Jane Austen Retellings That We Adore

While Elizabeth Bennet and her sisters fuss over balls and husbands, Sarah, their orphaned housemaid, is beginning to chafe against the boundaries of her class. When a new footman arrives at Longbourn under mysterious circumstances, the carefully choreographed world she has known all her life threatens to be completely, perhaps irrevocably, upended. Mentioned only fleetingly in Jane Austen’s classic, here Jo Baker dares to take us beyond the drawing rooms of Regency England and, in doing so, uncovers the real world of the novel that has captivated readers’ hearts around the world for generations.

Ayesha Shamsi has a lot going on. Her dreams of being a poet have been set aside for a teaching job so she can pay off her debts to her wealthy uncle. Though Ayesha is lonely, she doesn’t want an arranged marriage. Then she meets Khalid, who is just as smart and handsome as he is conservative and judgmental. When a surprise engagement is announced between Khalid and her cousin, Ayesha is torn between how she feels about the straightforward Khalid and the unsettling new gossip she hears about his family. Looking into the rumors, she finds she has to deal with not only what she discovers about Khalid, but also the truth she realizes about herself.

Writers united by their love for Jane Austen wrote tributes that are gathered together in this collection of short stories. They include riffs on Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, and Sense and Sensibility. Readers will also find stories that imagine encounters with Steventon’s most famous daughter. The anthology’s writers play with fiction categories to imagine how Austen would have written in other genres and create new stories infused with Austen’s legendary attention to detail.

Emma Woodhouse is imagined as a 21st-century interior designer. When she moves home to launch her new business, she moves in with her father. Emma immerses herself in offering matchmaking advice to her friends, regardless of whether her friends ask for her help. At the center of a social circle that includes Harriet, Jane, George, and Frank, Emma dispenses advice ranging from texting etiquette to the best places to take a first date. Alexander McCall Smith preserves Austen’s comic sensibilities when it comes to one of her more difficult heroines.

There’s never a good time to learn you are your father’s secret child — especially not at the reading of his will. With their father’s affairs laid bare and Nora’s sensible reputation in tatters due to a viral video scandal, she and her free-spirited sister have nothing left but a rustic inn in the middle of nowhere and each other. What’s more, they need to revamp the inn before Labor Day or they lose it all. Two sisters roll up their sleeves to run the dilapidated inn but must learn to work with the locals in this deliciously spicy novel inspired by Sense and Sensibility.

It is 1803, six years since Elizabeth and Darcy embarked on their life together at Pemberley, Darcy’s magnificent estate. Their peaceful, orderly world seems almost unassailable. Then a coach careens up the drive carrying Lydia, Elizabeth’s disgraced sister, who with her husband, the very dubious Wickham, has been banned from Pemberley. She stumbles out of the carriage, hysterical, shrieking that Wickham has been murdered. With shocking suddenness, Pemberley is plunged into a frightening mystery. Inspired by a lifelong passion for Austen, P. D. James masterfully re-creates the world of Pride and Prejudice, electrifying it with the excitement and suspense of a brilliantly crafted crime story.

Mary Bennett is not beautiful like her eldest sister Jane, and she can’t compete with the second sister Lizzie when it comes to quick wits. Mary B imagines that her life will remain solitary and will revolve around her books. But Mary’s quiet life is challenged by a series of events that draw on a strength of character that has been overshadowed by her siblings. Katherine J. Chen spins together a version of Pride and Prejudice in which her desire to be independent makes Mary an intriguing character in her own right.

This version of the Bennet family and Mr. Darcy is one that you have and haven’t met before: Liz is a magazine writer in her late thirties who, like her yoga instructor older sister, Jane, lives in New York City. When their father has a health scare, they return to their childhood home in Cincinnati to help — and discover that the sprawling Tudor they grew up in is crumbling and the family is in disarray. Enter Chip Bingley, a handsome new-in-town doctor who recently appeared on the juggernaut reality TV dating show Eligible. Chip takes an immediate interest in Jane, but Chip’s friend neurosurgeon Fitzwilliam Darcy reveals himself to Liz to be much less charming. And yet, first impressions can be deceiving.

The social mavens of Delhi know Ania Khurana. Her matchmaking skills have found love for her aunt, and now she’s out to find a match for Dimple, her socially inept friend. But life in Delhi is shaken by the arrival of her aunt’s handsome nephew from America. As her social circles spin themselves into a tizzy, Ania faces a challenge to her worldview. Rao has written an Emma for the 21st century.

Jane and Celia run a tea shop on Valencia Avenue in San Francisco, but after their father’s business scandal, they lose their little shop. The sisters move to Austin, Texas to start again and Jane meets an up-and-coming musician. Her romance drives a wedge between the sisters, then Marine Captain Callum Beckett takes an immediate dislike to Jane’s musician beau. This Texas-based retelling of Sense and Sensibility will delight Austen fans.

Jocelyn founds “Central Valley/River City all-Jane-Austen-all-the-time book club” in her small California town. Its six members meet for the first time in March to gather, read Austen’s novels and schmooze. By August, its members have experienced romantic complications and made life-altering decisions. Is the work of Jane Austen behind these developments — or is it the group?

A scandal and vicious rumor concerning the Binat family have destroyed their fortune and prospects for desirable marriages, but Alys, the second and most practical of the five Binat daughters, has found happiness teaching English literature to schoolgirls. When an invitation arrives to the biggest wedding their small town has seen in years, Mrs. Binat, certain that their luck is about to change, excitedly sets to work preparing her daughters to fish for rich, eligible bachelors. Told with wry wit and colorful prose, Unmarriageable is a charming update on Jane Austen’s beloved novel and an exhilarating exploration of love, marriage, class, and sisterhood.

In the years since Stephanie Barron first imagined Jane Austen as a lady detective, she has followed up this first novel with ten more, so prepare yourself: once you read this first book, you’ll be hooked. When Jane journeys to see her close friend, the Countess of Scargrave, she witnesses the tragic death of her friend’s husband. Added to the shock of his death are the threatening letters that blame the countess for his murder. Jane is moved to act on her friend’s behalf and soon finds herself embroiled in a mystery that will take her all the way to the House of Lords.