Downton Abbey/Jane Austen-ish books

January 13, 2024 3:34 PM

If it says "For fans of Downton Abbey" on it, I want to read it! Bonus points if it's a mystery.

I am completely uninterested in my usual reading diet of fantasy and sci-fi for some reason right now. I've been reading two different mystery series - the Amory Ames mystery novels set in 1930s England and Darcie Wilde's Rosalind Thorne books inspired by Jane Austen - and really enjoying both of them. I also love Downton Abbey (I've read most of Julian Fellowes' books) and everything Jane Austen. What else should I read that's in a similar vein? Stand-alone books are fine but I'm also definitely hoping for some good series that I can just tear through a bunch of.

posted by skycrashesdown to Media & Arts (30 answers total)

Apologies if this is too obvious but have you tried the queens from the golden age of mystery who were actually writing in that 1930s time period? Christie, Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, Josephine Tey? Most have a couple continuing characters.

(I guess you could add Allingham to that group but I never liked her series)
posted by TWinbrook8 at 4:08 PM on January 13 [6 favorites]

Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley is a lovely little satire about awful self absorbed people summering in a big manor house in the 1920s and it's one of my very favorite books.
posted by phunniemee at 4:33 PM on January 13 [4 favorites]

You might enjoy the Her Royal Spyness series.
posted by OrangeDisk at 4:44 PM on January 13 [3 favorites]

Not a mystery and not a series, but I recently read House of Mirth by Edith Wharton for the first time and really enjoyed it. Not a happy book but it is about the society life in New York at the turn of the century. From my memory of Austen, it is more critical of that society - definitely moreso than Downton Abbey.
posted by My Kryptonite is Worry at 5:07 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]

It's a stand alone but Death Comes to Pemberley?
posted by juv3nal at 5:15 PM on January 13 [7 favorites]

I was also going to recommend Edith Wharton, especially House of Mirth, but also Age of Innocence and the Children.
posted by bluedaisy at 5:31 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]

Another prolific vintage writer, Georgette Heyer wrote over two dozen Regency romance novels along the lines of Austen. She also wrote a dozen country house mysteries in the 30s and 40s, one of which bears a strong resemblance to Gosford Park, penned by Fellowes.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 5:33 PM on January 13 [10 favorites]

Jude Morgan has some Jane Austen-ish books. I think the best one is An Accomplished Woman which I found delightful.
posted by Constance Mirabella at 5:35 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]

I think you might like Sujata Massey's Perveen Mistry series set in 1920s Bombay - Bombay’s only female solicitor, Perveen Mistry, grapples with class divisions, sexism, and complex family dynamics as she seeks justice.

MC Beaton has a series of Edwardian mysteries called Snobbery with Violence that I think you may also like.

I also second the recommendation of Georgette Heyer, with the warning that Heyer published in the 1950s and was strikingly anti-Semitic for that time. The Grand Sophy is one to avoid for some virulent anti-Semitic scenes, in a book that was published during the time period of the Nuremberg trials
posted by lizard music at 6:01 PM on January 13 [3 favorites]

How about the Jane Austen mysteries by Stephanie Barron? I found them very fun.
Georgette Heyer’s regencies are great (I like her mysteries less and go to other authors of the time period for them.) There is antisemitism of various amounts in a lot of Heyer, although I love the books anyway. Just be aware of your tolerances and ability to skip over stuff.
posted by PussKillian at 8:09 PM on January 13

There are tons of Regency-set mystery series.

On the lighter side, Lynn Messina’s Beatrice Hyde Clare books. More serious are Anna Lee Huber’s Lady Darby series and CS Harris’ Sebastian St. Cyr. Tracy Grant has the Melanie & Charles/Malcolm & Suzanna series. (Publisher forced name change.)

Rhys Bowen as the Royal Spyness series. These are set a bit later/1930s but feature murders at country houses and such. Light as a cream puff.

These are not literary in the way Austen is, but scratches some of the itch, at least for me.
posted by HonoriaGlossop at 9:00 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]

The Murder of Mr Wickham by Claudia Gray.
posted by damsel with a dulcimer at 11:35 PM on January 13

Seconding Georgette Heyer's 1930's and 40's murder mystery books. I find them delightful. Plus some of the characters are in multiple books which is cool.
posted by daffodil at 3:22 AM on January 14

A bit of a left-of-field suggestion - I wonder if you might enjoy some Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. The stories are about an English aristocrat drawn into work as a private investigator by a tragedy in her family, set in Melbourne in the 1920s. I've experienced the stories as a TV series (it is excellent) but it's based on a series of books by Kerry Greenwood.
posted by Cheese Monster at 4:06 AM on January 14 [2 favorites]

Dorothy Sayers was already mentioned up thread so I'll heartily second. Gaudy Night is a perfect book.
posted by saladin at 4:38 AM on January 14 [2 favorites]

By Wilkie Collins, The Woman In White and The Moonstone.

