A delight for Austen fans, crime aficionados and all who value the gentle art of literary homage.

To be published in North America by St Martin's Press and in ANZ by Allen & Unwin

Lynn Shepherd to tour the UK speaking to Austen and other reading groups

Mansfield Park is the one Jane Austen novel over which fans and critics alike have speculated the most. Why was Austen so enamoured of her principal character, the timid Fanny Price? What was she trying to say about the movements of the times? Successful copywriter and academic Lynn Shepherd has decided to tackle these questions head-on in a hugely entertaining and respectful homage, Murder At Mansfield Park. Here we find a very different Fanny Price: forthright, ambitious, scheming and downright untrustworthy. What could possibly happen to a character like that? And how will the fortunes of the inhabitants of Mansfield Park and its environs be changed with the discovery of a dead body early one morning?

Lynn Shepherd is a successful copywriter. She returned to Oxford in 2003 for a DPhil, during which she lectured on Richardson and Fielding. Her thesis is being published by the OUP in late 2009 under the title: ‘Clarissa’s Painter’: Portraiture, Illustration, and Representation in the Novels of Samuel Richardson. This is her first novel.

Details

• ISBN 9781905636792
• Publication date: 8th April 2010
• Size: B format paperback
• Pages: 352
• RRP: £7.99

Rights information

• UK and Commonwealth ex Canada
• Aus/NZ rights sold to Allen & Unwin

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