Like many young couples, Elizabeth Bennet and her husband, Fitzwilliam Darcy, enjoy doting on their baby daughter and dreaming of the future. Weekends are spent entertaining friends or embarking on shopping trips to London — a sojourn that takes four days by carriage to complete. All in all, theirs is a life that’s quintessentially genteel.

Except, of course, when murder, mystery and mayhem get in the way.

Welcome to Carrie Bebris’ world — one that was forged by early-19th-century novelist Jane Austen in books that have become bastions of English literature. In 2000, the 41-year-old Centerville author decided to pick up where Austen left off: Bebris started a series of mysteries based on the characters she fell in love with as a teenager. Her first whodunit, Pride and Prescience, reacquainted readers with Mr. and Mrs. Darcy, whom Austen wrote about in Pride and Prejudice. Bebris’ latest offering, The Intrigue at Highbury, published last spring, centers around lovable matchmaker Emma Woodhouse, whose exploits Austen described in Emma. To read more, click here to subscribe. To read more, click here to subscribe >>