The Jane Austen Society

This charming debut is sure to delight Austen fans. Jane Austen lived out her last days in the sleepy village of Chawton, and in the days just after World War II, her legacy still looms large. Times are hard, and we meet several villagers burdened with their own private sorrows, who are doing what they’ve always done: turning to the works of Austen for solace. When a local business attempts to buy the Austen property and raze her cottage, the villagers band together to preserve her legacy. At one point, a character muses that Austen’s works present “a world so a part of our own, yet so separate, that entering it is like some kind of tonic.” The same can be said of Jenner’s wonderful book. Don’t miss Jenner’s 2022 novel Bloomsbury Girls, out May 17; audiophiles should know Juliet Stevenson narrates. For fans of Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer’s The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and Charlie Lovett’s The Last Book of the Grail.