The  New York Times  best seller is now a major motion picture starring Lily James and Sam Riley, with Matt Smith, Charles Dance, and Lena Headey.  Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses,  Pride and Prejudice and Zombies  is an audacious retelling of English literature’s most enduring novel. This expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem begins when a mysterious plague falls upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield. It’s the perfect read for literature lovers, zombie fans, and anyone who loves a reanimated Austen. It’s difficult to tell if critics’ reactions to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies should be characterized as praise or astonishment. Some reviewers treated the book as a delightful gimmick. Others found that, beneath the surface, the book actually constituted an interesting way of looking at Austen’s novel. Zombies answer certain puzzling questions: Why were those troops stationed near Hertfordshire? Why did Charlotte Lucas actually marry Mr. Collins? (She had recently been bitten by zombies and wanted a husband who could be counted on to behead her—of course!) But critics also pointed out that this parody shows that Austen’s novel has remained so powerful over time that even the undead can’t spoil it. Copyright 2009 Bookmarks Publishing LLC This may be the most wacky by-product of the busy Jane Austen fan-fiction industry—at least among the spin-offs and pastiches that have made it into print. In what’s described as an “expanded edition” of Pride and Prejudice, 85 percent of the original text has been preserved but fused with  “ultraviolent zombie mayhem.” For more than 50 years, we learn, England has been overrun by zombies, prompting people like the Bennets to send their daughters away to China for training in the art of deadly combat, and prompting others, like Lady Catherine de Bourgh, to employ armies of ninjas. Added to the familiar plot turns that bring Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy together is the fact that both are highly skilled killers, gleefully slaying zombies on the way to their happy ending. Is nothing sacred? Well, no, and mash-ups using literary classics that are freely available on the Web may become a whole new genre. What’s next? Wuthering Heights and Werewolves? --Mary Ellen Quinn “…a jolly mash-up of Austen’s 1813 classic and the horror tropes of the walking dead…”- Philadelphia Inquirer “ Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is the ultimate mash-up.” – Newsday “Because every story is better with zombies, Seth Grahame-Smith's bestselling novel-turned-movie is a must-read for Austen lovers... Pride and Prejudice and Zombies needs to be on every P&P fan's shelf.”– Bustle “A delightful horror-comedy that can be kind of scary, but it’s an absolute joy to read. Feel-good horror at its finest!” — BookRiot Jane Austen  is the author of  Sense and Sensibility ,  Persuasion ,  Mansfield Park , and other masterpieces of English literature.  Seth Grahame-Smith  is the author of the  New   York Times  best seller  Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter . He also wrote the screenplay for the Tim Burton film  Dark Shadows . He lives in Los Angeles. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies The Classic Regency Romance-Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem By JANE AUSTEN SETH GRAHAME-SMITH QUIRK BOOKS Copyright © 2009 Quirk Productions, Inc. All right reserved. ISBN: 978-1-59474-334-4 Chapter One IT IS A TRUTH universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. Never was this truth more plain than during the recent attacks at Netherfield Park, in which a household of eighteen was slaughtered and consumed by a horde of the living dead. "My dear Mr. Bennet," said his lady to him one day, "have you heard that Netherfield Park is occupied again?" Mr. Bennet replied that he had not and went about his morning business of dagger sharpening and musket polishing-for attacks by the unmentionables had grown alarmingly frequent in recent weeks. "But it is," returned she. Mr. Bennet made no answer. "Do you not want to know who has taken it?" cried his wife impatiently. "Woman, I am attending to my musket. Prattle on if you must, but leave me to the defense of my estate!" This was invitation enough. "Why, my dear, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune; that he escaped London in a chaise and four just as the strange plague broke through the Manchester line." "What is his name?" "Bingley. A single man of four or five thousand a ye