Northanger Abbey

Jane Austen's first novel and her funniest is a gleeful send-up of the gothic craze she loved. Catherine Morland, weaned on horrid novels, arrives at an ancient abbey convinced she will find a murdered wife behind a locked door - and learns that real life offers subtler dangers than the ones in books. Even as it mocks the gothic, it pauses to mount a spirited defense of novel-reading itself. Sold ...