JPGarland author

Becoming Catherine Bennet by Joseph P. Garland

On June 20, 1815, rumours of Wellington's victory in what history would come to call the Battle of Waterloo reach London. Among the townspeople celebrating first the rumour and then the confirmation of victory are Mr. and Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy (and their son, Fitzy) and Mr. and Mrs. Charles Bingley, who live a few blocks apart in Mayfair. The news became bleak for the families, however, when they soon received a dispatch that Captain George Wickham had been valiantly killed in battle. His pregnant widow, Lydia, and sister-in-law, Kitty (or Catherine), will come to London to be with their families, joined by their parents who come down from Longbourn. (The remaining sister, Mary, will remain in northern England near the Scottish border with her husband, a vicar.) Thus begins Becoming Catherine Bennet. Soon, though, we will discover two great secrets. One, concerning Darcy and his money, is soon known throughout London and Derbyshire and wherever a member of London society resides. The other, concerning our heroine, Catherine, will only be revealed to a handful, those who need to know all or part of the truth. Elizabeth, of course (though not as yet Jane). And the three who were freed by the death in 1813 of Lady Catherine de Bourgh: Charlotte Collins, William Collins, and Anne de Bourgh.

I Am Alex Locus by Joseph P. Garland

Twenty-three-year-old Alex Locus stumbles into the world of her late mother, Emily. With each revelation, she learns things she could not have imagined, and struggles to find the truth about her family. Emily had a long-term date with a friend on Friday afternoons. On one of those Fridays, August 8, 2008, though, she suffered a stroke that she did not survive. Nine years later, Alex is passing time at a New York bookshop, enjoying an author read from her collection of stories. Her life changes forever when learns of the existence of the "Emily Locus Award." She introduces herself: "I am Alex Locus." This begins a quest by Alex and her best friend Kate to learn the truth about her mother, starting with their reading the unpublished stories that for years sat in the attic of Alex's one-time suburban home. A quest that will reveal secrets, good and bad, about the family members she knew and some she only came to meet in her search.