Don Jacobson has 12 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 4 ratings. The most-rated is Of Fortune's Reversal.
The Keeper: Mary Bennet's Extraordinary Journey
Summary
Lizzy gripped Mary’s hands and began her speech. “Now is the time for you. Heal now. Future only, my dearest sister.” Mary Bennet has spent her entire life fighting to be herself. If only she knew just what that was. For years she buried her nose in the musty musing of Fordyce’s Sermons to Young Women, trying to be exceptional. She hid her light brown eyes - and herself - behind useless spectacles. With both Jane and Lizzy married, it is time for Miss Bennet to emerge from her cocoon. Learn how a young woman of deep faith and inquisitive mind emerges. Yet, even as Mary Bennet overcomes her troubled teenage years, she is challenged by her sudden and total love for a man who mysteriously appears on the night of a great calamity. And his secret grows out of a remarkable device - the Bennet Wardrobe! The Keeper follows the life of Mary Bennet as she matures from the prosy, moralizing caricature found in Jane Austen’s classic Pride and Prejudice into a confident young woman looking to make her mark in the rapidly changing world of the Industrial Revolution. And discover how the amazing Bennet Wardrobe makes life interesting for all Bennets. The Keeper is volume one of the Bennet Wardrobe Series...named Best Series of 2017 by More Agreeably Engaged!
©2017 Donald P. Jacobson (P)2018 Donald P. Jacobson
In Plain Sight
Summary
When Fitzwilliam Darcy’s father slides into an early grave, his son is forced to take on Pemberley’s mantle. Brandy numbs his pain, but Darcy’s worst inclinations run wild. After tragedy rips everything away, he spends years finding his way back to a new life as a man redeemed by a woman’s loving understanding. Elizabeth Bennet is afflicted with a common regency ailment: observing the world about her but not seeing those beneath her notice. Then, a clarifying act shatters the propriety that has denied her heart the transcendent love she craves. In Plain Sight explores Jane Austen’s eternal love story by flipping social roles on their heads. From their first encounter, Elizabeth Bennet and the convict known as “Smith” must overcome their prejudices and break through their pride. Only then can they share the treasure hidden in plain sight.
©2020 Don Jacobson (P)2020 Don Jacobson
The Longbourn Quarantine
Summary
Refugees flood the roads. The feared specter of smallpox has escaped London’s grimy docklands and now threatens the wealthy districts. Amongst that ragged stream is a single carriage jostling its way toward Meryton. Inside are the Darcy siblings along with Charles and Caroline Bingley. They desperately seek the safety of Netherfield Park. For all their riches, they cannot evade the plague’s dark hand. Bingley’s leasehold has been reduced to rubble as roving bands rape, pillage, and burn. The only sanctuary is Longbourn where, once installed, the Darcys and Bingleys are barred from leaving by a fortnight’s quarantine. Events converge with disease in The Longbourn Quarantine. Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy abandon old prejudices in the face of grief and mourning. Pride is set aside as Death hovers nearby. The couple forges ahead, knowing that love unexplored is love lost — that words must be said lest they remain unspoken in the time of epidemic.
©2020 Don Jacobson (P)2020 Don Jacobson
Of Fortune's Reversal
Summary
A brisk early November Hyde Park morning is shattered by a child’s scream. How two adults react in those next few desperate moments sets the plot in motion in this Pride and Prejudice alternative focusing on 21-year-old Kitty Bennet. Of Fortune’s Reversal is a novella-length tale based upon an inversion of Mrs. Bennet's exclamation that with one good marriage, the other girls will be thrown in front of rich men. For more than two centuries, the Jane/Bingley: Lizzy/Darcy tetrarchy has been portrayed as the solution to Mary and Kitty's marriage difficulties, not to mention Mrs. Bennet’s housing requirements. But what if that was not the case? What if Mr. Bennet dies just as Jane is receiving the Bingley sisters' invitation to dinner? No rainy-day horseback ride. No cold for Jane. No Elizabeth coming to Netherfield to nurse her elder sister...so no links forged in any way with Bingley (beyond what he felt for Miss Bennet at the Assembly) and Darcy (no fine eyes, no walk around the library, etc.). No Netherfield Ball. No proposal from Collins because he was already wed to a shrew who convinced him to evict the Bennet women. So no trip to Hunsford cottage for Lizzy because Charlotte remains a spinster at Lucas Lodge. Rather, the Bennet women are forced out of Longbourn - the older girls to Gracechurch Street and ultimately taking up employment away from the city. The two younger girls remain in Meryton with their mother, to be sent away to seminary for some much-needed formal education. But the death of Thomas Bennet has changed more than the family’s financial fortunes. It has also bent the arc of the Pride and Prejudice universe.
