In the tradition of Susannah Cahalan's Brain on Fire and Hadley Freeman's Good Girls, this is an intimate, deeply researched story of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) by the celebrated Smithsonian editor, memoirist, and essayist.Before I can tell you about the shock treatment, I should tell you about the horse tranquilizer.Ted Scheinman struggled with depression his whole life, but never like this. At thirty-five years old, he'd tr...

A raucous tour through the world of Mr. Darcy imitations, tailored gowns, and tipsy ballroom dancingThe son of a devoted Jane Austen scholar, Ted Scheinman spent his childhood summers eating Yorkshire pudding, singing in an Anglican choir, and watching Laurence Olivier as Mr. Darcy. Determined to leave his mother's world behind, he nonetheless found himself in grad school organizing the first ever UNC-Chapel Hill Jane Austen Summer Camp, a weekend-long event that si...

In the tradition of Susannah Cahalan's Brain on Fire and Hadley Freeman's Good Girls, this is an intimate, deeply researched story of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) by the celebrated Smithsonian editor, memoirist, and essayist.Before I can tell you about the shock treatment, I should tell you about the horse tranquilizer.Ted Scheinman struggled with depression his whole life, but never like this. At thirty-five years old, he'd tr...

A raucous audiobook tour through the world of Mr. Darcy imitations, tailored gowns, and tipsy ballroom dancingThe son of a devoted Jane Austen scholar, Ted Scheinman spent his childhood summers eating Yorkshire pudding, singing in an Anglican choir, and watching Laurence Olivier as Mr. Darcy. Determined to leave his mother’s world behind, he nonetheless found himself in grad school organizing the first ever UNC-Chapel Hill Jane Austen Summer Camp, a weekend-long ev...

""Greeley’s storytelling is intricate, masterly, and delightfully imaginative. Highly recommended.""—Library Journal (starred review)In this gorgeously written and spellbinding historical novel based on Pride and Prejudice, the author of The Clergyman’s Wife combines the knowing eye of Jane Austen with the eroticism and Gothic intrigue of Sarah Waters to reimagine the life of the mysterious Anne de Bourgh.As a fus...

A bold, heartfelt tale of life at Green Gables . . . before Anne: A marvelously entertaining and moving historical novel, set in rural Prince Edward Island in the nineteenth century, that imagines the young life of spinster Marilla Cuthbert, and the choices that will open her life to the possibility of heartbreak—and unimaginable greatness.Plucky and ambitious, Marilla Cuthbert is thirteen years old when her world is turned upside down. Her beloved mother dies in childbirth, and Ma...

A sublime comedy of contemporary manners, this is the novel Jane Austen might well have written had she lived in twenty-first- century California.Nothing ever moves in a straight line in Karen Joy Fowler's fiction, and in her latest, the complex dance of modern love has never been so devious or so much fun. Six Californians join to discuss Jane Austen's novels. Over the six months they meet, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable, and love happens. Wit...

IllustrationsFree Audiobook LinksPride And Prejudice, the story of Mrs. Bennet's attempts to marry off her five daughters is one of the best-loved and most enduring classics in English literature. Excitement fizzes through the Bennet household at Longbourn in Hertfordshire when young, eligible Mr. Charles Bingley rents the fine house nearby. He may have sisters, but he also has male friends, and one of these—the haughty, and even wealthier, Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy—irks the vi...

Coming out of an unhappy relationship and a stint at an artist colony, Charlotte, a writer, takes a job teaching at a private ESL college. There she befriends Renata—audacious, sexy, and as changeable as Proteus. “I have a story for you,” Renata says to her one day over lunch. She doesn’t elaborate further, but Charlotte soon discovers that she has found in Renata an unexpectedly passionate and compelling subject.“Caroline Adderson is such a graceful and intelligent writer that the...

Octavia Butler's premature and sudden death in 2006 has been very widely lamented, unhappily confirming her influence as a vital African-American and female pioneer in SF. Xenogenesis (retitled Lilith's Brood in 2000) is one of Butler's most important works, and comprises the novels Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988), and Imago (1989). The Notes cover Octavia Butler's life and work; the background and structure of the trilogy; (Black) SF in relation to race and gender; the tradition of dy...

The Story of a Whim by Grace Livingston Hill“If a young man spells his name 'Christie,' he cannot blame fate when a pretty girl writes him an affectionate letter—under the impression that she is corresponding with a girl of her own age. To Christie Bailey, lonely and discouraged, it was a great temptation. He answered in the character of a lonely, freckled, 'spinster' of twenty-eight. Perhaps it was the clear trusting eyes in the photograph she sent him—anyway Chri...

Sarah Matthews has everything in the world a woman could wish for: a loving husband; two beautiful children; a small business which she runs together with her sister-in-law; and even her own top of the range car.   Why then does she keep having recurring nightmares? Over a friendly lunch with her ex-lady boss, seeds of doubt and discontent begin to gnaw at her, and the realization dawns that she is no longer free to live a life of her own as she would wish. When offered...