Catherine Morland has read every gothic thriller she can get her hands on, and when she's finally invited to a real English abbey, she's convinced she's stepped into one — certain the house is hiding a dark family secret, certain every locked door means something sinister. What she actually finds is something Austen finds far more interesting: ordinary social maneuvering, a charming and unreliable suitor, and the gap between the stories we've been trained to expect and the much stranger reality of growing up.Austen's sharpest satire of the gothic fiction craze of her time, and one of her wittiest studies of a young reader learning to tell fiction from life.