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Today, Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice celebrates its 200th anniversary.

As Quirk fans know, we sure to do love Jane Austen here at the HQ, what with our mashups like Pride & Prejudice & Zombies and Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters. To celebrate, we’ve got some giveaways on our Facebook, the interactive eBook App for Pride & Prejudice & Zombies is free (today’s the last day!), and I’ve got this cute excerpt from the Jane Austen Handbook on letter writing.

Why letter writing?

Letters play an important part in Pride & Prejudice (ie: the letter Darcy writes to Elizabeth and Jane’s letter about Lydia running off with Wichkham) and a lot of other Austen books.

So read on, and learn how to write and prepare a proper, Jane Austen era note. Enjoy!

Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice turns 200 this Monday, and here at the Quirk HQ, we've been busy celebrating. Giveaways with bloggers, some fun guest posts, all kinds of good stuff. 

And now, thanks to our friends at Padworx Studios, the Pride & Prejudice & Zombies: Interactive eBook App is available for FREE through Monday, January 28th. 

The app is regularly priced at $8.99 and "features hundreds of illustrations, an original musical score, buckets of gory animation, and a pair of literary masterpieces: Hold your device right side up to enjoy Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Turn it upside down to read Jane Austen’s original Pride and Prejudice. Turn the device 90 degrees to read both novels." You can check out the App in this video.

Give it a download, and enjoy! 

The Pride & Prejudice & Zombies: Interactive eBook App [iTunes]

This weekend, fans of Sherlock Holmes will be celebrating his birthday. The legendary literary figure turns 159 this Sunday, January 6th.

In honor of his birthday, here’s an excerpt from The Sherlock Holmes Handbook. Fun Facts: Ransom Riggs wrote this for us before he penned Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children, and its full of illustrations (two of which are featured in this post) by Eugene Smith, the man behind the beautiful drawings in the Lovecraft Middle School series.

We’ll be giving copies away on our Facebook page, so make sure you check that out! Enjoy!

Hey Quirk fans! 

We're out of the office until January 3rd, but we'll be back in 2013 with fun new books and lots of new content. 

This year's holiday card was created by the good people at Space 1026 here in Philadelphia. Oh, and that adorable cross-stitched pattern? You can make one yourself. Just download this .PDF. 

Right Click, Save As [Holiday.PDF, 450k]

We hope all of you have a wonderful, safe holiday. 

<3

Quirk

Photo by Pat Pilon

Despite the fact that I usually start hearing Christmas music around Halloween (why?!), whenever the holidays arrive, I almost always find myself missing something. A present for this person, a piece of holiday clothing I swore I’d wear (ugly Christmas sweater, why must you be brought up every year), or an important festive decoration.

Like the Christmas angel tree topper.

If you’re hapless around the holidays like me, well, here’s an excerpt from the Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Holidays by David Borgenicht and Joshua Piven. Just in case you forget to pack that angel for the top of the tree.

It should come as no surprise that here at Quirk, we like to read. A lot. I mean, you can’t make books if you aren’t reading them too, right? Emails are frequently sent around the office about this book or that, and finished books usually end up in our lobby, free to a good home.

Below, you’ll find some of our favorite reads of the year. Some are new, some aren’t. But all of them are great.

The Odds by Stewart O’Nan: I’ve read all of Stewart O’Nan’s novels and his latest, The Odds, is one of my favorites. The story concerns a marriage on the brink of collapse; Art and Marion Fowler are unemployed fifty-somethings, drowning in debt and facing foreclosure on their home. In a last-ditch effort to save their marriage, Art plans a second honeymoon at a Niagara Falls casino, where he intends to gamble every last penny of their retirement savings on a “can’t-miss” roulette scheme.

Maybe you have to be married to fully appreciate this book (and the longer you’ve been married, the more you’ll enjoy it). It’s a short novel, only 192 pages, and I read the entire book in a single night. The suspense of the final chapters (when Art finally embarks on his roulette scheme) caught me off-guard. I realized I really cared about these characters; I really wanted them to win, even though I knew the odds were stacked against them. The last line is perfect. – Jason Rekulak, Creative Director

Dream More: Celebrate the Dreamer in You by Dolly Parton: I love Dolly Parton’s new book. It’s a slim little volume that outlines her philosophy of life, based on her 2009 commencement speech to graduates at the University of Tennessee. But if you haven’t read any of Dolly Parton’s books yet, I’d have to recommend starting with her 1994 autobiography, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. It’s a great read.

And her Imagination Library is an excellent charity dedicated to fostering a love of reading among preschool children by mailing them high-quality, age-appropriate books directly to their homes. All children deserve books, regardless of their family’s income. As Dolly always says, “Never let a rhinestone go unturned.” – Margaret McGuire, Editor (@oinkoink)