Lady Catherine's Necklace (A Jane Austen entertainment) - Tapa blanda

In Lady Catherine's Necklace we are reintroduced to that monster of unfeeling snobbery Lady Catherine de Bourgh and her toadying curate Mr Collins, familiar to all from Pride and Prejudice. When a carriage accident brings Priscilla Delaval and her brother Ralph to the door of Rosings, Lady Catherine's residence in Kent, a chain of events is set in train which includes, among other things, a brush both with death and with the lower orders for Lady Catherine (in which she discovers a surprising talent for culinary improvisation), and the belated discovery of a skeleton in the cupboard of Lady Catherine's late husband Sir Lewis. A beautifully written and supremely entertaining "Jane Austen Entertainment".

Joan Aiken, English-born daughter of American poet Conrad Aiken, began her writing career in the 1950s. Working for Argosy magazine as a copy editor but also as the anonymous author of articles and stories to fill up their pages, she was adept at inventing a wealth of characters and fantastic situations, and went on to produce hundreds of stories for Good Housekeeping, Vogue, Vanity Fair and many other magazines. Some of those early stories became novels, such as The Silence of Herondale, first published fifty years ago in 1964. Although her first agent famously told her to stick to short stories, saying she would never be able to sustain a full-length novel, Joan Aiken went on to win the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize for The Whispering Mountain, and the Edgar Alan Poe award for her adult novel Night Fall. Her best known children's novel, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, was acclaimed by Time magazine as 'a genuine small masterpiece'. In 1999 she was awarded an MBE for her services to children's literature, and although best known as a children's writer, Joan Aiken wrote many adult novels, both modern and historical, with her trademark wit and verve. Many have a similar gothic flavour to her children's writing, and were much admired by readers and critics alike. As she said 'The only difference I can see is that children's books have happier endings than those for adults.' You have been warned . . .