©2016 Donald P. Jacobson (P)2018 Donald P. Jacobson
Henry Fitzwilliam's War (Bennet Wardrobe Series Book 2)
Summary
Time is once again bent in 1883 as Viscount Henry Fitzwilliam, Viscount of Matlock, uses the remarkable Bennet Wardrobe to seek his manhood through combat as suggested by his great friend, Theodore Roosevelt. But, as Henry’s Great Grandmother, Lydia Bennet Wickham Fitzwilliam, noted, “The Wardrobe has a strange sense of humor.” The lessons the young aristocrat learns are not the ones he expected. Henry travels over 30 years into the future to land in the middle of the most awful conflict in human history - World War I. His brief time at the Front teaches him that there is no longer any room on the battlefield for heroic combat. Rather he discovers the horrors of “modern” warfare - the machine gun, high explosive artillery, and poison gas - and the incredible waste of young men’s lives. Henry's two weeks spent recuperating at the Beach House in Deauville, after being temporarily blinded by chlorine gas, that irrevocably changes his life. There he encounters an incredible woman, one who will define his near 10-year search for the love of his life after he returns to his own time - and he learns how his personality was shaped by their emerging relationship...one that was impossible on a number of levels. This brief Pride and Prejudice Variation novella (approx. 20,500 words) grew from the author’s efforts to sketch the events that shaped the personality of Henry Fitzwilliam. Listeners can consider Henry Fitzwilliam's War to be a prequel to The Exile. Named The Best Series of 2017 by More Agreeably Engaged.
©2016 Donald P. Jacobson (P)2018 Donald P. Jacobson
The Avenger
Summary
"Bennet looked at his wife’s swollen lips, softly bruised from several deeply loving kisses, and her flushed complexion, as alluring when gracing the countenance of a woman of four-and-40 as that of a girl of nine-and-10. He was one of the lucky few to have fallen in love with the same woman at both ages. The elder had, after all, learned all that the younger could only begin to imagine." Thomas Bennet, Master of Longbourn, had always counted himself amongst the few educated gentlemen of his acquaintance. But, he had to travel over 120 years into the future to discover how little he knew about the woman sharing his life. Once again, the amazing Bennet Wardrobe proved to be the schoolmaster. Tom Bennet’s lesson? Mrs. Bennet had been formed especially for him. Fanny Bennet also would uncover deep wells of courage and inspiration as she stood by her man’s side in the bleak years after World War II. Together they would lead their descendants in pursuit of the beast who had wronged every member of the five families. Now, in The Avenger, are introduced to the forces which power the Wardrobe...C.S. Lewis’ Fourth Love - agape; Jacobson’s Fifth Love - exagoras agapis, the love which redeems; and Sixth Love - Synchotikí agape, the love which forgives. The Avenger: Thomas Bennet and a Father’s Lament is the sixth volume of the Bennet Wardrobe series and chronicles Mr. and Mrs. Bennet’s journey through the Wardrobe to visit their daughter, the Countess of Matlock, in her own where/when. This novel is about 131,000 words in length.
©2018 Donald Jacobson (P)2019 Donald Jacobson
The Exile: The Countess Visits Longbourn (Bennet Wardrobe Series Book 5)
Summary
“I have been shaped by the events of over forty years, from when I was but a maiden. The world is a nasty place full of awful persons, Mr. Wickham, and does not get any lighter through complaining or blaming. T’is only if you confront evil with resolution that you have any hopes of prevailing.” - The Dowager Countess of Matlock (11th) The countess: an enigma? A mystery? Or a young girl, all-grown-up? Kitty Bennet, the fourth daughter of the Master and Mistress of Longbourn, had spent far too long as the shadow of her younger sister. The all-knowing Meryton chinwaggers suggested that young Miss Bennet needed education - and quickly - especially after the irregular circumstances that forced the wedding of Lydia Bennet and George Wickham. How right they were...but the type of instruction Kitty Bennet received, and the where/when in which she matriculated, was far beyond their ken. For, they knew nothing of that remarkable piece of furniture that had been part of the lives of clan Bennet for over 120 years: the Bennet wardrobe. After spending 46 years in the future, the Dowager Countess of Matlock returned to Longbourn’s bookroom at that exact same moment as she left in 1811 to tend to many important pieces of family business. However, she was now a woman of 63 years, some 13 her father’s senior. Time can deal funny cards in the universe created by Jane Austen and the Bennett Wardrobe. Of course, the Countess is acting to set in motion forces that will shape the future of Britain - and the five families - throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. In the process, Kitty Fitzwilliam will help her youngest sister find the love she craved with the unexpected hero who, as the Duke said, “saved us all”. The Exile: The Countess Visits Longbourn is the second part and conclusion of the Bennet Wardrobe volume, chronicling the life of Kitty Bennet in the Wardrobe’s universe. This novel takes listeners on a journey that stretches from the early 19th into the mid 20th centuries.
