Perfect for enthusiasts of Laura Levine and Stephanie Barron, Elizabeth Blake’s Jane Austen Society mystery debut is a mirthfully morbid merger of manners and murder.

In this Austen-tatious debut, antiquarian bookstore proprietor Erin Coleridge uses her sense and sensibility to deduce who wiped out the president of the neighborhood Jane Austen Society.

Erin Coleridge’s used bookstore in Kirkbymoorside, North Yorkshire, Britain, is a gathering place for the villagers and, in particular, for the neighborhood Jane Austen about Satisfaction, Prejudice, and Poison: A Jane Austen Society Mystery Society. On the Society’s monthly conference, matters come to a head between the old guard and its young turks. After the meeting breaks for tea, persuasion gives method to murder?with extreme prejudice?when chief executive Sylvia Pemberthy falls dead to the floor. Poisoned? Presumably … but by whom? And was Sylvia the just target?

Handsome?but shy?Detective Inspector Peter Hemming and charismatic Sergeant Rashid Jarral reach the picture. The long suspect list includes Sylvia’s fan Kurt Becker and his tightly wound wife Suzanne. Or, maybe, the killer was Sylvia’s own cuckolded spouse, Jerome. Among the countless Society members who may have had her within their places is certainly dashing Jonathan Alder, who was simply heard possessing a royal fight of words using the late president the night time before.

Then, when Jonathan Alder narrowly avoids becoming another victim, Farnsworth (the town’s “kitty woman”) persuades a significantly time-crunched Erin to help DI Hemming. But the killer is more devious than anyone imagines.