Front Cover Reveal - My Mr Darcy and Your Mr Bingley by Linda Beutler

Today I have the honour of joining one of my favourite bloggers in sharing with you the cover of Linda Beutler's upcoming new story, 'My Mr Darcy and Your Mr Bingley'. I'll be sharing the front cover, and Rita, of 'From Pemberley to Milton' will be sharing the back cover.

I am pleased to be able to bring you news of Linda's new story. She's visited the blog before, as the author of 'The Red Chrysanthemum', 'Longbourn to London', 'A Will of Iron' and as a contributing author to the 'Sunkissed: Effusions of Summer' anthology.

Firstly, let me whet your appetite by telling you a little bit more about the premise of this story...

One never quite knows where the inspiration will strike. For award-winning author Linda Beutler and My Mr. Darcy & Your Mr. Bingley, the moment of genesis arrived in a particularly contentious thread at the online forum A Happy Assembly. What is the nature of personal responsibility? Where do we draw the line between Mr. Bingley being too subject to Mr. Darcy’s “persuasion” and Mr. Darcy playing too heavily on Mr. Bingley’s “sensibility”? This is a conundrum guaranteed to raise even more questions.

What happens to the plot and character dynamics of Pride & Prejudice if Mr. Bingley is given just a dash more spine? Or if Jane Bennet decides enough embarrassment is too much? How does Mr. Darcy manage the crucial apology a more stalwart Mr. Bingley necessitates he make? What if Mr. Darcy meets relations of Elizabeth Bennet’s for whom she need not blush on their home turf rather than his? Suffice it to say, this is a story of rebuked pride, missing mail, a man with “vision”, a frisky cat, and an evening gown that seems to have its own agenda.

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A frisky cat and a misbehaving evening gown?! Sounds like fun!

Author Bio

Linda Beutler’s professional life is spent in a garden, an organic garden housing America’s foremost public collection of clematis vines and a host of fabulous companion plants. Her home life reveals a more personal garden, still full of clematis, but also antique roses and vintage perennials planted around and over a 1907 cottage. But one can never have enough of gardening, so in 2011 she began cultivating a weedy patch of Jane Austen Fan Fiction ideas. The first of these to ripen was The Red Chrysanthemum (Meryton Press, 2013), which won a silver IPPY for romance writing in 2014. You might put this down as beginner’s luck—Linda certainly does. The next harvest brought Longbourn to London (Meryton Press, 2014), known widely as “the [too] sexy one”. In 2015 Meryton Press published the bestseller A Will of Iron, a macabre rom-com based on the surprising journals of Anne de Bourgh.

Now, after a year-long break in JAFF writing to produce Plant Lovers Guide to Clematis (Timber Press, 2016)—the third in a bouquet of books on gardening—we have My Mr. Darcy and Your Mr. Bingley bursting into bloom.

Connect with the Author: • Facebook • Twitter • Author Blog at Meryton Press •

Now without further ado, here is the front cover of 'My Mr Darcy and Your Mr Bingley'..... drumroll......

What do you think of the cover? I can't help but wonder whether this could be the character with 'vision'? Are these Jane's arms? And is she removing his spectacles to give him a kiss or to avoid breaking them when she hits him?! I love book covers, it's always fun to speculate about what the author is conveying in the picture that they have chosen.

Now you've seen the front cover, you might well want to pop a peep at the back cover. But wait! Linda posted a blog post very recently about the trouble with bookends, which relates to the back cover, so why not read that too?

The back cover is being revealed by the lovely Rita over at 'From Pemberley to Milton', which is one of my favourite blogs, and ensures that the wonderful Mr Thornton of 'North and South' gets as much love and appreciation as the more widely adored Mr Darcy. Please drop by and see the back cover :)

There will be more about this book to come. My thanks go to Janet Taylor, for arranging the joint cover reveal, and to Rita, for co-ordinating with me to make it a joint effort!

Stop Press!

The book has been released earlier than planned and can be bought now! You can get it at Amazon US, Amazon UK and very likely other places too. Check your country's site.