Mr. Bennet's five eligible daughters will never inherit their father's money. Neither will their scatterbrained mother. The family fortunes are destined, in the absence of a male heir, to pass to a cousin, William Collins, a pompous parson. Should one of the daughters marry him? Or is there a chance for the rich empty-headed bachelor Charles Bingley? And what about the aristocratic and supercilious Fitzwilliam Darcy? Yet both these men seem less exciting...

This engaging story of two attractive and mutually devoted sisters was first published in 1811. Romantic Marianne with her unrestrained enthusiasms, which lead to disillusionment and despair, makes a perfect foil to the unselfish Elinor, who brings a quiet self-control to her own heartbreak. The sentimental education of the two heroines is conducted with a fine regard for all the varying shades of romantic attraction, and in the end it is Marianne...

Maggie Gallacher had all but read the print off the elegant, gold-trimmed card. An invitation from the Duke of Moorshire to an evening at Lea Hall? She could still scarcely believe her eyes, even if it was a long-overdue honour - after all her husband Rod had done for the town.