©2018 Donald P. Jacobson (P)2018 Donald P. Jacobson
Lessers and Betters: A Pride and Prejudice Variation
Summary
Experience love as it blooms upstairs and downstairs.
Lessers and Betters asserts that class is an imaginary distinction conferring no better manners on the haves and no lesser nobility on the have-nots and that the deepest human emotions are universal and ignore wealth or status.
Now for the first time under the same cover, discover the paired novellas that explore the remarkable events of November 5, 1815, when the Cecil Governess, Kitty Bennet, was grievously injured as she defended her charge. What rests behind the attack? Listeners of Lessers and Betters will experience a unique literary unique approach that offers both gentry and servant perspectives presented in their own self-contained novellas.
Of Fortunes Reversal: A brisk Hyde Park morning is shattered by a child’s scream. How two gently-born adults react in those next few desperate moments sets the plot in motion that is a unique reconsideration of the traditional Pride and Prejudice memes. Of Fortune’s Reversal is a novella-length tale based upon an inversion of Mrs. Bennet's exclamation that with one good marriage, the other girls would be thrown in front of rich men. What if the well-wed sister was neither Jane nor Elizabeth?
The Maid and the Footman: Explore the growing affection between a young lady’s maid, Annie Reynolds, and a retired sergeant, Henry Wilson: ultimately a love story as great as any written by the immortals. In the Jane Austen universe, the celebrated novels are written from the point-of-view of the landed gentry. Servants are rarely seen except to open doors, serve dinner, or fetch smelling salts. Follow Annie and Henry as they combine with General Sir Richard Fitzwilliam and Miss Bennet to defeat an awesome threat aimed at the heart of the British Empire.
The combined volume is approximately 82,000 words in length.
©2018 Donald P. Jacobson (P)2018 Donald P. Jacobson
Lizzy Bennet Meets the Countess (Bennet Wardrobe Series Book 4)
Summary
The universe was shaken once again on Midsummer’s Day in 1801. The Bennet Wardrobe’s door to the future was opened in the book room at Longbourn. This time, the most impertinent Bennet of them all, Elizabeth, tumbled through the gateway. Except she left not as the grown women with whom we have become so familiar, but rather as a 10-year-old girl who had been playing a simple game of hide-and-seek. What/where/when was her destination? What needs could a young girl, only beginning to learn to make her way in the Regency, have that could be answered only by the Wardrobe? Or were the requirements of another Bennet, one who began as younger, but had aged into a beautiful, confident leader of society, the prime movers behind Lizzy’s journey? Is the enigmatic Lady Kate the force that shaped the destiny of Lizzy and her younger sisters left back in Hertfordshire? How do the visions of the future brought home by young Lizzy help shape her world? Answers to these and other questions raised in the Bennet Wardrobe series can be found in Lizzy Bennet Meets the Countess. This is a medium-length novella that considers a slice of time between the end of The Exile: Kitty Bennet and the Belle Époque in 1892 (volume two of the Bennet Wardrobe) and the beginning of Henry Fitzwilliam’s War in 1915. After Lizzy is transported back to that bucolic summer day in 1801 proto-industrial Great Britain, Lizzy Bennet Meets the Countess will carry all listeners forward to what may be considered the greatest writers’ workshop in history. T’was at the legendary Villa Diodati on the shores of Lake Geneva that Lord Byron gathered Mary Godwin (Frankenstein), John Polidori (The Vampyre) and Percy Bysshe Shelley for a vacation during the Year Without a Summer. Fitzwilliam Darcy and his wife, Elizabeth, were there to act as catalysts that would transform vague ideas into timeless speculative fiction.
