Welcome to Austenesque Extravaganza, a month-long celebration of Austenesque novels and authors! My name is Meredith Esparza, and I’m an ardent admirer of Austenesque novels and your host for this month-long tribute to Austenesque novels and authors.

Today’s Austenesuqe Event is: FUN AND GAMES FRIDAY

• For this event we enjoy some fun and frivolity with Austenesque themed quizzes and games.

*Remember, each time you comment during this event it counts as an entry for the Amazing Austenesque Giveaway! Don’t forget to fill out this form so I can contact you if you win! (You only need to fill it out one time for the whole month.)

TODAY’S GAME:  AUSTENESQUE FIRST LINES

• Match the title of the book with its first lines.  NO CHEATING!  If you answer all of them correctly you will receive 3 bonus entries for the Amazing Austenesque Giveaway!!!

A.  A Modern Day Persuasion by Kaitlin Saunders

B.  According to Janeby Marilyn Brant

C.  Anne Elliot A New Beginning by Mary Lydon Simonsen

D.  Darcy and the Duchess by Mary Anne Mushatt

E.  In the Arms of Mr. Darcy by Sharon Lathan

F.  Mr. Darcy Takes the Plunge by J. Marie Croft

G.  Nachtstürm Castle by Emily C. A. Snyder

H.  Pemberley by the Sea by Abigail Reynolds

I.  Pemberley Ranch by Jack Caldwell

J.  Rude Awakening of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler

L.  The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen by Syrie James

M.  The Pemberley Chronicles by Rebecca Ann Collins

2. The sea wall marked the beginning. Cassie had first glimpsed the ocean there while her jaded college friends told stories about their past vacations on Cape Cod. They didn’t know she came from a place with asphalt seas, so she pretended the ocean was just as familiar to her.

3. Since her marriage to Mr. Darcy some seven weeks ago, Elizabeth had wanted for nothing to complete her happiness, unless it was a chance to see her sister Jane again. Which is why her excitement increased markedly as they drove into London and around midmorning found themselves approaching Mr. Bingley’s in Grosvenor Street.

4. Mrs. Catherine Tilney was a well-read girl, but not a stupid one. Perhaps at one time she had been given over to unbridled imagination that saw ghosts in every cupboard and skeletons in every shoe, but her visit to Northanger Abbey – the ancestral home of her husband – had cured her immensely, if the far more sinister bath had not.

5. It was official, Anne Elliot was a spinster. During her twenty-third and twenty fourth years, her father and sisters had frequently said that if Anne didn’t find a suitor very quickly, she would die a spinster.

6. In the weeks following Colonel Fitzwilliam’s marriage to Lady Simone Fotherby, the reality of Elizabeth Darcy’s second pregnancy was affirmed. The spring to fall months of 1819 unfolded in peace, exciting travel, and the anticipation of new life with no problems of magnitude occurring and no warning of the winder troubles to come.

7. I always though Homer painted his character Odysseus as a real slow learner with that whole twenty-year-journey thing. I mean, what kind of an idiot needs two decades to understand a simple lesson like “Don’t be arrogant in the eyes of the gods?”

8. Why I feel the sudden urge to relate, in pen and ink, a relationship of the most personal nature, which I have never before acknowledged, I cannot stay. Perhaps it is this maddening illness which has been troubling me and now again of late – this cunning reminder of my own immortality – that compels me to make some record of what happened, to prevent the memory from vanishing into the recess of my mind, and from there to disappear for ever from history, as fleeting as a ghost in the mist.

9. A piercing sound, like a ship’s horn but higher, shriller, shakes my frame. I open one eye, then the other; the lids seem stuck together. From a gap in the curtains a tiny, knife-thin strip of light slices the darkness.

10. Pemberley’s revered housekeeper, Mrs. Esther Reynolds, graciously entertained, in her own comfortable private quarters, three genteel ladies, one of middle age and two much younger. Once they had finished their tea and the older women had caught up on all the latest news and gossip, Mrs. Reynolds inquired as to whether her guests would care for a guided tour of the grand estate’s public rooms and its immediate lawns.

11. A lone figure sat astride a tall, black Arabian under a single oak tree atop a ridge. It was a hot day, and in the early afternoon sun, the shade was welcomed by horse and rider alike, standing as still as a statue.

12. The world was over for seventeen year old Anne Elliot. With tears streaming down her face, she lay crying on her bed, clutching a pillow which was now drenched with tears.

*The fantastic graphics you are seeing for Austenesque Extravaganza were created by the wonderfully talented Lady Turner! Thank you, Lady Turner!