Northanger Abbey
Gold Dagger Award–winning British crime writer McDermid offers a canny new twist on Jane Austen’s early novel. Fans of the original will know that Cat Morland is a book lover eager for her own supernatural adventure. In McDermid’s tale, when Cat’s neighbors offer to bring her to Edinburgh for a festival, she leaps at the opportunity to spread her wings. There, Cat meets two siblings, John and Bella Thorpe. She and Bella become fast friends despite Bella’s occasional shallowness, but Cat can’t abide John, who only seems to care about driving fast cars and showing off to try to win Cat’s affection. Instead, she prefers mysterious Henry Tilney and his delicate sister Eleanor, who bear striking similarities to the vampires in her favorite books. When the Tilneys invite Cat to stay with them at their ancestral home, Northanger Abbey, she feels chills at the thought of both staying with Henry and uncovering a centuries-old macabre mystery. McDermid’s brilliant update of the characters’ outlooks, philosophies, and attitudes within a modern context makes this a reimagined delight for Austen fans. --Amber Peckham