Northanger Abbey

Catherine Morland is seventeen, headstrong, and dangerously well-read. She has consumed so many Gothic novels that real life seems disappointingly pale in comparison. When she is invited to Bath, she hopes for mystery, intrigue, perhaps a ruined abbey and a brooding hero. What she finds instead is the suffocating superficiality of Regency social life, and the Tilney family, whose ancestral home Northanger Abbey promises at last to fulfill her most dramatic fantasies. But the abbey holds no dark secrets, only uncomfortable truths about the gap between literature and reality. Austen's earliest novel is also her most playful: a loving yet sharp satire of Gothic conventions that doubles as a wry coming-of-age story. Catherine must learn to separate her romantic imaginings from actual people, a lesson that costs her both her pride and her illusions. Witty, self-aware, and surprisingly warm, this is Austen at her most playful. It rewards readers who love literature about readers, and anyone who has ever believed in stories a little too fiercely.