Bücher von Anne Harlowe

This book was originally a novella entitled Poet of Pemberley and the main characters were Darcy and Elizabeth of Pride and Prejudice fame-but the author, tired of hanging onto Jane Austen's bonnet strings, decided to rewrite it to stand on its own merits (or lack thereof!). The new title is still somewhat Jane Austen-ish, but she has no doubt that Darcy wasn't the only proud young man in the Regency period. Her proud young man is called Lacy, and Lilian Helliwell replaces Elizabeth Bennet. Lacy and Lilian's relationship is nothing like the perfect relationship portrayed in Pride and Prejudice (if such a thing can exist), which was a stumbling block to some readers of the original version as they couldn't accept that Darcy would stray. Changing Darcy for Lacy solved that problem. The change is appropriate, because the book was never much of a P&P sequel, but more of a book about poets and poetry with lots of Regency raunch thrown in. Lord Lacy, an aspiring poet, writes a love poem to an eligible young lady called Amelia, but she laughs at him and rejects him. Later, he falls in love with a penniless curate's daughter, but his pride offends her and his poetry puts her off even more. She tames his pride (though she can do nothing about his poetry) and agrees to marry him, only to find that "his mistress is his muse", and their marriage is wrecked-can Lacy win her back, and will he have to give up poetry to do so?

"Good," said Wickham, studying his reflection in the large looking-glass over the fireplace. "I used to be rather fond of angling. It's all in the bait, you see. Throw 'em a bit of juicy bait, and you've hooked 'em before you can say Jack Robinson - and with bait like this..." He caressed his elegantly-folded cravat and admired himself in the mirror. Jane Austen described Wickham as "One of the most worthless young men in Great Britain". This book explores Wickham's worthlessness from his early days as a young rake and fortune-hunter in London, through his seduction of Georgiana Darcy in Ramsgate, to his elopement with the fifteen-year-old Lydia. It goes on to describe how he reaps what he sows in Lydia's gradual transformation into another Mrs Bennet.

Everything is going wrong for the Duke of Wharfedale: his wife his having an affair, a highwayman is haunting his domains, and Dalesman Dalton is opposing his plans for the new almshouse. Everything is going wrong for Dolly, too. Her father is insisting she marries sickleworker Fred Figget - and if that is not bad enough, she gets held up by the highwayman when she is delivering her father's churns to market. Matters come to a head when the duke's wife elopes with her lover, and Dolly finds the highwayman, badly wounded, in her aunt's barn. WARNING: Hot! Contains numerous sizzling sex scenes!

Captain Cardew prefers balls at regional assemblies and small country houses because there he can meet the daughters of the lower class of gentry, who are impressed by his uniform and his rank, and are easily seduced. At one of these balls, at Hawtry Hall, he meets Millicent, a doctor's daughter, and Hannah, a clergyman's daughter, and seduces them both, one after the other. But, as he has found before, it is much easier to get into these affairs than to get out of them.

While in the middle of writing a book of study notes for Pride and Prejudice, the author took a break and amused herself by writing a short story in the style of Jane Austen entitled A Night at Pemberley. She submitted it to a Jane Austen Fan Fiction web site and it was well received, encouraging her to attempt other, ever wilder, flights of Jane Austen-based fantasy - Darcy as a vampire, Darcy falling in love with Ann Radcliffe's Emily instead of Elizabeth, ghosts at Pemberley (from Mrs De Burgh's comment about the "shades of Pemberley", and many more. Darcy fans should note that these stories celebrate the gothic, rather than the romantic, in Jane Austen's oeuvre. They are the kind of gothic burlesque which Jane Austen herself enjoyed writing in her early work, particularly Northanger Abbey. The author also expresses some scepticism about the relationship between Darcy and Elizabeth - which is heresy to many Jane Austen fans - you have been warned! She has also written several other Jane Austen inspired works, including Wickham, Darcy's Daughters and Sex and Sensibility, and enjoyed it so much that the study notes are still unfinished.

Lord Lacy's daughter, Emily, is persuaded by her parents to marry the ageing Lord Dalrymple. After all, he has a title, Earl of Morpeth, and a mansion, Crookhill Abbey, that is even more extensive than Lord Lacy's mansion in Buxton. However, when Emily gets to Northumberland, she finds that Crookhill Abbey is little better than a crumbling mausoleum. Crookhill Abbey is not quite a Jane Austen sequel - but there are echoes of Jane Austen's, Pride and Prejudice - also Eliza Parsons', The Castle of Wolfenbach, and Ann Radcliffe's, The Mysteries of Udolpho. However, there are also many new characters, including the heroine, Emily, the anti-hero, Lord Dalrymple, Thomas, a struggling artist, and his aristocratic lover, Catherine, all tangled up in an original plot that leads them to - the horrors of Crookhill Abbey.