Jane Odiwe Jane Austen Sequels

Chapter Three It was just a second or two, but I was so surprised that I shut the door again before I’d even begun to register what on earth was happening. I was in such a state of shock my first thought was that I must have opened the wrong door, so I traced my steps back to the bathroom in the dark, managing to stub my toe in the process before daring to put on the landing light. I was feeling spooked by the whole experience, though to be perfectly honest, it was very disappointingly lacking in scariness. When I got back to my room I opened the door, hesitatingly, but as in all the best frightening tales the vision was gone. I’ve decided I saw a snapshot in time, as anyone living in an old house might see, though I really feel it was more than that. The girl, the room and all the objects were real and solid - not a wisp of ethereal ghostliness or ectoplasm, yet a part of me still can’t quite believe it. Had I been dreaming? One thing I did investigate immediately was

Chapter Two Caroline Bath, Somerset November 1975 Having survived shopping, which wasn’t at all the trial I was expecting and turned out to be fun, I’m now writing this in my new bedroom. I’d thought when we first got here that I might as well be Catherine Morland because the houses haven’t changed since Jane Austen’s time, and stepping inside the hallway and the reception rooms on the first floor you might be forgiven for thinking you’d gone back in time. It’s very Georgian, furnished with tourists in mind, and scented with the magical fragrance of a house that’s only ever known brimming flower bowls of milky narcissus and heady lilac in spring or spires of delphiniums and plump roses in summer. It’s full of the sights and smells of life lived luxuriously - elegant Chippendale furniture, watered silk on the walls, embroidered cushion covers on satin sofas in the drawing room, and giltwood pier glasses set between the windows. The scent of fragrant wood smoke, wax can

I've loved writing Searching for Mr Tilney and I hope you'll enjoy reading it too. Here's a peek at the Prologue and Chapter One - Chapter Two will be posted tomorrow! Prologue Caroline  Chelsea, London July 2017  I found it in an old bookshop in Cambridge a few weeks ago, on a tour of the city. It was a hot day, and to step inside the cool book-lined walls of the crooked Tudor building was like finding heaven on earth. I’d become ever more obsessed as the years went by in my quest to find even the smallest detail of tangible proof for all that had happened to me as a young girl, and I’d scoured every relevant book I could find for any clues to support the insight I’d gained. Though the overwhelming guilt that I’d done nothing about my discovery had softened over the years, I could never decide if I’d been right to keep its knowledge hidden, and even now I felt it might have been wrong to collude in guarding such secrets. It was midsummer’s day when I found the