Simon & Schuster
January 2009
On Sale: December 30, 2008
Featuring: Mary Bennet
352 pages ISBN: 1416596488 EAN: 9781416596486 Hardcover Add to Wish List
Everyone knows the story of Elizabeth and Jane Bennet in
Pride and Prejudice. But what about their sister
Mary? At the conclusion of Jane Austen's classic novel,
Mary, bookish, awkward, and by all accounts, unmarriageable,
is sentenced to a dull, provincial existence in the
backwaters of Britain. Now, master storyteller Colleen
McCullough rescues Mary from her dreary fate with The
Independence of Miss Mary Bennet, a page-turning sequel
set twenty years after Austen's novel closes.
The story
begins as the neglected Bennet sister is released from the
stultifying duty of caring for her insufferable mother.
Though many would call a woman of Mary's age a spinster, she
has blossomed into a beauty to rival that of her famed
sisters. Her violet eyes and perfect figure bewitch the
eligible men in the neighborhood, but though her family
urges her to marry, romance and frippery hold no attraction.
Instead, she is determined to set off on an adventure of her
own. Fired with zeal by the newspaper letters of the
mysterious Argus, she resolves to publish a book about the
plight of England's poor. Plunging from one predicament into
another, Mary finds herself stumbling closer to long-buried
secrets, unanticipated dangers, and unlooked-for
romance.
Meanwhile, the other dearly loved characters
of Pride and Prejudice fret about the missing Mary
while they contend with difficulties of their own. Darcy's
political ambitions consume his ardor, and he bothers with
Elizabeth only when the impropriety of her family seems to
threaten his career. Lydia, wild and charming as ever,
drinks and philanders her way into dire straits; Kitty, a
young widow of means, occupies herself with gossip and
shopping; and Jane, naïve and trusting as ever, spends her
days ministering to her crop of boys and her adoring, if not
entirely faithful, husband. Yet, with the shadowy and
mysterious figure of Darcy's right-hand man, Ned Skinner,
lurking at every corner, it is clear that all is not what it
seems at idyllic Pemberley.
As the many threads of
McCullough's masterful plot come together, shocking truths
are revealed, love, both old and new, is tested, and all
learn the value of true independence in a novel for every
woman who has wanted to leave her mark on the world.
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