The Empress Of The Last Days

'Jane Stevenson is a writer of formidable ability' - Sunday Telegraph

Spectacular talent...great intellectual sharpness... [This] is a profoundly satisfying end to a magnificent sequence

Jane Stevenson's touch is so light, her learning so deep and wide, that you enter another country which, while foreign, soon feels as familiar as your own

The Empress of the Last Days is a detective story and an account of 'a game of snakes and ladders for young academics', but it is also a novel of ideas...it's refreshing to read an accessible fiction that races at serious themes with its horns lowered

Stevenson deftly strikes a balance between lush romanticism and cool contemporary realism

Stevenson is excellent at historical detail and on relationships in history...she has whetted our appetite for more delicious tastes from the past

One for the scholarly super-sleuths among us

Jane Stevenson is the author of two collections of novellas, Several Deceptions and Good Women, and four novels, London Bridges, Astraea, The Pretender and The Empress of the Last Days. She is reader in English at the University of Aberdeen.

The Empress of the Last Days is the final volume of the remarkable trilogy that began with Astraea and The Pretender. A group of friends, Corinne, Theodoor and Michael, bring together their talents and knowledge to uncover the hidden story of Pelagius's royal marriage. As a result of their investigations, Michael finds himself journeying to Barbados, to meet the last descendant of the marriage of Pelagius and Elizabeth of Bohemia - a young black scientist who, unknown to herself, has a serious claim to be considered the rightful queen of England. 
 
In this impressively far-reaching novel, Stevenson considers the transformative moments in people's lives and, in doing so, creates a paean to love, trust and history.

London Bridges

London Bridges, her first novel, evokes the mood and sheer enjoyability of classic English detective fiction, though it is set in the London of the 1990s. A young lawyer comes across a treasure lost in the Blitz, and is tempted into a series of crimes which end eventually in murder. Meanwhile, a very contemporary cast of characters assembles to confound him. The denouncement of the intricate plot occurs in the Cotswolds, and involves teddy bears, Greek monks, New Age bikers and the source of the Thames, but before we get there, there is humour, satire, social observation, occasional moments of paths, and the scintillating wit and intelligence that distinguished Several Deceptions.

Several Deceptions

'These stories are refreshingly, unapologetically erudite... They are also extremely funny' - Stephanie Merritt, Observer

A very enjoyable display of deadly wit given with a relaxed literary confidence. Here is a gossipy, smart, critical, intellectual, high spirited and literate voice

Clever and enjoyable... This is an accomplished first book, and even if Stevenson never writes another word, she is already more than promising

What continuously sustains these stories is an unfashionable concept of serious fiction as etnertainment, an art in which the process is as enjoyable as the effects it is designed to produce... Relish the neat professionalism of a smart new act

Stevenson's careful plotting and attention to detail prove she is a new voice worth listening to

Jane Stevenson is the author of two collections of novellas, Several Deceptions and Good Women, and four novels, London Bridges, Astraea, The Pretender and The Empress of the Last Days. She is a professor in the history department at Aberdeen University and holds the Regius Chair of Humanity.

These four novellas are narrated by a brilliantly distinctive voice telling the stories of an Anglo-Italian Professor of Semiotics undone by his own cleverness; an Irish woman who joins a Tibetan nunnery in India; the old university friends whose party is galvanised by a pugnacious newcomer into a demented Buchanesque mission to restore their hostess's lost humour; and an international lawyer who takes to terrorism in pursuit of a theory. Several Deceptions is clever, funny and a little cruel and introduces a writer of quite remarkable gifts.

Jane Stevenson

Stevenson is such a fine writer: sinewy and erudite, dark and funny... I loved this book and if it doesn't find its way into an awful lot of suitcases this summer, there is no justice

Jane Stevenson writes with easy and erudite fluency, perceptive candour and scalpel-like precision. Her characters are sexy, articulate and persuasive

At around 70 pages a pop, a Stevenson novella is the perfect literary form for our attention-deficient era: short enough to span a couple of journeys into work or a pair of bedtimes, yet as satisfying emotionally as many fictions five times the length, and with a tension and humour nourished by their concision. Elegant and cool, Stevenson's prose remains a wonderful thing, as efficient and unobtrusive as glass

Utterly beguiling novellas...this is literary fiction as pure entertainment

Stevenson offers some engagingly sharp observations about family life

Immensely satisfying. Rich and compelling

In a style as piercing as the glint in an estate agent's eye, she has written three marvellous morality tales for our mortgaged times

Stevenson is sophisticated and irrepressibly playful...King Solomon had it that a good woman was worth more than rubies. Stevenson's Good Women are worth their weight in gold

Jane Stevenson has a unique talent for exploring the feminine sphere in a radically gutsy way, and I challenge any woman not to be so engrossed by her stories that she doesn't notice herself whooping with glee then collapsing in cathartic tears

Very good indeed. Flinty, fiery and funny

Jane Stevenson arrived on the British literary scene with a book called Several Deceptions. A collection of four novellas, it was unashamedly erudite, marvellously witty and just a little bit cruel. It revived a neglected form quite brilliantly. 
 
Now, after four acclaimed novels, she returns with another sparkling novella collection. In 'Light My Fire' a passionate relationship cannot withstand a clash of tastes and an ancient Aga; a housewife's life is transformed when she starts to see angels in 'Walking with Angels'; and 'Garden Guerillas' follows a widow plotting an elaborate horticultural revenge on her daughter-in-law. Despite being framed by domesticity, these stories are wickedly potent and each has a string in its tale.

Jane Stevenson

Praise for Good Women

Stevenson is such a fine writer: sinewy and erudite, dark and funny... I loved this book and if it doesn't find its way into an awful lot of suitcases this summer, there is no justice

Jane Stevenson writes with easy and erudite fluency, perceptive candour and scalpel-like precision. Her characters are sexy, articulate and persuasive

At around 70 pages a pop, a Stevenson novella is the perfect literary form for our attention-deficient era: short enough to span a couple of journeys into work or a pair of bedtimes, yet as satisfying emotionally as ...

Stevenson is such a fine writer: sinewy and erudite, dark and funny... I loved this book and if it doesn't find its way into an awful lot of suitcases this summer, there is no justice

Jane Stevenson writes with easy and erudite fluency, perceptive candour and scalpel-like precision. Her characters are sexy, articulate and persuasive

At around 70 pages a pop, a Stevenson novella is the perfect literary form for our attention-deficient era: short enough to span a couple of journeys into work or a pair of bedtimes, yet as satisfying emotionally as ...

Stevenson is such a fine writer: sinewy and erudite, dark and funny... I loved this book and if it doesn't find its way into an awful lot of suitcases this summer, there is no justice

Jane Stevenson writes with easy and erudite fluency, perceptive candour and scalpel-like precision. Her characters are sexy, articulate and persuasive

At around 70 pages a pop, a Stevenson novella is the perfect literary form for our attention-deficient era: short enough to span a couple of journeys into work or a pair of bedtimes, yet as satisfying emotionally as ...

Books by Jane Stevenson

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