My Dear Charlotte: With the Assistance of Jane Austen's Letters

A Regency mystery featuring the actual letters of Jane Austen—perfect for fans of Sharon Lathan, Georgette Heyer, and Barbara Pym. This innovative British Regency mystery is set in the early 1800s and infused throughout with the language of Jane Austen. Quotes from Austen’s letters are incorporated into letters written by the protagonist, Elinor Cowper, to her elder sister Charlotte. From the introduction by Jan Fergus: “Of course, you don’t have to love Austen to love this book. If you enjoy detective novels, you will find here a completely satisfying murder mystery, coupled with a romance (or more than one, in fact). My Dear Charlotte gives you, in addition to mystery and romance, a portrait of the world of the English gentry at around 1815, immediately after the defeat of Napoleon—its manners and its moral certainty . . . But it’s readers of Jane Austen who will get the most pleasure from My Dear Charlotte. It is in my opinion the only successful attempt to re-create the world of Austen’s novels . . .. Holt does much more, though: she has chosen to write a novel-in-letters, which allows her to incorporate witty quotations directly from Austen’s letters into her novel, quotations about persons, occasions, the minutiae of daily life from housekeeping and shopping to the weather and human nature.” Widow Sheila Malory has been looking forward to her stay at the Bodleian Library in Oxford as a chance to research wartime women writers and catch up with old friends from her college years, the one "purely happy" time in her whole life. Her relaxing idyll is interrupted when a librarian, Gwen Richmond, is crushed to death beneath collapsed bookshelves. After the "accident" proves to be murder, Mrs. Malory's godson Tony, who also works in the library, asks her to help investigate. Gwen was manipulative and unpleasant, so there are no shortage of suspects. The dead woman's World War II diary reveal dreadful truths that may lead to the killer; they will also force Mrs. Malory to revisit the past in a new and colder light. The Cruellest Month is the second of Hazel Holt's Mrs. Malory mysteries A British Regency murder mystery/romance set in 1815, written "with the assistance of Jane Austen's letters." Balls, visits, courtships, gossip (and murder, of course!). Especially for readers who love Jane Austen, Sharon Lathan, Georgette Heyer and Barbara Pym.