When Jane Austen’s Regency-era heroine Emma Knightley visits her pregnant friend Jane and her husband Frank Churchill at their Yorkshire estate, a proper country house party soon becomes the site of a ghastly murder . . .

Emma, her husband George, and her father and his new wife have journeyed to Enscombe Park, the grand estate where Jane and Frank live with his uncle, who adopted Frank as a boy.  Upon their arrival, they are concerned to find Jane wan from her condition, Frank bruised from a mysterious accident, and Mr. Churchill in an ill temper, as well as surprised by additional houseguests including Miss Caroline Bingley and a distant cousin from the West Indies.

Emma worries this might all be too much for Jane, but it is Mr. Churchill who is decidedly out-of-sorts, possibly due to his heart medication. When Frank’s uncle is found dead in the library, it appears he’s fallen victim to heart seizure. But Emma—despite George’s admonitions to stay out of it—begins to wonder if he may have been poisoned.

Experience has taught Emma that her matchmaking instincts may not always be spot-on, but her sleuthing skills are as sharp as ever. As a recently altered will and secret debts come to light, suspicion falls on Frank Churchill of all people. Now it’s up to Emma to save her friend’s husband from the gallows . . .