©2017 Donald P. Jacobson (P)2018 Donald P. Jacobson
The Exile: Kitty Bennet and the Belle Epoque (Benet Wardrobe Series Book 3)
Summary
Longbourn, December 1811. The day after Jane and Lizzy marry dawns especially cold for young Kitty Bennet. Called to Papa’s bookroom, she is faced with a resolute Mr. Bennet who intends to punish her complicity in her sister’s elopement. She will be sent packing to a seminary in far-off Cornwall. She reacts like any teenager chafing under the “burden” of parental rules - she throws a tantrum. In her fury, she slams her hands against the doors of The Bennet Wardrobe. Her heart’s desire? "I wish they were dead! Anywhere but Cornwall! Anywhere but here!" As Lydia later said, “The Wardrobe has a unique sense of humor.” London, May 1886. Seventeen-year-old Catherine Marie Bennet tumbles out of The Wardrobe at Matlock House to come face-to-face with the austere Viscount Henry Fitzwilliam, a scion of the Five Families and one of the wealthiest men in the world. However, while their paths may have crossed that May morning, Henry still fights his feelings for another woman, lost to him nearly thirty years in his future. And Miss Bennet must now decide between exile to the remote wastelands of Cornwall or making a new life for herself in Victorian Britain and Belle Époque France. The Exile follows the story of Kitty Bennet as she grows from the coughing follower of her younger sister, Lydia, into a bright and engaging young woman living in the exciting world of the late 19th century. However, she must pass through many trials before she can fully understand why the Wardrobe sent her 75 years into the future - and for her to become one of the most important fixtures in the Bennet Wardrobe Universe. The Bennet Wardrobe Series has been named Best Series of 2017 by More Agreeably Engaged!
©2017 Donald P. Jacobson (P)2018 Donald P. Jacobson
The Pilgrim: Lydia Bennet and a Soldier's Portion
Summary
My life has been very much like an unfinished painting. The artist comes to the portrait, day after day, to splash daubs of color onto bare canvas, filling in the blanks of my story. Thus grows the likeness, imperfect as it may be, which you see today.” (Lydia Fitzwilliam, Countess of Matlock, in letter to her sister Elizabeth Bennet Darcy, March 14, 1831) Does it matter how a man fills out his regimentals? Miss Austen never considered that query. Yet, this question marks the beginning of an education - and the longest life - in the Bennet Wardrobe saga. Lydia Bennet, Longbourn’s most wayward daughter, embarks on her quest in The Pilgrim: Lydia Bennet and a Soldier’s Portion. This biography reveals how the Wardrobe helps young Mrs. Wickham learn that honor and bravery grow not from the color of the uniform - or the gender of its wearer - but rather from the contents of the heart. In the process, she realizes that she must be broken and repaired, as if by a kintsugi master potter, to become the most useful player in the Bennet Wardrobe’s great drama. The Pilgrim explores questions of love, loss, pain, worry, and perseverance. All of these are brought to bear as one of the silliest girls in England grows into the Dowager Countess. This novel is the seventh and next-to-last volume in the Bennet Wardrobe series. Each book along the way has revealed more about how the mysterious Wardrobe has led Miss Austen’s Bennets to learn that which they need in order to take part in its ultimate mission. Praise for the book: “Multifaceted and nuanced, The Pilgrim: Lydia Bennet and a Soldier’s Portion speaks to the verities of life. Once again, Don Jacobson has combined the essence of Pride and Prejudice with an esoteric storyline and the universal themes of redemption and forgiveness in this well-crafted narrative.” (Mirta Ines Trupp, author of The Meyersons of Meryton)
©2019 Donald Whitfield Jacobson (P)2020 Donald Whitfield Jacobson
When God Makes Lemonade
Summary
Do you know someone who could use some encouragement? Perhaps that someone is you. When God Makes Lemonade comes from the lives of everyday folk - a collection of stories about people like you who have discovered unexpected sweetness in the midst of sour circumstances. Some of these real-life stories are laugh-out-loud funny, others are sobering, and more than a few will have you reaching for a tissue. But these true stories all have one thing in common: hope. There is no question; life will sometimes give you lemons: out-of-your-control issues of health, employment, and relationships, circumstances that are truly sour - you wouldn’t wish them on anyone. But when those lemons become lemonade, it is as refreshing as an ice-cold drink on a hot summer day. When in life “stuff happens,” know that Lemonade Happens™ too! Be encouraged and inspired... When God Makes Lemonade.
©2013 Thomas Nelson (P)2013 Oasis Audio