What Cathy Read Next...

Calling all fans of Jane Austen – in particular Pride and Prejudice – or Regency romance!

Today on What Cathy Read Next I’m featuring Darcy by Alice McVeigh, the third book in her Jane Austen ‘variations’. A ‘witty and imaginative’ re-telling of Austen’s classic tale’ with a new ‘Darcyesque’ slant and containing omitted scenes from the original – as well as an extra helping of humour – Alice describes her book as ‘a fresh new Pride and Prejudice with (wedding) bells on!’ (I must admit, I am rather swooning over the image on the cover.)

Darcy: A Pride and Prejudice Variation is available to purchase from Amazon UK in paperback and as an ebook. And while you’re there, why not pick up the previous books in the series, Susan: A Jane Austen Prequel and Harriet: A Jane Austen Variation.

As every author knows, promoting your book to potential readers is a task that never ends. That’s where book bloggers come in so I’m pleased to be able to bring you an extract from the book that will, I hope, whet your appetite to click on that ‘Buy Now’ button.

About the Book

“Should she reject me again, I shall have to wed – as I swore I never would – for dynasty alone. I can only ever love Elizabeth Bennet.”

Love is put to the test in this fresh spin on Jane Austen’s starriest novel, entwining original and classic characters in a tale of passion and self-discovery. In a timeless story of love amid the clash of social classes, Darcy is faced with a terrible choice: to stay in London to force Wickham’s hand – or to go to Rome, to salvage his family’s reputation.

Find Darcy: A Pride and Prejudice Variation on Goodreads

Extract from Darcy: A Pride and Prejudice Variation by Alice McVeigh

As our visitors left, I chose to accompany the Gardiners and their niece to their carriage, taking the chance to thank Elizabeth. ‘It was very good of you to come.’

‘Not at all. Your sister is charming,’ said she. ‘How I long to hear her play!’

‘Thank you, but I hope to hear you play again, as well.’

‘I fear that would be only an embarrassment, as I have not touched an instrument this long age.’

‘But the voice can surely not have altered? Colonel Fitzwilliam said, only the other day, how it had brightened Rosings last Easter.’

She turned to look at me, as if contemplating some swift rejoinder, misjudged the depth of the marble step beneath, and slipped, with a little cry. Taking three steps in one, I caught her round the waist, secured her against the balustrade and released her. So strange a moment – locked close, a third of the way down the marble staircase – time itself suspended!

Her aunt, following, heard the cry and rushed to the head of the stairs. ‘Lizzy! What has happened?’

‘Why nothing at all! I fell, I cannot think how, but Mr Darcy caught me – for which I am most grateful,’ she said to me, with a private smile. ‘I am sorry to have alarmed you, Aunt, for I am rarely clumsy, as a rule.’

How I wished I could have prolonged that instant on the stair! I was then obliged to return to the saloon, where Miss Bingley was saying very spitefully, ‘How very ill Eliza Bennet looked this morning! I never in my life saw anyone so altered. She is grown so brown and coarse!’

I could not sleep that night, for recollecting that moment on the stair.

About the Author

Alice McVeigh was born in South Korea, of American diplomatic parents, and lived in Asia until she was 13, when the family returned to Washington D.C. She then fell in love with the cello, winning the Beethoven Society of Washington cello competition, and reaching the finals of the National Music Teachers Association Young Soloists national competition. After achieving a B.Mus. with distinction at the internationally acclaimed Jacobs School of Music, she came to London to study with Jacqueline du Pré and William Pleeth. Since then she has performed with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique all over Europe, America and Asia.

Her first two contemporary novels – While the Music Lasts and Ghost Music – were published by Orion Publishing/Hachette in the late 90s, and her first play (Beating Time) put on at the Lewisham Theatre. As well as performing, Alice has ghosted or edited over 200 books. She has also scribbled a witty guide to the orchestral profession: All Risks Musical, cartoons by Noel Ford. Her speculative thriller, Last Star Standing, was published by Unbound Publishing under her pen name, Spaulding Taylor, on February 21st, 2021. It won a Kirkus-starred review and was runner-up in the Independent Press Awards in the Action/Adventure category. It is a finalist in CIBA’s Cygnus Scifi Award, the Wishing Shelf Book Awards (in adult fiction) and the Eric Hoffer Book Awards (in science fiction).

