In her latest spellbinding escapade, Jane Austen arrives in London to
watch over the printing of her first novel, and finds herself embroiled
in a crime that could end more than her career. For it is up to Jane to
tease a murderer out of the ton, lest she--and her country--suffer a
dastardly demise....
On the heels of completing Sense and Sensibility, Jane heads to Sloane
Street for a monthlong visit with her brother Henry and his wife, Eliza.
Hobnobbing with the Fashionable Great at the height of the Season, Jane
is well aware of their secrets and peccadilloes. But even she is
surprised when the intimate correspondence between a Russian princess
and a prominent Tory minister is published in the papers for all to see.
More shocking, the disgraced beauty is soon found with her throat slit
on Lord Castlereagh's very doorstep.
Everyone who's anyone in high society is certain the spurned princess
committed the violence upon herself. But Jane is unconvinced. Nor does
she believe the minister guilty of so grisly and public a crime. Jane,
however, is willing to let someone else investigate--until a quirk of
fate thrusts her and Eliza into the heart of the case...as prime
suspects!
Striking a bargain with the authorities, Jane secures seven days to save
herself and Eliza from hanging. But as her quest to unmask a killer
takes her from the halls of government to the drawing rooms of London's
most celebrated courtesan, only one thing is sure: her failure will not
only cut short her life. It could lead to England's downfall. A
compulsively readable, uncommonly elegant novel of historical suspense,
Jane and the Barque of Frailty once again proves Jane Austen a sleuth to
be reckoned with.
