The Heiress of Northanger Abbey

★ BlueInk Starred Review: "Nancy Bilyeau's novel is a smart update and sequel to Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey... She writes with a gorgeous, fluid voice that brings Jane Austen's beloved characters back to life in a beautifully layered and thoroughly human way... The pacing is superb, matching the atmospheric dread of a classic Gothic romance."

To save her daughter, Catherine Tilney must learn what is imagined—and what is real.

From the bestselling author of The Blue comes a sequel to Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. Gloucestershire, 1820: Twenty-two years after the close of Northanger Abbey, Catherine Tilney is living a happily ever after. But her busy life as a clergyman's wife is shattered by a letter that resurrects her darkest fears. Her daughter Phoebe has fallen under the influence of the unscrupulous Thorpe family—the very figures who once nearly destroyed Catherine's happiness.

Determined to protect her child from dangerous fortune hunters, Catherine follows Phoebe to an isolated manor on Dartmoor. There, she finds a landscape of reckless passions, family secrets, and a dangerously charming aristocratic neighbor. It all feels eerily like the plot of the latest Gothic sensation, The Vampyre — but is Catherine once again letting her imagination run wild?

In this psychologically charged sequel to Jane Austen's classic, award-winning historical novelist Nancy Bilyeau transforms Catherine's youthful adventures into a mystery with the highest of stakes. The Heiress of Northanger Abbey is a story of mothers and daughters, deception and desire—and of a woman who must learn to trust her power of perception before it's too late.

For Austen fans who adore a high-spirited Regency tale, savor a hint of the Gothic—and long to be transported to the mist-shrouded moors.

"Prepare to be captivated by this brilliant homage to the Gothic genre that will thrill Austen fans and lovers of historical fiction alike. Impossible to put down!" — Syrie James, bestselling author of The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen and The Mysteries of Pendowar Hall

"Mysteries and dangers … very enjoyable!" —Janie Chang, USA Today bestselling author of The Fourth Princess: A Gothic Novel of Old Shanghai