Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict

The Los Angeles Times bestseller that has Austen lovers hooked

After nursing a broken engagement with Jane Austen novels and Absolut, Courtney Stone wakes up to find herself not in her Los Angeles bedroom or even in her own body, but inside the bedchamber of a woman in Regency England. Who but an Austen addict like herself could concoct such a fantasy?

Not only is Courtney stuck inside another woman's life, she is forced to pretend she actually is that woman; and despite knowing nothing about her, she manages to fool even the most astute observer. For her borrowed body knows how to speak without slaying the King's English, dance without maiming her partner, and embroider as if possessed by actual domestic skill.

But not even Courtney's level of Austen mania has prepared her for the chamber pots and filthy coaching inns of nineteenth-century England, let alone the realities of being a single woman who must fend off suffocating chaperones, condom-less seducers, and marriages of convenience. Enter the enigmatic Mr. Edgeworth, a suitor who may turn out not to be a familiar species of philanderer after all.

Laurie Viera Rigler's novels CONFESSIONS OF A JANE AUSTEN ADDICT and RUDE AWAKENINGS OF A JANE AUSTEN ADDICT (both published by Plume in North America, by Bloomsbury in the UK, and by Sperling & Kupfer in Italy) could have been considered semi-autobiographical had they not involved time travel and body switching.

Her short story, Intolerable Stupidity, in which Mr Darcy brings charges against all the writers of Pride and Prejudice sequels, spin-offs and retellings, appears in the anthology JANE AUSTEN MADE ME DO IT (Ballantine, October 2011). In addition to working on her third novel, Laurie is the creator of the web series Sex and the Austen Girl, which is inspired by her Austen Addict novels. All 23 episodes can be found at Laurie's online home, janeaustenaddict.com, and at babelgum.com/sexandtheaustengirl. Laurie can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.