JANE AND THE UNPLEASANTNESS AT SCARGRAVE MANOR

Readers love her as an author, now they'll embrace her as the sleuth in Stephanie Barron's new mysteries. Not long after Jane Austen arrives at the estate of her friend, the Countess of Scargrave, her elderly husband, the Earl, succumbs to a mysterious illness. The widow then becomes the target of some sinister accusations. Jane attempts to get to the bottom of this complex puzzle, putting herself in the gravest jeopardy as she follows a trail of clues that leads all the way to the House of Lords.

JANE AND THE MAN OF THE CLOTH

Jane Austen and her family are looking forward to a peaceful late-summer holiday in the seaside village of Lyme Regis. But on the road thither, a fearful storm and an overturned carriage lead the shaken travelers to seek refuge at High Down Grange. And there, in a dismal manor house wrapped in an air of malevolent neglect, Jane meets the darkly forbidding yet strangely attractive master of High Down Grange, Mr. Geoffrey Sidmouth. What murky secrets does the brooding Mr. Sidmouth hope to homeserve behind his fierce glower? And who is the exceedingly lovely young woman dressed in peasant garb who shares his home? Once settled in town, Jane seeks to learn the answers. Yet common gossip is soon forgotten when a man is found hanged from a makeshift gibbet by the sea. Only the day before, Jane had observed this same man in a heated exchange with Mr. Sidmouth. Still, the worthies of Lyme are certain the labourer's death is the work of "the Reverend," the notorious ringleader of the midnight smuggling trade. The Reverend's identity is the paramount mystery of Lyme Regis. And Jane, who can never resist a puzzle, is determined to solve this one. But to her dismay, she must soon admit that she harbours a strange sensibility for a man who could very well be a murderer. And then a second mysterious death draws her into a perilous scheme to entrap and expose Geoffrey Sidmouth. From the drawing-rooms of the cultured and the devious to secret caverns and coarse haunts, her mission will take her far from a lady's proper venue...until even so canny a student of character and valiant adventurer must ask herself: "Is the prize worth the risk - to my heart as well as my person?"

JANE AND THE WANDERING EYE

As Christmas of 1804 approaches, Jane Austen finds herself "insupportably bored with Bath, and the littleness of a town". It is with something like relief, then, that she accepts a peculiar commission from Lord Harold Trowbridge to shadow his niece, Lady Desdemona, who has fled to Bath to avoid the attentions of an arrogant and unsavory earl. Little does she suspect that it will lead to murder.

JANE AND THE GENIUS OF THE PLACE

In the waning days of summer, Jane Austen is off to the Canterbury Races, where the rich and fashionable go to gamble away their fortunes. It is an atmosphere ripe for scandal. But even Jane is unhomepared for the shocking drama that ensues when a raven-haired wanton in a scarlet riding habit takes center stage. She is Francoise Grey, a flamboyant French beauty who has cast a spell over the gentlemen of Cent...and her unbridled behavior at the races invites the most scandalous speculation. What can Mrs Grey be thinking, Jane wonders, to so brazenly strike a gentleman with her whip? And what recklessness then spurs her to leap the rail on her fleet black horse and join the race? Only hours after Mrs. Grey has departed the race grounds in triumph will Jane realize the full import of her questions. For in a shabby chaise less than a hundred feet from where Jane sat, the impossible is revealed: Mrs. Grey's lifeless body, gruesomely strangled, her ruby riding habit nowhere to be found. As those around her rush to arrest the owner of the chaise - a known scoundrel with eyes for Franoise - Jane looks further afield to find a number of others behaving oddly, including the dashing military man caught rifling through the dead woman's desk, the widower who does not appear to be grieving, and the shy governess curiously overpowered by the horror of the Frenchwoman's death. As rumors shomead like wildfire that Napoleon's fleet is bound for Kent, Jane begins to suspect that Franoise Grey's murder was an act of war rather than a crime of passion. The peaceful fields of Kent have become a very dangerous place...and Jane's thirst for justice may exact the steepest price of all - her life.

JANE AND THE STILLROOM MAID

Jane Austen is enjoying a summer visit to Derbyshire's craggy peaks, sparkling streams, and cavernous gorges. But there, amid scenes of unsurpassed beauty, she stumbles upon the ugliest slaughter she has ever seen. High in the rocks near the town of Bakewell lies the body of a young gentleman. With blond curls and delicate features, the victim has the face of an angel - yet Jane can see that he had been shot in the forehead and savagely mutilated." "But even more shocking is the revelation gleaned from the surgeon's examination: the deceased is in fact a woman - a maidservant clad in the garb of her master, Mr. Charles Danforth of Penfolds Hall. Tess Arnold had been in charge of the stillroom at Penfolds for many years and was known as an adept preserver of produce and compounder of home remedies - until, it seems, she was dismissed for a scandalous indiscretion." "Was Tess, Jane wonders, the gory prey of a madman loose in the hills? Or was she, perchance, the cast-off impediment to a young nobleman's marriage? Is there any merit to the claims of the ranting blacksmith, who speculates that Tess fell victim to a ritual execution - the dark side of the secret brotherhood of the Freemasons?" "A fortuitous encounter with Lord Harold Trowbridge, Jane's Gentleman Rogue, affords her ample opportunity to study local gentry. She soon learns that the two Danforth brothers of Penfold Hall could not be more dissimilar: Andrew, jovial and ambitious, Charles, lame and taciturn, given to midnight rambles and haunted by the successive deaths of his wife and four children. The common folk whisper that he is cursed - or worse. Through it all, Jane's genius for observation, interrogation, and artifice places her routinely at risk - and just out of sight lurks a killer from whom little can protect her.

