British Manners

Mrs. Bennet’s marital schemes aren’t the only horrors Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy face this season in Hertfordshire… After learning Netherfield is set to lease at last, Elizabeth Bennet ventures onto the shadowed estate for a glimpse of Longbourn’s newest neighbors. There she finds herself confused by the eccentric Bingley sisters and drawn to the enigmatic Mr. Darcy. But the forbidding grounds whisper of mysteries as sinister as they are ancient. A web of growing madness draws Elizabeth closer to Netherfield and Mr. Darcy, a gentleman whose troubled past is tied to the awakening...

Campbell Flynn, art historian, professor, and fêted fixture of the literati, always knew that when his life came crashing down, it would happen in public—yet he never imagined that a single year in London would expose so much. He’s never taken other people half as seriously as they take themselves, which is the first of his mistakes. The second is a new project: opportunistic and precisely calibrated to rake in a fortune.

Everyone in Highley eagerly anticipates the arrival of Reginald Abernathy, the new master of Albon Manor. Everyone, that is, except Lord William Bascomb. William knows he’ll be expected to woo Reginald’s sister, and he can't summon the interest for it. But when the Abernathys arrive at last, William discovers he’s interested after all - in Reginald. Reginald is the most handsome, most dashing, most intriguing man he’s ever known. Better yet, he seems to share William's preference for men.

In Manners, Ralph Waldo Emerson expounds on the meaning of customs and politeness in civil society. He argues that the purpose of manners is more to facilitate the creation and proper working of society and not to establish hierarchies.