Ladies in Waiting Jane Austen's Unsung Characters

Celebrate Jane Austen’s classic novels with this short story anthology starring forgotten characters as they experience their own happy endings.

In honor of her 250th birthday, eight authors have come together with wildly imaginative reboots of the lives of several of Jane Austen’s minor characters. Written with plenty of love and wit, these clever stories star everyone from Pride and Prejudice’s snobbish Caroline Bingley to the modern descendant of Sense and Sensibility’s Eliza Williams and much more. Blurring genres and taking us across the oceans, Ladies in Waiting is a heartfelt celebration of Jane Austen and her timeless masterpieces.

Nikki Payne is the author of Pride and Protest and Sex, Lies, and Sensibility. By day, Nikki Payne is a curious tech anthropologist asking the right questions to deliver better digital services. By night, she dreams of ways to subvert canon literature. She’s a member of Smut U, a premium feminist writing collective, and is a cat lady with no cats.

Diana Quincy is the bestselling author of the Accidental Peers series. As a US Foreign Service brat, Diana grew up all over the world but is now happily settled in Virginia with her husband and two sons. When not bent over her laptop, Diana spends time with her family, reads, practices yoga and plots her next travel adventure.

Audrey Bellezza is a two-time Emmy Award–nominated TV producer who has spent over twenty years writing, developing, and executive producing nonfiction television shows for a number of networks and streaming platforms. Audrey lives in New Jersey with her husband and two children.

Emily Harding is one-half of the writing duo behind the For the Love of Austen series, including Emma of 83rd Street and Elizabeth of East Hampton. She is a graduate of Emerson College with degrees in both creative writing and film. After working over fifteen years in television development and production, she found her way back to writing. Emily lives in Dallas with her husband, two children, and an incredibly spoiled Texas heeler.

Elinor Lipman is the award-winning author of several books of fiction and nonfiction, including The Inn at Lake Devine, Isabel’s Bed, and more. Her first novel, Then She Found Me, was adapted into a film directed by and starring Helen Hunt, with Bette Midler, Colin Firth, and Matthew Broderick. She divides her time between Manhattan and the Hudson Valley.

Adriana Trigiani is the New York Times bestselling author of twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, including the instant New York Times bestseller The Good Left Undone. Her work has been published in thirty-eight languages around the world. An award-winning playwright, television writer/producer and filmmaker, Adriana’s screen credits include writer/director of the major motion picture of her debut novel, Big Stone Gap, the adaptation of her novel Very Valentine and director of Then Came You. Adriana grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia where she cofounded The Origin Project, an in-school writing program serving over 1,700 students in Appalachia. She is at work on her next novel. 

Sarah MacLean, a life-long romance reader, wrote her first romance novel on a dare, and never looked back. She is the New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of romances translated into more than twenty languages, a romance columnist, and the cohost of the weekly romance novel podcast Fated Mates. A graduate of Smith College and Harvard University, she lives in New York City.

Eloisa James is a New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of historical romance novels. Her books have been translated into twenty-six languages with sales worldwide of seven million. As Mary Bly, she is a Shakespeare professor at Fordham University. She lives in New York City and Florence, Italy. Find out more at EloisaJames.com. 

Karen Dukess is the author of The Last Book Party and Welcome to Murder Week. Karen has been a newspaper reporter in Florida, a magazine publisher in Russia, and a speechwriter on gender equality for the United Nations. She has a degree in Russian studies from Brown University and a master’s in journalism from Columbia University. She lives outside of New York City and in Truro on Cape Cod, where she interviews some of today’s most acclaimed writers as host of the Castle Hill Author Talks for the Truro Center for the Arts. Find out more at KarenDukess.com.