JANE AND THE PRISONER OF WOOL HOUSE

In her sixth engrossing outing, Jane Austen employs her delicious wit and family ties to the Royal Navy in a case of murder on the high seas. Somewhere in the picturesque British port of Southampton, among a crew of colorful, eccentric, and fiercely individual souls, a killer has come ashore. And only Jane can fathom the depths of his ruthless mind....

JANE AND THE GHOSTS OF NETLEY

In her seventh captivating adventure, Jane Austen finds her crime-solving mettle put to the test in a confounding case of intrigue, murder, and high treason. Among the haunted ruins of an ancient abbey, Jane is drawn into a shadow world of dangerous secrets and traitorous hearts where not only her life is at stake--but the fate of England.

DEATH IN THE OFF-SEASON

Labor Day finds Nantucket shrouded in fog and Rusty Mason drowned in his brother's cranberry bog. Rusty has been out of the country for ten years - fleeing the law and the family wounds he left behind. Rookie detective Meredith Folger has to decide whether Rusty's killer mistook him for his brother - or whether Peter Mason murdered Rusty himself.

DEATH IN ROUGH WATER

While investigating the supposedly accidental drowning of her friend Adelia's father, Merry Folger, a cop on Nantucket Island, must search for an elusive killer.

DEATH IN A MOOD INDIGO

A skeleton is discovered on a bone-chillingly cold Siasconset beach by two children playing on the windswept sands. Is the dead woman the latest victim of a killer who has already homeyed upon five women in Massachusetts? Or could the half-buried corpse be the beautiful Harvard-educated psychiatrist whose disappearance baffled Nantucket police? And if so, how is that mystery linked to the sensational disappearance of the flamboyant sculptor Ian Markham, who vanished in his boat, A Mood Indigo, that very same morning, seven years ago? As the FBI and the media swarm over the island, Nantucket police detective Merry Folger finds herself caught in the web of old passions and crimes, a web whose net continues to ensnare victims. For whoever the dead woman may be, her murder is a death that, like all shocking events in the past, has repercussions in the homesent. Deadly repercussions.

DEATH IN A COLD HARD LIGHT

Merry Folger is more than ready for a romantic vacation with her fiancé Peter when fate - and her police chief father - intervenes. Twenty-one-year-old Jay Santorski never should have drowned in the frigid waters off the Nantucket shore. What was the athlete, Harvard scholar, and part-time scalloper doing out alone in the storm-churned bay? At her father's insistence - and over Peter's objections - Merry returns to the island to investigate, only to be confronted at every turn by false leads and dead ends. And Police Chief John Folger is behind too many of these roadblocks. For the first time, Merry begins to feel she cannot trust her lifelong role model - her own father....

THE CUTOUT

They were partners, lovers, soul mates in a business where betrayal is a heartbeat away. CIA analyst Caroline Carmichael lost her husband Eric when his plane was blown out of the sky by elite group of terrorists known as 30 April. For two years she's headed an Agency task force tracking Eric's killers. Now, her dead husband has surfaced among those responsible for an explosion that rocks Berlin-and the brutal kidnapping of the U.S. Vice homesident. Uncertain of Eric's motives and loyalties, the Agency plays its last,best card: Eric's wife-the Cutout. It is up to Caroline to learn whether Eric is a rogue psychopath bent on changing the face of Europe. Torn between duty to country and the ghost of her past, Caroline is drawn into a dizzying maze where one wrong turn will mean certain death. And in a game where even the life of a Vice homesident is a pawn. Caroline knows that the Cutout will be the first to fail.

THE SECRET AGENT

Trained by the OSS, Jack Roderick plummeted into Bangkok one rainy morning in 1945 and never left. Silk King, pirate, ruthless collector of beautiful objects - especially women - Roderick was feared and respected as a foreign spy, a business kingpin, and a trader in men's souls. And then, at the height of the Vietnam War, caught in a killing web of treachery and revenge that would determine the fate of his only son, Rory, Jack Roderick walked into the jungle...and vanished from the face of the earth." "Four decades later, can the mystery be solved? International fund manager Stefani Fogg is recruited by a man whose job it is to know the unknowable. Wealthy beyond corruption, impervious to romance, and equipped with a mind that can crack any enigma, Stefani signs up for the adventure of a lifetime: playing Secret Agent to Max Roderick, grandson of Bangkok's long-vanished Legendary American. A world-class skier tangled in a sordid Thai murder investigation, Max is consumed with the riddle of Jack Roderick's disappearance - and with his own father's death in the jungles of Vietnam." Seduced by Max's charm and intrigued by his family history, Stefani ignores the warning signs and follows her heart. But when Max's quarrel with the Thai police turns deadly and a killer strikes, she knows she must return to the place where it all began, to unravel the lies, penetrate a deadly conspiracy, and expose a killing truth. She flees Max's France for Bangkok's khlongs - into the ruins of the Silk King's dark past and the mesmerizing shadow of the Roderick family curse. What she finds, in Jack Roderick's story and in the fate of his fighter-pilot son, is an American dream that crashed and burned in the rice paddies of Vietnam and a chilling legacy that haunts our own to this day.