Aunt Dimity and the Duke (Aunt Dimity Series #2)

by Nancy Atherton

Overview

Emma Porter is forty, fat, frumpy, and a passionate amateur gardener. When her longtime lover dumps her for a younger woman, Emma escapes the cloying sympathy of family and friends by setting out on a summer-long driving tour of England's glorious gardens. A Dimity-contrived coincidence brings her to Penford Hall, a sprawling Gothic mansion in Cornwall, where she finds a duke in search of a missing lantern with extraordinary powers. Suspecting there's more than one mystery to be solved at Penford Hall, Emma accepts the duke's invitation to stay on and restore the once glorious chapel garden to its former beauty. The dark rumors surrounding a rock star and the near-death of the duke's beautiful cousin confirm Emma's suspicions, and set her—with Aunt Dimity's ghostly guidance—on the path to Penford Hall's secrets and the pleasure of unexpected love.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140178418
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/28/1995
Series:	Aunt Dimity Series , #2
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	70,475
Product dimensions:	4.20(w) x 6.72(h) x 0.64(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Nancy Atherton is the author of six Aunt Dimity novels: Aunt Dimity’s Death, Aunt Dimity and the Duke, Aunt Dimity’s Good Deed, Aunt Dimity Digs In, Aunt Dimity’s Christmas, and Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil (all available from Penguin). She lives next to a cornfield in central Illinois.

Table of Contents

Editorial Reviews

Atherton's second novel proves more amusing than her first (Aunt Dimity's Death) as it recycles several characters from that mystery/ghost story. Bostonian Emma Porter-a 39-year-old computer analyst and ardent gardener recently jilted by her longtime lover-is on her own in England, exploring Cornwall's gardens. A seemingly chance encounter leads her to Penford Hall, a name prominent in the tabloids five years earlier when a rock star's death peripherally involved Grayson Alexander, the 14th duke of Penford. At the Hall, Emma is greeted by Grayson as the savior of his ruined chapel garden, waiting to be restored in time for the village ``Fte'' that occurs once every 100 years to celebrate a legendary local supernatural event. That act is memorialized in a chapel window being examined by restorer Derek Harris, a widower who soon becomes Emma's romantic interest. Also present is a fading supermodel whose acerbic tongue cuts the story's high sugar level until she is rendered unconscious by a blow to the head. The source of Grayson's largesse and the identity of the model's attacker, when revealed, leave some questions unanswered, but romance runs rampant, happy endings abound and most readers will be smiling at book's end. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Atherton follows Aunt Dimity's Death (LJ 10/1/92) with a lightly Gothic-flavored forerunner set in a Cornwall mansion. Emma Porter, fortyish computer nerd and gardener, becomes entangled in a mystery involving the Duke of Penford. Aunt Dimity herself appears only in name-but no matter.

Library Journal