Michael Thomas Ford

Alive and well as a vampire in the modern world, literary master Jane Austen anonymously runs a bookshop in sleepy upstate New York but despairs of publishing a centuries-old manuscript that has been rejected dozens of times, a situation that is further compromised when she falls in love. Original.

A Novel

Jane Bites Back

Sarah Sammis

A current trend in literature is the classic mashup. Jane Austen seems to be the most popular classic author to repurpose. Usually these books fall into either contemporary novels about a young person (usually a woman) reliving an Austen plot or somehow being affected by one of her books — Jane Austen Ruined My Life, for example. The other category is the paranormal mashup where a classic is retold with a paranormal twist — Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, for example. There are also a number of sequels to famous books, like Mr. Darcy, Vampyr.

Jane Bites Back by Michael Thomas Ford is the first book I've read where Jane Austen herself is in the book and is the paranormal twist. As you can probably guess from the title and cover, she's a vampire. She's "living" in a small Upstate New York town and running a small bookstore. What she really wants, though, is to see her last manuscript published but she isn't desperate enough to resort to self publishing.

Jane gets her chance at publication, as Jane Fairfax, and is thrust back into a very changed publishing world with it. Along with her confusion over how things work now, Jane also has to contend with a lover returned, and a blogger who is out to ruin her new career before it even gets started.

I read the book while up in the mountains, sans internet. It was just the refreshing, silly read I needed. I found it fast paced and humorous. I plan to read the sequel soon, Jane Goes Batty.

Judy Hudgins

a fun look at Jane Austen if she were alive today. a little predictable, but a good read anyway.

Jane Bites Back A Novel

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