You might try a novel by Anthony Trollope of which there are many.
posted by SemiSalt at 4:49 AM on January 14 [1 favorite]

Have you read Jo Baker's Longbourn? It's a parallel fiction, set at the same time as Pride and Prejudice, about the lives of the servants and working-class people around the Bennetts. This is the kind of book I am envious of people getting to read for the first time.

Anthony Trollope's The Eustace Diamonds centers around a mysterious jewel theft that sets London on its ear, but the reader is in on it the whole time. I think it's delightful, and I've read it several times. With Trollope, you have to be willing to deal with the baked-in madonna/whore dichotomy, casual anti-Semitism, and 170-year-old current events, but The Eustace Diamonds has the least of that for your public-domain buck. I don't understand how he could have those opinions when he was capable of such perceptive character work for both men and women, but there you are.

The mystery writer Ruth Rendell, who wrote serial mystery fiction from the 70s to 90s or so, wrote historical fiction later in her life under the name of Barbara Vine. Those books might or might not involve mysteries but always have a mysterious vibe.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:29 AM on January 14 [4 favorites]

The Remains of the Day could fit the bill. It takes place in a manor house, and has some of the same sort of upstairs/downstairs aspects as much of Fellowes' work.
posted by Maxwell_Smart at 9:41 AM on January 14

Captain Lacey novels by Jennifer Ashley
Lady Fan mysteries by Elizabeth Bailey
Murder on Black Swan Lane by Andrea Penrose
Murder on Astor Place by Victoria Thompson
posted by Enid Lareg at 9:47 AM on January 14

For 1930s country house settings, but not mysteries, you could try Nancy Mitford (The Pursuit of Love, Love in a Cold Climate), which are two largely comic semi-autobiographical novels about growing up in an eccentric family in the country house set. There are couple of other sequels as well, but I remember them being weaker.

They were published in the 40s; I imagine they need the usual warnings about changing social attitudes, but it’s a while since I read them so I can’t be more specific.
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 10:40 AM on January 14

The Secret of Pembrooke Park by Julie Klassen scratched this itch perfectly for me!
posted by invincible summer at 11:13 AM on January 14

Lord Edgington Investigates is a series of cozy mysteries set in the 1920s and so far all of the mysteries have been set in a manor house in the country. If you have access to Hoopla, George Blagden does a wonderful job on the audiobooks. The link I posted to has a link to a free novella.
posted by Constance Mirabella at 11:14 AM on January 14

The Shooting Party, which has an intro by the Downton Abby person and IIRC inspired Gosford Park and the lighter and more broadly appealing DA.
posted by scribbler at 12:38 PM on January 14 [1 favorite]

If you're willing to try contemporaneous books, Charlotte M Yonge wrote a lot; my favorite is The Pillars of the House for its profoundly non-alpha hero and lengthy detail, but I think more people like The Daisy Chain. She also wrote a lot of books that were historical romances in her time, if you want some knights, armor, etc. Even more of an odd taste now.

I'm also fond of Maria Edgeworth, sometimes her didacticism comes off as very modern now. (Often not!)
posted by clew at 3:14 PM on January 14

cold comfort farm
posted by brujita at 3:59 PM on January 14

I very much enjoyed The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow. It's about Mary Bennet, and very sweet and satisfying.
posted by unicorn chaser at 12:32 AM on January 15 [1 favorite]

Evelina by Frances (Fanny) Burney is reputedly the book that inspired Jane Austen to write.
posted by Hogshead at 2:58 AM on January 15 [1 favorite]

You might like Tirzah Price's Jane Austen murder mysteries
posted by millermartel at 3:57 PM on January 15

The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart is set in the US in the very early 1900s and involves a big country house and servants, etc. It's at a curious time when some people have cars and most people have never ridden in one. Telephones are scarce.
posted by SemiSalt at 5:26 AM on January 16

Response by poster: There are so many fantastic answers here, thank you all so much! I should have specified that part is my attraction to these books is that they often are fairly light and fluffy, and even the murder mysteries don’t typically have a lot of peril/danger. (I have read Edith Wharton and the writing is beautiful, but all of what I’ve read definitely has far too much despair for me to handle right now.) Off to fill up my library holds list!
posted by skycrashesdown at 3:28 PM on January 16 [1 favorite]