Thank you to all who entered, with out delay here are the ten winners of "Lady Vernon and Her Daughter" by Jane Rubino and Caitlen Rubino-Bradway. Congrats to everyone!
ABOUT THE BOOK:"In an early, untitled epistolary novella (referred to as “Lady Susan”), Jane Austen introduced one of her most compelling characters – Lady Susan Vernon – an attractive and cunning widow who believes her beauty allows her to behave in selfish, devious ways. Written during the same period in which Austen produced Elinor and Marianne, “Lady Susan” also focuses on the economic and romantic plights of two heroines displaced when the family home passes to an unworthy heir. But, while Elinor and Marianne was revised and happily expanded to become Sense and Sensibility, “Lady Susan” was abandoned. Until now.SYNOPSIS:
In LADY VERNON AND HER DAUGHTER: A Jane Austen Novel (Crown; October 2009), mother-daughter team Jane Rubino and Caitlen Rubino-Bradway have taken letters from this epistolary novella and transformed them into a vivid, authentic, and more recognizably “Austen” work of fiction. In this enthralling reimagining, Lady Vernon and her daughter must navigate a society where a woman’s security is at the mercy of an entail, where love is hindered by misunderstanding, where marriage can never be entirely isolated from money, yet where romance somehow carries the day.
Both avid readers of Jane Austen, Caitlen and Jane worked in tandem to piece together LADY VERNON AND HER DAUGHTER. To do so, they reexamined Austen’s six great novels in order to reproduce her distinctive style and the fundamentals of her storytelling. The result is a delightful interpretation and a treat for fans of literature’s most beloved woman of letters."
"A woman with neither property nor fortune must ward off this affliction by cultivating the beauty, brilliance and accomplishment which will blind a promising suitor to the want of a dowry and take her off the hands of a grateful family. When she is securely married, she may suspend her own improvement and turn her energies toward the domestication of her husband and the acquisition of wealthy suitors for their daughters. Still, she must never sink to complacency, but always keep sharp, for it may be her unfortunate lot to survive her spouse and she will be thrown back upon her wits once more."
Such is the plight of Lady Vernon and her daughter, Frederica. Upon the premature death of Sir Frederick Vernon, his estate passes to his younger brother and heir, Charles Vernon; Vernon chooses to regard his promises to Sir Frederick of financial support for Lady Vernon and her daughter as conditional –“only an informal understanding that Lady Vernon and her daughter would not starve.”
Penniless and homeless, Lady Vernon and her daughter are taken into the high-spirited household of their friends, the Manwarings; but, when Lady Vernon learns the particulars of her late husband’s understanding with Charles Vernon – specific promises of the amount to be settled upon herself and Frederica - she returns to the Vernon estate to confront her in-laws. When her sister-in-law’s younger brother, Reginald deCourcy, descends upon the household to get a look at “the most accomplished coquette in England,” his arrival sets off rumors of a romance between the young man and Lady Vernon. Meanwhile, in London, Frederica’s term in a finishing school, set down as a prelude to her marriage to a wealthy cousin, Sir James Martin, ends in scandal and expulsion.
As the tale moves from Sussex to Kent to London, romance, gossip, misunderstanding, two proposals of marriage and an unexpected arrival bring about surprising reversals of fortune in this skillful and witty revision of Jane Austen’s early novella, Lady Susan."
While most women can’t imagine working with their mother or daughter without causing major trauma to their relationship, for mother-daughter writing team Jane Rubino and Caitlen Rubino-Bradway, the process brought them closer together. The two recently collaborated on their first work together, LADY VERNON AND HER DAUGHTER: A Jane Austen Novel (Crown; October 6, 2009), a delightful retelling of one of Jane Austen’s early, untitled works that she had never finished, and say their working relationship gave them new found respect for each other.
Hi all I have got a sweet giveaway for you all courtesy of Crown Publishing. The giveaway is for TEN copies of Lady Veron and Her Daughter by Jane Rubino and Caitlen Rubino-Bradway. It is a new historical fiction that is due to hit book store October 6Th in hardback."Jane Austen’s novella Lady Susan was written during the same period as another novella called Elinor and Marianne–which was later revised and expanded to become Sense and Sensibility. Unfortunately for readers, Lady Susan did not enjoy the same treatment by its author and was left abandoned and forgotten by all but the most diligent Austen scholars. Until now.
In Lady Vernon and Her Daughter, Jane Rubino and Caitlen Rubino-Bradway have taken Austen’s original novella and transformed it into a vivid and richly developed novel of love lost and found–and the complex relationships between women, men, and money in Regency England.
Lady Vernon and her daughter, Frederica, are left penniless and without a home after the death of Sir Frederick Vernon, Susan’s husband. Frederick’s brother and heir, Charles Vernon, like so many others of his time, has forgotten his promises to look after the women, and despite their fervent hopes to the contrary, does nothing to financially support Lady Vernon and Frederica.
When the ladies, left without another option, bravely arrive at Charles’s home to confront him about his treatment of his family, they are faced with Charles’s indifference, his wife Catherine’s distrustful animosity, and a flood of rumors that threaten to undo them all. Will Lady Vernon and Frederica find love and happiness–and financial security–or will their hopes be dashed with their lost fortune?
With wit and warmth reminiscent of Austen’s greatest works, Lady Vernon and Her Daughter brings to vivid life a time and place where a woman’s security is at the mercy of an entail, where love is hindered by misunderstanding, where marriage can never be entirely isolated from money, yet where romance somehow carries the day."
