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Book Title and Author Name:
The Man in the Stone Cottage: a novel of the Brontë sisters
By Stephanie Cowell
Audiobook by Brilliance Audio
Blurb:
“A haunting and atmospheric historical novel.” – Library Journal
In 1846 Yorkshire, the Brontë sisters— Charlotte, Anne, and Emily— navigate precarious lives marked by heartbreak and struggle.
Charlotte faces rejection from the man she loves, while their blind father and troubled brother add to their burdens. Despite their immense talent, no one will publish their poetry or novels.
Amidst this turmoil, Emily encounters a charming shepherd during her solitary walks on the moors, yet he remains unseen by anyone else.
After Emily’ s untimely death, Charlotte— now a successful author with Jane Eyre— stumbles upon hidden letters and a mysterious map. As she stands on the brink of her own marriage, Charlotte is determined to uncover the truth about her sister’ s secret relationship.
The Man in the Stone Cottage is a poignant exploration of sisterly bonds and the complexities of perception, asking whether what feels real to one person can truly be real to another.
Praise for The Man in the Stone Cottage:
“A mesmerizing and heartrending novel of sisterhood, love, and loss in Victorian England.” – Heather Webb, USA Today bestselling author of Queens of London
“Stephanie Cowell has written a masterpiece.” – Anne Easter Smith, author of This Son of York
“With The Man in the Stone Cottage, Stephanie Cowell asks what is real and what is imagined and then masterfully guides her readers on a journey of deciding for themselves.” – Cathy Marie Buchanan, author of The Painted Girls
“The Brontës come alive in this beautiful, poignant, elegant and so very readable tale. Just exquisite.” – NYT bestseller, M.J. Rose
“Cowell’s ability to take readers to time and place is truly wonderful and absorbing.” – Stephanie H. (Netgalley)
“Such a lovely, lovely book!” – Books by Dorothea (Netgalley)
Excerpt 3:
After having stayed away from the cottage on the moors for many months and the shepherd within who no one else has ever seen, Emily is suddenly worried he may have vanished. She has just begun to draft her first novel Wuthering Heights
The rest of the winter brought awful weather. It was too cold to hang wash outside, so chemises and underdrawers and petticoats and shirts were draped on ropes stretched across the kitchen to dry, steaming slightly from the hot fire. Outside, snow covered the fences and the high grass while the sheep seemed like ghosts as they moved in the blizzards.
When Emily raised her face from the pages of her story, she finally allowed herself to think of Jonathan MacConnell in his small cottage, likely half buried in snow. No, likely not for she recalled that he said he might leave before this winter. The stone cottage would be empty, as it had been when she first discovered it. She put her fingers to her lips which he had wanted to kiss. But perhaps he had packed but not yet gone.
Emily pulled on her warmest cloak and laced her mother’s boots, which could hardly be mended anymore. Within minutes, she was through the moor gate and plunging into the icy snow. She was panting by the time she saw the familiar hill before her which she had first climbed as a girl. I am always too late for everything, she thought. How could I forget to come?
Breathless she made the hilltop. Her hood fell off, and the snow flew in her face. For a moment she could see nothing. She wiped it away with her glove, looked down. Below her, in the icy piles around its foundations, the stone cottage had returned to the ruins in which she first had found it so many years before. The roof was half gone, and the door torn away.
Then he’s left for certain, she told herself. I have missed him because I forgot.
She covered her face with her gloved hands.
But when she took away her hands, the house was whole again. The icy snow was dying down, blowing away. Making her way to the back of the house, she saw a ladder and Jonathan MacConnell standing on it. His face lit up at the sight of her and he called, happily, “Can it be you? I almost left, a few months ago before Christmas. How glad I am to see you!”
She picked up his fallen hat and when he came down, gave it to him. He brushed it off with his bare hand, leaving sparkles of ice in the strands. She could find no words to say but that she was very glad to find him, and she would not say that. Her throat swelled.
The snow had entirely ceased to fall.
Finding her voice, she asked him, “Why didn’t you go?”
