New Books In Literature

For a woman who published only four novels during her lifetime, with two others appearing shortly after her death and several incomplete or shorter works released into print much later, Jane Austen has had an astonishing and enduring legacy, with spinoffs, sequels, prequels, and remakes galore. Vanessa Kelly’s Murder in Highbury (Kensington Books, 2024), the first in a murder mystery series based on Austen’s Emma, offers one particularly appealing example. As happens in the best of these adaptations, Kelly’s Emma Woodhouse—now Emma Knightley—shares basic personality traits with her original conception but is not constrained by them. Stumbling into an impossible-to-predict encounter with a dead body in the chancel of the local church, Emma keeps her head even as her companion, Harriet Martin, seems ready to faint at the horrible sight. Emma confirms the victim’s death, settles her friend down, then sends her off to find the local doctor/coroner and George Knightly, Emma’s husband and the local magistrate. Emma