According to Monsters and Critics, a new Young Adult book has echoes of Jane Austen.

Two best friends experience confusion in love in this nifty little spin on Pride and Prejudice. Julie can’t contain the swiftly changing obsessions of Ashleigh, so she goes along with them as best friends do. Ashleigh’s latest craze is Jane Austen.

She decides to crash the school dance at the exclusive boy’s school in town, in an effort to meet Darcy and Bingley. The scheme works, and Julie falls hard for handsome Parr. Ashleigh, meanwhile, chooses Parr as her fanciful Darcy. Julie suffers, but can’t see that Parr is equally attracted to her. Comical misunderstandings ensue in this innocent who-will-wind-up-dating-whom farce.

Shulman manages to lift the story above standard fare with clever plotting and quirky, often elegant writing that should please the literary crowd while keeping romance lovers engaged. Several cuts above the usual fare.

More at Amazon. We recall spotting a YA S&S pastiche at our local book emporium a while ago…here it is.

We are exceedingly pleased to announce that six seven (eight if you count the title page) watercolor illustrations of Persuasion painted by C.E. Brock are now available online–we think for the first time. Alert Janeite Cinthia of JAcastellano, the Spanish language Jane Austen mailing list, has been persistently trying to track these down for some time, and has at last succeeded. We also had assistance from Alert Janeite Marybeth, who is preparing a scholarly study of the Brock illustrations of Jane Austen’s novels. They join an existing archive of other Brock illustrations already online.

The new illustrations are:

The title page

Mr. Shepherd gives his opinion

Mary Musgrove welcomes her sister to Uppercross Cottage

Dear Dr. Shirley!

Louisa falls for the Captain

A fine family-piece at Uppercross

Already equipped for Bath

A conversation in the Octagon Room

A list of all the scans from Persuasion is available here.

We are in the process of collecting scans of other illustrations of Jane Austen’s novels and should be presenting them soon, along with lots of other goodies; they will have a new home of their own. Stay tuned!

(And we are truly grateful to Cinthia and Marybeth for all their help in assembling these lovely illustrations from our favorite of Jane Austen’s novels.)

ETA: The missing scan.