This is kind of old, but we’re just seeing it now. The-Signal.com from the Santa Clarita Valley in California has an article about several local writers, including Thomas Thorpe (!), the author of a series of novels very loosely inspired by Pride and Prejudice called The Darmon Mysteries.

“I’ve always liked Jane Austen,” said Thorpe, a Sylmar resident who will appear at a book-signing event at Valencia’s Barnes & Noble on March 12. “I just got the idea to write sequels to her stories.” (Cause you’re the first person who ever had that bright idea. –Ed.)

The result is a four-part series focused on the Darmon family, who find themselves in the midst of history-altering events in diverse countries.

In Thorpe’s newly released “The Forth Contention,” main characters Elizabeth and William are in Egypt. Racing with time to save their English lifestyle in a contest with the rival Forth family for untold wealth and freedom for the kingdom of Greece, the duo experience peril on a grand scale.

“William and Elizabeth are not far removed from Darcy and Elizabeth from ‘Pride and Prejudice,’” Thorpe described. “I just wanted to see them in a more challenging setting, in a kind of a post-marriage situation. You don’t find too many books dealing with married couples facing challenges together like this.” Book 5 will take William and Elizabeth from the African deserts to the outer reaches of Siberia.
A stickler for detail, Thorpe does the majority of his research on the Internet during down time. “When space crafts are cruising to Mars, things aren’t terribly active,” he said. “My science background lends itself to looking at events and conditions that surround the story.”
Thorpe, who moonlights as a professor of astronomy at Glendale College, appreciates the opportunities his books provide to educate as well as entertain. “Their real value is being so accurately set that you also learn a lot about history and events of the day,” he said. “You know what it’s like to be put in that setting and what you might do in that situation. History becomes alive that way.”

The fourth book in the series, The Forth Contention, is described as follows at Amazon.com:

William Darmon and his wife Elizabeth were powerful figures in the countryside of County Kent-pillars of the community who set society’s pace from their expansive grounds known as Mayfair Hall. Now William’s brother-in-law, Charles, a novice politician, has fallen victim to a scheme of the rival Forth family and has introduced a bill before Parliament known as the Writ of Confiscation that will cost the Darmon’s their ancestral home unless they can find their missing deed. A late family friend has hidden the document on a trip to Egypt decades earlier and left clues to its location only visible in the night sky of 1825. As they begin to unravel the mystery, the body of a Forth family member turns up on the doorstep of Charles’ manor.

The other books in the series are all available at Amazon.