It’s been another hard week, people, and when shit is hard, I go to Jane. Bitch only wrote six books before she died—she’d never make it in romance today. Fortunately, fanfic! Who doesn’t love a Jane Austen retelling? I used to binge read Stephanie Barron’s Jane Austen as sleuth books when they first came out, and I forgot all about her, and a couple of days ago, I got the audiobook of Jane and the 12 Days of Christmas in the library, and, loverly, such a good listen. The narrator, Kate Reading, is fantastic (she also narrates Sherry Thomas’ Lady Sherlock series).
BLURB: Christmas Eve, 1814. Jane Austen has been invited to spend the holiday with family and friends at the Vyne, the gorgeous ancestral home of the wealthy and politically prominent Chute family. As the year fades and friends begin to gather beneath the mistletoe for the twelve days of Christmas festivities, Jane and her circle are in a celebratory mood: Mansfield Parkis selling nicely; Napoleon has been banished to Elba; British forces have seized Washington, DC; and on Christmas Eve, John Quincy Adams signs the Treaty of Ghent, which will end a war nobody in England really wanted.
Jane, however, discovers holiday cheer is fleeting. One of the Yuletide gathering dies in a tragic accident whose circumstances Jane immediately views with suspicion. If the accident was in fact murder, the killer is one of Jane’s fellow snowbound guests. With clues scattered amid cleverly crafted charades, dark secrets coming to light during parlor games, and old friendships returning to haunt the Christmas parties, whom can Jane trust to help her discover the truth and stop the killer from striking again?
Stephanie Barron also writes as Francine Mathews.
Enjoy!
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