Miss Austen
By Gill Hornby

Theand Sunday Timesand bestselling novel, soon to be a major series onand BBC Oneand andand BBC iPlayerand starring Keeley Hawes in 2025.'You can't help feeling thatand Jane would have approved.'and Observer'So good,and so intelligent, so clever, so entertainingand - I adored it.' Claire Tomalin'Celebratesand unexamined lives,and sisterhoodand andand virtuesand such as kindness and loyalty'and Sunday Times___________Throughout her lifetime, Jane Austen wrote countless letters to her sister. But why did Cassandra burn them all?1840: twenty three years after the death of her famous sister Jane, Cassandra Austen returns to the village of Kintbury, and the home of her family's friends, the Fowles.She knows that, in some dusty corner of the sprawling vicarage, there is a cache of family letters which hold secrets she can never allow to be revealed.As Cassandra recalls her youth and her relationship with her brilliant yet complex sister, she pieces together buried truths about Jane's history, and her own. And she faces a stark choice: should she act to protect Jane's reputation, or leave the contents of the letters to go unguarded into posterity?Based on a literary mystery that has long puzzled biographers and academics,and Miss Austenand is a wonderfully original and emotionally complex novel about the loves and lives of Cassandra and Jane Austen.___________'The perfect book to wrap yourself around on a dark night'and STYLIST'This is a deeply imagined and deeply moving novel'and KAREN JOY FOWLER, author ofand The Jane Austen Bookclub'It's a delight, one of those that you don't want to end.'and RTE'A charming novel'and SUNDAY MIRROR'Hornby brings to life the Austen family, using the known to speculate on what might have been.'and THE TIMESand Audio Book of the Week'Extraordinary and heart-wrenching.'and LARA PRESCOTT, author ofand The Secrets We Kept'Gill Hornby ingeniously imagines what Cassandra Austen's own life might have been like.'and DEIRDRE LE FAYE, editor ofand Jane Austen's Letters'Tender and touching'and DAILY MAIL'Utterly absorbing.'and ARTEMIS COOPER'Delightful.'and SUE RYAN, founder of Henley Lit Fest