Pride and Prejudice

The author of two sequels to Jane Austen novels (The Third Sister and Presumption), Barrett now sets out to complete Austen's last book. When she died in 1817, Austen left behind 11 chapters of a novel chronicling the growth and demise of Sanditon, a town on the southern coast of Sussex. Thomas Parker and his wife have partnered with Sanditon's grande dame, Lady Denham, in an effort to establish the town as a center of tourism competitive with Brighton. A guest of the Parkers, fresh, sharp and level-headed 22-year-old Charlotte Heywood, is the novel's heroine.

In this continuation to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, one of the best-loved novels in the English language, Elizabeth Bennet, now Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy and mistress of Pemberley, finds herself in a very different league of wealth and privilege. Writing to her sister, Jane, she confides her uncertainty and anxieties, and describes the every-day of her new life. Her first year at Pemberley is sometimes bewildering but Lizzy's spirited sense of humor and satirical eye never desert her.

 Picking up twenty years after Pride and Prejudice left off, Mr. Darcy's Daughters begins in the year 1818. Elizabeth and Darcy have gone to Constantinople, giving us an opportunity to get to know their five daughters, who have left the sheltered surroundings of Pemberley for a few months in London. While the eldest, Letitia, frets and the youngest, Alethea, practices her music, twins Georgina and Belle flirt and frolic their way through parties and balls and Camilla -- levelheaded and independent -- discovers what joys and sorrows the city has to offer an intelligent young woman.