her determination to
protect Lord
Harold's legacy could exact the costliest price of all: her
own life.
Jane and His Lordship's Legacy is
historical suspense writing at its very finest, graced
with insight,
perception, and uncommon intelligence of its singular
heroine in a
mystery that will test the mettle of her mind and heart.
Being a Jane Austen Mystery
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