Book Description
May 1816: Jane Austen is feeling unwell, with
an uneasy stomach, constant fatigue, rashes, fevers and aches. She attributes
her poor condition to the stress of family burdens, which even the drafting of
her latest manuscript—about a baronet's daughter nursing a broken heart for a
daring naval captain—cannot alleviate. Her apothecary recommends a trial of the
curative waters at Cheltenham Spa, in Gloucestershire. Jane decides to use some
of the profits earned from her last novel, Emma, and treat herself
to a period of rest and reflection at the spa, in the company of her sister,
Cassandra.
Cheltenham Spa hardly turns out to be the relaxing sojourn Jane and Cassandra
envisaged, however. It is immediately obvious that other boarders at the guest
house where the Misses Austen are staying have come to Cheltenham with stresses
of their own—some of them deadly. But perhaps with Jane’s interference a
terrible crime might be prevented. Set during the Year without a Summer, when
the eruption of Mount Tambora in the South Pacific caused a volcanic winter
that shrouded the entire planet for sixteen months, this fourteenth installment
in Stephanie Barron’s critically acclaimed series brings a forgotten moment of
Regency history to life.
