About Darcy: A Pride and Prejudice Variation: A Pride and Prejudice Variation (Warleigh Hall Press Jane Austen Series):
FOUR WEDDINGS – AND NO FUNERALS!
WINNER of PENCRAFT’S “Summer’s Best Books” (2023)
“Should she reject me again, I shall have to wed – as I swore I never would – for dynasty alone. I can only ever love Elizabeth Bennet.”
Love is put to the test in this fresh spin on Jane Austen’s starriest novel, entwining original and classic characters in a tale of passion and self-discovery.
Alice McVeigh puts the spotlight on Darcy in this witty and imaginative re-telling of Austen’s classic tale. In a timeless story of love amid the clash of social classes, Darcy is faced with a terrible choice: to stay in London to force Wickham’s hand – or to go to Rome, to salvage his family’s reputation.
With a new Darcyesque slant, omitted scenes from the original, and an extra helping of humour – as well as excerpts from The Wisdom and Wit of Miss Mary Bennet – this is a fresh new Pride and Prejudice with (wedding) bells on!
“McVeigh has a remarkable sense of the literary world Austen established, and is able to recreate it with masterly skill. Specifically, she reproduces Austen’s prose style with great fidelity, in all of its charming sophistication and clever wit.” – Kirkus Reviews
“Austen enthusiasts will enjoy a style faithful to the original, while those looking for a new twist will appreciate the post-modern perspectives showcasing character motivation from a fresh standpoint.” – IndieReader
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Author Bio:
Alice McVeigh has been published by Orion/Hachette in contemporary fiction, by UK’s Unbound in speculative fiction (writing as Spaulding Taylor) and by Warleigh Hall Press in historical fiction. Her books have placed in the BookLife Prize, and won gold medals/first place in the Pencraft, Global, eLit, Incipere and Historical Fiction Company Book Awards. Two of her novels have been Publishers Weekly “Editors Pick – outstanding” – one has a Kirkus Star.
A long-term Londoner, McVeigh was born in Seoul, South Korea, and grew up in Thailand, Singapore, and Myanmar, where her father was a US diplomat. After teenage years in McLean, Virginia, and achieving a degree in cello performance at the internationally renowned Jacobs School of Music, she came to London to study cello with William Pleeth. After settling in London, she began to work all over the world with orchestras including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic, and Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s Orchestre Revolutionaire et Romantique.
She was first published in the 1990s, when her two contemporary novels (WHILE THE MUSIC LASTS and GHOST MUSIC) were published by Orion Publishing to excellent reviews, including: “The orchestra becomes a universe in microcosm; all human life is here . . . McVeigh succeeds in harmonising a supremely comic tone with much darker notes.”(The Sunday Times) And: “McVeigh is a professional cellist and is thus able to describe with wry authority the extraordinary life of a London orchestra. This is a very enjoyable novel, and not quite as light as it pretends to be.” (The Sunday Telegraph).
WHILE THE MUSIC LASTS is now available on Alice’s website in a revised and rewritten edition. It will be announced in April 2023 as a runner-up in contemporary fiction in the Writer’s Digest Book Awards. She is currently preparing to release GHOST MUSIC in an updated edition.
In February 2021, UK independent Unbound published her speculative thriller, LAST STAR STANDING under her pen name, Spaulding Taylor. It received a Kirkus star, and has been a finalist in Chanticleer’s Cygnus Book Award, the Eric Hoffer Book Awards, the Wishing Shelf Book Awards, The International Book Awards and the Independent Press Awards.
Also in 2021, Warleigh Hall Press released SUSAN: A JANE AUSTEN PREQUEL. A quarterfinalist in Publishers Weekly’s 2021 BookLife Prize, it won First Place/Gold Medal in the PenCraft Book Awards, the HIstorical Fiction Company Book Awards, the Global Book Awards, and the eLit book Awards. Shelf Unbound magazine selected it as one of the “100 notable indies of 2021”. The BookLife Prize rated it 10/10. (“Pitch-perfect… this Austen-inspired novel echoes the master herself.”)
The second of her six-novel Austenesque series – HARRIET: A JANE AUSTEN VARIATION – was published on Feb. 3, 2022. A starred Editor’s Pick on Publishers Weekly, it is currently a finalist for the Forward Book of the Year Award and a finalist in Chanticleer’s Chatelaine Book Award. After replicating SUSAN’ s success in the Global Book Awards and Shelf Unbound, it was also a finalist in the International Book Awards, and has an IndieBRAG medallion.
The third book in the series – DARCY: A PRIDE AND PREJUDICE VARIATION, will be released June 30, 2023.
Alice is married to Professor Simon McVeigh; and their daughter Rachel has a Presidential Scholarship to Harvard (Ph.D). When not playing cello, writing, or editing, Alice is generally smiting tennis balls at the Bromley Tennis Centre. (Often too hard. As her daughter acutely observed when aged four, “My mum hits the ball farther than anybody!”)