Throughout her lifetime Jane Austen wrote countless letters to her sister. But why did Cassandra burn them all1840 twenty three years after the death of her famous sister Jane Cassandra Austen returns to the village of Kintbury and the home of her familys friends the Fowles.She knows that in some dusty corner of the sprawling vicarage there is a cache of family letters which hold secrets she can never allow to be revealed.As Cassandra recalls her youth and her relationship with her brilliant yet complex sister she pieces together buried truths about Janes history and her own. And she faces a stark choice should she act to protect Janes reputation or leave the contents of the letters to go unguarded into posterityBased on a literary mystery that has long puzzled biographers and academics Miss Austen is a wonderfully original and emotionally complex novel about the loves and lives of Cassandra and Jane Austen.