An Accomplished Woman

Sir Clement Carnell was the most domineering and strait-laced of fathers, and his death has left his grown children, Louisa and Valentine, with a sense of release. While Valentine throws open the Devonshire estate of Pennacombe to their fashionable cousins from London, Louisa feels free at last to reject the man her father chose as her prospective husband - Pearce Lynley.

The honourable Christopher Fancot, on leave from the Diplomatic Service in the summer of 1817, is startled to find his entrancing but incorrigibly extravagant mother on the brink of financial and social ruin - and more than alarmed that his identical twin, Evelyn, Earl of Denville, has disappeared without trace. Christopher, or Kit, the respectable brother, is forced into an outrageous masquerade by his wayward family's tangled affairs. But in the face of Evelyn's continued absence, even Kit's ingenuity is stretched to the limit.

Anne Elliot has grieved for seven years over the loss of her first love, Captain Frederick Wentworth. But events conspire to unravel the knots of deceit and misunderstanding in this beguiling and gently comic story of love and fidelity.

Picking up 20 years after Pride and Prejudice left off, Mr. Darcy's Daughters begins in the year 1818. Elizabeth and Darcy have gone to Constantinople, giving us an opportunity to get to know their five daughters, who have left the sheltered surroundings of Pemberley for a few months in London.

When Phoebe, a young niece of Pride and Prejudice's Mr. Darcy, is shattered by an unhappy romance, she retreats to Pemberley and is joined by kind-hearted Louisa Bingley, unmarried after three London seasons. Once the young ladies are situated in the house, several handsome strangers also arrive - all hopeful of winning the girls' hearts.

After being disowned by her family, Cassandra Darcy - the artistic eldest daughter of Anne de Bourgh (and granddaughter of the infamous Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Mr. Darcy's cousin in Pride and Prejudice) - strives to make a living by painting. But struggling to succeed in bohemian London turns out to be the least of her worries! To begin with, there are the unwelcome advances of a certain Lord Usborne, and then there are the letters bequeathed to her by a friend.

Young Kitty Charing stands to inherit a vast fortune from her irascible great-uncle Matthew - provided she marries one of her cousins. Kitty is not wholly adverse to the plan, if the right nephew proposes. Unfortunately, Kitty has set her heart on Jack Westruther, a confirmed rake, who seems to have no inclination to marry her anytime soon.

Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth Gaskell's last novel, is regarded by many as her masterpiece. Molly Gibson is the daughter of the doctor in the small provincial town of Hollingford. Her widowed father marries a second time to give Molly the woman's presence he feels she lacks, but until the arrival of Cynthia, her dazzling stepsister, Molly finds her situation hard to accept. Intertwined with the story of the Gibsons is that of Squire Hamley and his two sons.

When Fate and a chivalrous impulse combine to saddle Viscount Desford with a friendless, homeless waif in the engaging shape of Cherry Steane, who else should he turn to in such a scrape but his childhood playmate, Henrietta Silverdale? And although they refused to oblige their parents by marrying, they have always been the best of friends. But as Desford pursues Cherry's grandfather and father around the seedier fringes of society, Hetta is forced to wonder if he might not, at last, have fallen in love.

When Arabella first arrives in London, she has only one mission: to snare a rich husband. With a mind to beat the competition, she pretends to be a rich heiress and soon finds herself the talk of the town, pursued by the most eligible bachelors in the city. But she has her sights on one man only: the much-hunted Mr Beaumaris. Our feisty heroine puts up a fight and deals the worldly-wise Beaumaris a deft hand in the game of love; at first grudgingly charmed, he soon becomes smitten.