The Women
All Creatures Great & Small

Miss Austen

For fans of Jo Baker’s Longbourn, a witty, wonderfully original novel about Cassandra Austen and her famous sister, Jane.

Whoever looked at an elderly lady and saw the young heroine she once was?

England, 1840. Two decades after the death of her beloved sister, Jane, Cassandra Austen returns to the village of Kintbury and the home of her family friends, the Fowles. In a dusty corner of the vicarage, there is a cache of Jane’s letters that Cassandra is desperate to find. Dodging her hostess and a meddlesome housemaid, Cassandra eventually hunts down the letters and confronts the secrets they hold, secrets not only about Jane but about Cassandra herself. Will Cassandra bare the most private details of her life to the world, or commit her sister’s legacy to the flames?

Moving back and forth between the vicarage and Cassandra’s vibrant memories of her years with Jane, interwoven with Jane’s brilliantly reimagined lost letters, Miss Austen is the untold story of the most important person in Jane’s life. With extraordinary empathy, emotional complexity, and wit, Gill Hornby finally gives Cassandra her due, bringing to life a woman as captivating as any Austen heroine.

More Non-Juvenile Books

  • From legendary playwright August Wilson comes the powerful, stunning dramatic bestseller that won him critical acclaim, including the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize.
  • In Finding Margaret Fuller, the remarkable life of Margaret Fuller unfolds as she navigates the intellectual circles of 19th-century America, becoming a mentor to Louisa May Alcott and inspiring Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. As she breaks barriers—becoming the first woman allowed to study at Harvard and the first female foreign news correspondent—Fuller embarks on a journey filled with passion, revolution, and self-discovery, ultimately challenging the societal norms of her time.
  • Settle in with these Garfield Sunday funnies, handpicked and annotated by celebrated Garfield cartoonist Jim Davis.