Suddenly You

On her thirtieth birthday, successful novelist Amanda Briars arranges an encounter intended to change her private life, but a misunderstanding brings publisher Jack Devlin to her door. Their professional and romantic relationship develops through questions of authorship, control, secrecy and the risks of intimacy outside conventional marriage.

The novel is set in the expanding nineteenth-century publishing trade, when circulating libraries, commercial presses and a growing reading public created new opportunities for women writers. Amanda’s income gives her unusual independence, but sexual reputation and publishing power remain unevenly distributed.