Northanger Abbey

'If adventures will not befall a lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad.' The last of Austen's novels to be published, this is a humorous tale of the hazards of female friendship and undesirable suitors. Crumbling castles shrouded in secrets, ghostly skeletons cloaked in black veils, and innocent maidens held in the gravest of danger: the clichéd tropes of gothic romance fill the mind of Catherine Morland, the young, naïve, but warm-hearted heroine of Jane Austen's parody of the popular fiction of her time. Venturing away from her country parsonage home to delight in her first season amongst fashionable society in Bath, Catherine must navigate the more prosaic hazards of female friendship and undesirable suitors to secure the affection of eligible Henry Tilney. But when Catherine is invited to Northanger Abbey, the Tilneys' ancient stately home, her love of sensational stories of murder and mystery fires her imagination, and threatens to destroy her future happiness.