List $34.95

Written by Karen Joy Fowler - Audio book performed by Kimberly Schraf - Unabridged Fiction - 7 COMPACT DISCS - 9 hours

Publisher, Listen & Live Audio (March 2004)

New York Times Book Review (about the hardcover edition) "What strikes one first is the voice: robust, sly, witty, elegant, unexpected."

A sublime comedy of contemporary manners, this is the novel Jane Austen might well have written had she lived in twenty-first- century California.

Nothing ever moves in a straight line in Karen Joy Fowler's fiction, and in her latest, the complex dance of modern love has never been so devious or so much fun.

Six Californians join to discuss Jane Austen's novels. Over the six months they meet, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable, and love happens. With her finely sighted eye for the frailties of human behavior and her finely tuned ear for the absurdities of social intercourse, Fowler has never been wittier nor her characters more appealing. The result is a delicious dissection of modern relationships.

Dedicated Austenites will delight in unearthing the echoes of Austen that run through the novel, but most readers will simply enjoy the vision and voice that, despite two centuries of separation, unite two great writers of brilliant social comedy.

About the Author: Karen Joy Fowler , a PEN/Faulkner and Dublin IMPAC nominee, is the author of Sarah Canary, The Sweetheart Season, Black Glass: Short Fictions, and Sister Noon.

About the Performer: Kimberly Schraf has been recording acclaimed audiobooks for twelve years and has acted professionally in theaters ranging from Arena Stage and the Kennedy Center, to Scotland's Deinburgh Festival. She is a graduate of St. John's College in Annapolis.