Pocket
December 2009
On Sale: November 24, 2009
Featuring: Mary Bennett
464 pages ISBN: 1439158797 EAN: 9781439158791 Mass Market Paperback 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 McCulloughÕs 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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