Looking out my bedchamber window, I couldn’t see the trees or the garden I knew to be near Harrowden House, much less the distant tower of rocks called Hound Tor. It was two hours to sundown, but the mists of Dartmoor moved swiftly. At first they were white tendrils snaking along the ground, but then the most rose to encircle the trees and scraggly bushes like a vengeful admirer forsaking his hiding place to smother prey.
I fiddled with the necklace hanging around my throat. It had a sapphire in the center, one of the few valuables I owned. I was married to a Tilney, but my beloved husband was the rector of Woodston, more interested in helping people than flaunting riches. But tonight I needed to look as impressive as possible.
Downstairs, Isabella Harrowden, once Isabella Thorpe, was giving a dinner at her house on the moor. She invited Lord Piers Pomeroy, a man I didn’t want to share a table with, considering his reputation as someone who might have had something to do with a missing maid.
And tonight, what I feared most of all was what kind of impression he would try to make on my beautiful seventeen-year-old daughter Phoebe, the heiress of Northanger Abbey.
THE HEIRESS OF NORTHANGER ABBEY
Genre: Historical Mystery, 1820s
Release: September 2026
Format: Print, Digital
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop.org | Kobo
From the bestselling author of The Crown and The Blue comes a sequel to Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen’s classic novel.
Gloucestershire, 1820: Twenty-two years after the close of Northanger Abbey, Catherine Tilney seems to be living a happily ever after. But her busy life as a clergyman’s wife is shattered by a letter that resurrects her darkest fears. Her daughter Phoebe has fallen under the influence of the unscrupulous Thorpe family—the very figures who once nearly destroyed Catherine’s happiness.
Determined to protect her child from dangerous fortune hunters, Catherine follows Phoebe to an isolated manor on Dartmoor. There, she finds a landscape of reckless passions, family secrets, and a dangerously charming aristocratic neighbor. It all feels eerily like the plot of the latest Gothic sensation, The Vampyre — but is Catherine once again letting her imagination run wild?
In this psychologically charged sequel to Jane Austen’s classic, award-winning historical novelist Nancy Bilyeau transforms Catherine’s youthful adventures into a mystery with the highest of stakes. The Heiress of Northanger Abbey is a story of mothers and daughters, deception and desire—and of a woman who must learn to trust her power of perception before it’s too late.
For Austen fans who adore a high-spirited Regency tale, savor a hint of the Gothic—and long to be transported to the mist-shrouded moors.
About the author
Nancy Bilyeau (nancybilyeau.com) is the author of nine historical novels. She wrote the Joanna Stafford trilogy, a trio of thrillers set in Henry VIII’s England, for Simon & Schuster. The first of the books, The Crown, was dubbed “The Page Turner You’ll Tear Through” by Oprah magazine. Her fourth novel, The Blue, was set in the 18th century and drew on her own background as a descendant of the Huguenot settler Pierre Billiou. Her new novel, The Heiress of Northanger Abbey, is a sequel to Jane Austen’s classic. A former staff editor at Rolling Stone and InStyle, she lives with her family in the Hudson Valley.