“I almost did, but I wanted to see you first. I waited, willing you to come to me. One Sabbath between storms a few months ago, I rode my old mare to your church but remained in the back. You were with your sisters, singing hymns from the book. Three charming girls in bonnets.”
She said uncomfortably, “I wish you had spoken to me when you came to the village.”
“I know you a little and you didn’t want it. I’m your secret. I sensed it. It gets lonely being a secret, lass.”
“I think of us as friends.”
“Strange friends indeed. ‘I won’t come to you, and you may not come to me.’ ‘I’ll see you in a year, maybe not.’” He smiled, teasing. “Come inside where it’s warm,” he said. When she did not take the hand, he shrugged and opened the door to his cottage.
Avoiding even brushing his coat sleeve, she passed him and sat down carefully on the wobbly chair near the burning logs. He took the other chair, removing his mufflers.
She said, “I did stay away a time. I’ve been writing a book. It so possesses me, I forget the world. I forgot everything. Even friends…you.”
His face softened. “Friends indeed then?”
“Why yes, of course.”
“A whole book! I cannot imagine writing so much.”
“I think my sisters write books, but they aren’t very successful. None of us are. Sometimes mine seems realer than my own world.”
“Can it do that?”
“Oh yes! It makes me forget things I can’t manage.”
“Do you mean your brother? I’ve been thinking of him. Last month after seeing you girls in church, I had a mug in the Haworth pub and heard talk that he fell in love with a married woman who’s widowed now and who’ll marry him soon and solve your family’s financial needs.”
“Is it the general talk?”
“It is and I see you don’t like it. I like the look of your father, very much the old prophet. What would he think of me, I wonder?”
“I don’t want him to know yet. He’s ill at the idea of us being hurt or taken in by a stranger.”
“Am I still a stranger?”
“Not anymore, but my family mightn’t understand, because you’re a married man run away from your wife from a place no one has ever heard of. And we met in such a strange way. And you may disappear from my life as abruptly as you came. With my knowing nothing of it.”
“I won’t,” he said. “I’ll stay a time if you will continue to come to me.”
“I’ll always come,” Emily said. Rising, she walked around the table and bent down to press her lips against his. He touched the back of her head to bring her closer. His lips were warm and slightly chapped, and she lingered a time before springing away. All the way home, she ran over the sopping ground as fast as she could.
That night her novel woke her like something shaking her arm. She stumbled to the desk. She had some attempts to light the lamp. The words came from nowhere, rushing and pushing. The scenes were still coming out of order. She remembered how years ago, in the marketplace, she had seen a boy about five years old, staring after her.
The clock on the stairs chimed two in the morning.
She forgot everything but her book.
Emily wrote for a long time, trying to make her penmanship legible, catching the words as they came. It was not until dawn began, slowly lightening the sky, that she felt too tired to continue. She locked everything away and lay down again. The whole story was gray, like the light, but she felt its edges, its middle, its muddled endings, the many of them.
Emily pulled the pillow over her head against the strange people in her room and whispers from corners. We have always been here, they murmured. We are more real than you are. We are more real than he is, your man in his stone cottage, and he is dangerously real.
Live for us alone.
I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always. Take any form, drive me mad, only do not leave me in this dark alone where I cannot find you. I cannot live without my life! I cannot die without my soul.
Buy Link:
Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/u/mqLV2d
Author Bio:
Stephanie Cowell has been an opera singer, balladeer, founder of Strawberry Opera and other arts venues including a Renaissance festival in NYC.
She is the author of seven novels including Marrying Mozart, Claude & Camille: a novel of Monet, The Boy in the Rain and The Man in the Stone Cottage. Her work has been translated into several languages and adapted into an opera. Stephanie is the recipient of an American Book Award.
Author Links:
Website: https://stephaniecowell.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stephanie.cowell.14
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cowell.stephanie/
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/stephaniecowell
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/197596.Stephanie_Cowell
Thanks so much for hosting Stephanie Cowell, with an enticing excerpt from her compelling new novel, The Man in the Stone Cottage.
Take care,
Cathie xo
The Coffee Pot Book Club