Excerpt from The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

He listened to her rambling on, then shook his head as if in disbelief.

"You haven't read her then?" the woman asked, a disbelieving light in her own eyes meeting his.

"Can't say I've too much interest. Stick to Haggard and the like. Adventure stories, you know. Suppose you might judge me for that."

"I would never judge anyone for what they read." She caught the ironic look on his face and added, with another broad smile, "Although I guess I just did."

"All the same, I never understood how a bunch of books about girls looking for husbands could be on par with the great writers. Tolstoy and such."

She looked at him with new interest. "You've read Tolstoy?"

"Used to—I was going to be sent up to study, during the war, but both my brothers got called to fight. I stayed back here, to help out."

"Do you all work the farm together then?"

He looked away. "No, miss. They're both dead now. The war."

He liked to say the words like that, like a clean cut, sharp and deep and irrevocable. As if trying to stave off any further conversation. But he had the feeling that with her this approach might only invite more questions, so he quickly continued, "By the way, see those two roads, where they meet—you came in from Winchester, from the left, yeah? Well, stick along here to the right—that's now the main road to London—and you come into Chawton proper. That there's the cottage up ahead."

"Oh, that's really awfully kind of you. Thank you. But you must read the books. You must. I mean, you live here—how can you not?"

He wasn't used to this kind of emotional persuasion—he just wanted to get back to his wagon of hay and be gone.

"Just promise me, please, Mr.…?"

"Adam. The name's Adam."

"Mary Anne," she replied, extending her hand to shake his goodbye. "Start with Pride and Prejudice, of course. And then Emma—she's my favourite. So bold, yet so wonderfully oblivious. Please?"

He shrugged again, tipped his cap at her, and started to walk off down the lane. He dared to look back only once, from just past the pond where the two roads met. He saw her still standing there, tall and slender in her midnight blue, staring at the redbrick cottage, at its bricked-up window and the white front door opening straight onto the lane.

Excerpted from The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner . Copyright © 2020 by Natalie Jenner . Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.