8 Mysteries for Jane Austen Lovers That Will Bewitch You, Body and Soul

Here’s one that brings together all the characters in Jane Austen’s world.

Mr. Knightley and Emma invite all of their friends and acquaintances to a house party, but Mr. Wickham is not invited. He’s made more enemies with a recent financial scandal, and many people are angry at his machinations and wish him ill.

But they soon learn that someone actually decides to rid the world of Mr. Wickham. Now Juliet Tinney, the daughter of Catherine and Henry Tilney from Northanger Abbey, and Jonathan Darcy, the eldest son of the Darcys, team up to find out who really killed the wicked Wickham.

It’s the first of the four-book Mr. Darcy and Miss Tinley series (so far).

The protagonist, Miss Dido Kent, has been described as Jane Marple in Jane Austen’s world.

This book opens as Dido writes a letter to her sister: “My Dear Eliza, The great Mrs. Lansdale is no more.” Mrs. Lansdale is a neighbor to Dido’s cousin in Richmond, where Dido is spending time. 

Everyone thinks the woman’s nephew is the culprit, but Dido suspects otherwise.

Unfortunately, her suitor, Mr. William Lomax, thinks that she should leave things alone. Dido, however, isn’t one to let a murderer go scot free.

It’s the second in the four-book Dido Kent series.

If you wanted to see Lizzie Bennet strut her stuff, this one is for you.

Lizzie is London’s first female solicitor at her father’s firm. She's romantically involved with Fitzwilliam Darcy, who is also a solicitor.

Her professional and love life get tangled up in a case from a bereaved brother who asks Lizzie to look into a warehouse fire that resulted in death. That case leads Lizzie to questioning the woman that Darcy had previously proposed to.

But when the lead suspect is also murdered and threats mount against Lizzie, it’s clear that they don’t just need a suspect, they need to find the culprit.

It’s the first in the two-book Lizzie & Darcy Mystery series, which is a spinoff of Tirzah Price’s Jane Austen Murder Mystery series.

Emily Cavanaugh needed a change. She’s been teaching English for many years, but she wants more.

When she learns that she has inherited a significant fortune from an aunt, she picks up her life to go to Stony Beach, Oregon to claim the inheritance. What she hadn’t expected was to see the man who broke her heart 35 years ago.

That becomes trivial when there’s a suggestion that Emily’s aunt did not die gracefully from old age, but rather from someone’s hand.

When she herself survives an attempt on her life, she uses Jane Austen’s Persuasion as guidance to find out who murdered her aunt.

Here’s a young adult novel inspired by the world of Jane Austen.

Sophia Thompson is not content to be a mild-mannered lady. She wants action and adventure…preferably as one of the Bow Street Runners, London’s detectives who are the precursor to the police.

When her cousin Daphne asks for Sophia to look into the murder of Daphne’s brother, Sophia decides this is a perfect chance to kill two birds with one stone: get justice for Daphne and her family and prove Sophia’s investigative skills.

She did not expect to find love along the way in the form of Jeremy, a Bow Street Runner himself. But Jeremy’s got to solve the case or he’ll be thrown out of the detective corps.

Will they get to the truth behind the murder, or will both Sophia and Jeremy see their dreams come to a crashing halt?

For some Austen fans, Mansfield Park and its heroine Fanny Price is controversial. So if you want a reimagining of that world, this is the book to try.

In this world, Fanny Price is an insufferable wealthy heiress, while Mary Crawford is her opposite: sweet, kind, but without any means. But as much as Mary has reason to dislike Fanny, she feels that she must solve Fanny’s murder.

Mary has to team up with Charles Maddox, described as a thief-taker, to find out which, of all the people who would have wanted Fanny dead, actually did the deed.

It’s the first in the Charles Maddox series, where each book centers on a 19th century author.

For fans of the Gilded Age and Jane Austen, here’s a delightful book about female artists and artist and writer salons.

After Ginny’s heart is broken by her long-term crush, Charlie, she throws herself into her writing, imagining her life that could have been if he hadn’t proposed to another woman.

Ginny finds herself immersed in the creative arts when her brother, Franklin, introduces her to his best friend, John, who runs a salon at his mansion on Fifth Avenue in New York City. She soon finds herself entranced with John, but when someone is found murdered in John’s mansion, Ginny realizes that all the glitter and gold of the salon may be hiding tawdry dark secrets.

On top of that, Charlie reemerges, complicating Ginny’s life as she tries to navigate a murder and a world set on keeping women on the sidelines.

Here’s a fun updated telling of Pride and Prejudice.

Elizabeth Parker wants a new start to the year. She decides that attending her Aunt Winnie’s murder mystery party on New Year’s Eve at her aunt’s Cape Cod bread and breakfast is the perfect remedy.

Except that means dealing with Peter McGowan, the boy who teased her when she visited her aunt as a child—and may have nefarious plans for her aunt’s B&B.

But the wrong person turns up actually dead, not play-acting dead.  Now Elizabeth finds herself surrounded by possible suspects as the police accuse her aunt of the crime.

She finds herself having to team up with Peter to get to the bottom of it all.

It’s the first of the four-book Elizabeth Parker Mystery series.