In June 2021, Warleigh Hall Press published the first in her series of six Jane Austenesque novels (Susan: A Jane Austen Prequel). An imagining of Lady Susan as a sixteen-year-old, Susan was a quarter-finalist in Publishers Weekly’s 2021 BookLife Prize, won First Place (historical) in the Pencraft Book Awards, won a Gold Medal (historical) in the Global Book Awards and the eLit Book Awards 2022, was honoured with an IndieBRAG medallion and was selected as one of Shelf Unbound magazine’s “100 notable Indies” of 2021. The second (Harriet: A Jane Austen Variation) was a bestseller in Amazon’s British Historical Fiction category and recently selected as Editor’s Pick (“outstanding”) on Publishers Weekly.

Alice is married to Professor Simon McVeigh, and lives in London. They have one daughter, who is doing a Master’s in Chinese Literature at Peking University (Beijing), and a second home in Crete. Apart from fiction, Alice’s greatest enthusiasms involve playing chamber music, tennis and the family’s long-haired mini-dachshunds.

Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too? Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!

Currently reading

A NetGalley ARC and a book for my personal Backlist Burrow reading challenge.

The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan Jean Kwok (Hodder & Stoughton)

Japanese-occupied Malaya, 1945. Cecily Alcantara’s children are in terrible danger.

Her eldest child Jujube, who works at a tea house frequented by drunk Japanese soldiers, becomes angrier by the day. Jasmin, the youngest, lives confined in a basement for her own safety. And her son, Abel, has disappeared without a trace.

Cecily knows too that this is all her fault; and that her family must never learn the truth.

Back Trouble by Clare Chambers (Cornerstone)

On the brink of forty, newly single with a failed business, Philip thought he’d reached an all-time low when a topple on a London street lays him literally flat. So, bedbound and bored, Philip starts to write the story of his life.

But the mundane catalogue of seaside holidays, broken relationships and unspoken truths, reveals more surprises, both comic and touching, than Philip or his family ever bargained for. Even, perhaps, a happy ending.

Recently finished

The Leftover Woman by Jean Kwok (Viper)

The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne (Transworld)

Perfume River by Robert Olen Butler (No Exit)

Robert Quinlan and his wife Darla teach at Florida State University. Their marriage, forged in the fervor of anti-Vietnam-war protests, now bears the fractures of time, with the couple trapped in an existence of morning coffee and solitary jogging and separate offices. For Robert and Darla, the cracks remain below the surface, whereas the divisions in Robert’s own family are more apparent: he has almost no relationship with his brother Jimmy, who became estranged from the family as the Vietnam War intensified.

William Quinlan, Robert and Jimmy’s father, a veteran of World War II, is coming to the end of his life, and aftershocks of war ripple across all their lives once again when Jimmy refuses to appear at his father’s bedside.

And a disturbed homeless man whom Robert at first takes to be a fellow Vietnam veteran turns out to have a devastating impact not just on Robert, but on his entire family. (Insightful & immersive – full review to follow)

What Cathy (will) Read Next

Munich Wolf by Rory Clements (Zaffre)

Munich in the 1930s is a magnet for young, rich, aristocratic Brits. They come to learn German, but also to go wild, free at last from the suffocating constraints of strait-laced England. They ski in the Alps, swim in the lakes, drink in the beer cellars and fall for the charms of dashing SS officers. What they don’t see – or choose to ignore – is the cold, brutal, underbelly of the Nazi movement which considers Munich its spiritual home.

But not every German is a Nazi. Murder squad detective Sebastian Wolff is one of those walking a tight line between doing his job and falling foul of the political party he abhors.

When a high-born English girl is murdered, Wolff is ordered to solve the crime. He has a fine record and, importantly, he is fluent in English. But he realises the mission is a poison chalice, for Hitler is taking a personal interest in the case – as is his young English acolyte Miss Unity Mitford.

Wolff is hemmed in on all sides. At work, he is watched closely by the secret police, at home he could be denounced at any moment by his own son, a fervent member of the Hitler Youth. And when he begins to suspect that the killer might be linked to the highest reaches of the Nazi hierarchy, he fears his task is simply impossible – and that he will become the killer’s next victim.

What Cathy Read Next…