Name:  Stephanie Cowell

Book Title: The Man in the Stone Cottage: a novel of the Brontë sisters

Series: N/a

Publication Date: September 16th, 2025

Publisher: Regal House Publishing

Pages: 258

Genre: historical fiction

Any Triggers: no

Twitter Handle: @cathiedunn @marylschmidt

Instagram Handles: @cowell.stephanie @thecoffeepotbookclub

Hashtags: #Brontë #Yorkshire #Victorian #EnglishLiterature #WomenWriters #HistoricalFiction #TheCoffeePotBookClub #BlogTour

Tour Schedule Page: https://thecoffeepotbookclub.blogspot.com/2025/08/blog-tour-the-man-in-the-stone-cottage-by-stephanie-cowell.html

Book Title and Author Name:

The Man in the Stone Cottage: a novel of the Brontë sisters

By Stephanie Cowell

Audiobook by Brilliance Audio

Blurb:

“A haunting and atmospheric historical novel.” – Library Journal

In 1846 Yorkshire, the Brontë sisters— Charlotte, Anne, and Emily— navigate precarious lives marked by heartbreak and struggle.

Charlotte faces rejection from the man she loves, while their blind father and troubled brother add to their burdens. Despite their immense talent, no one will publish their poetry or novels.

Amidst this turmoil, Emily encounters a charming shepherd during her solitary walks on the moors, yet he remains unseen by anyone else.

After Emily’ s untimely death, Charlotte— now a successful author with Jane Eyre— stumbles upon hidden letters and a mysterious map. As she stands on the brink of her own marriage, Charlotte is determined to uncover the truth about her sister’ s secret relationship.

The Man in the Stone Cottage is a poignant exploration of sisterly bonds and the complexities of perception, asking whether what feels real to one person can truly be real to another.

Praise for The Man in the Stone Cottage:

“A mesmerizing and heartrending novel of sisterhood, love, and loss in Victorian England.” – Heather Webb, USA Today bestselling author of Queens of London

“Stephanie Cowell has written a masterpiece.” – Anne Easter Smith, author of This Son of York

“With The Man in the Stone Cottage, Stephanie Cowell asks what is real and what is imagined and then masterfully guides her readers on a journey of deciding for themselves.” – Cathy Marie Buchanan, author of The Painted Girls

“The Brontës come alive in this beautiful, poignant, elegant and so very readable tale. Just exquisite.” – NYT bestseller, M.J. Rose

“Cowell’s ability to take readers to time and place is truly wonderful and absorbing.” – Stephanie H. (Netgalley)

“Such a lovely, lovely book!” – Books by Dorothea (Netgalley)

Excerpt 4:

Branwell, the only brother of the family and now thirty years old, has become an alcoholic and drug addict, in spite of the sister’s hopes that he would save the family.

Despite that conversation, bills from the Black Bull were once more presented weekly at the parsonage door. Over the next months, Branwell pawned some of the silver spoons for money for opium and drink; she and Martha went stone-faced to the pawnbroker in the poorest streets of the town and redeemed them. A month later, they found their brother collapsed in an alley.

Then all talk of his writing ceased.

He was well for a day, perhaps two. He was calm that night, they later said. No, he was not. Anyone can tip a candle; anyone too tired can fall asleep with one burning and a wind through the open summer window.

Charlotte sat up in bed at the sharp, piercing cry of Anne from the hall and hurried from her door. Emily in her nightdress was rushing toward Branwell, who was hardly dressed. Behind him, flames leaped and consumed the bed hangings up to the poles.

He waited unmoving. “Bedroom candle! Knocked it over.”

“How, by God?”

“I don’t know.”

“Stand away!” Emily had seized the full bucket of water they kept on the landing. Anne followed with a second. Charlotte ran down for more and struggled to carry it, back aching, bare feet leaving marks on the wet floor. In her brother’s room, water flooded every crack in the floorboard. By then, their father had come with his own bucket.

“Why was the candle lit?”

“Fell asleep reading… Very sorry…” Branwell muttered.

The clock struck four in the morning by the time the flames were out. Branwell was naked to the waist, his thin ribs pressed against his strained skin, blotched with soot and some kind of crawling rash.

“You must believe me,” he said.

As their father took his son back to share his own bed, the sisters remained shivering, white bare feet wet, hair wet. The sodden bed hangings from his room drooped down.

“Sorry.” They heard the fragment of their brother’s voice from behind their father’s bedroom door and their father’s voice sounding like it did so many years ago when they were very small. “Shh… God was watching… All’s well.”

Emily was silent. Then the words burst from her. “I wish he were dead,” she said. Everything poured out then. With her fist, she struck the doorjamb again and again. She shouted and yelled. Her fierce brown mastiff rushed up and down the stairs again, barking and howling as if he could not stop.

In the floor below, water dripped through the ceiling, seeping into the crate of copies of gift books sent from Charlotte’s publisher, dampening the pages, staining the cloth covers of the first few.

From that time on, their father made Branwell sleep on a cot at the foot of the paternal bed. Emily, now calmer, waited in darkness in the hall before her room. “Heal him,” she whispered. Deep within her body, she felt the old power that would let her stop a storm. “Heal him and I will be Yours only again, you elusive God to whom my father has dedicated his life. That is the price of my returning to You.”

Charlotte came from her room and held her. They stood together, clinging to each other.

Anne joined them; she had come softly, like a ghost.

Buy Link:

Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/u/mqLV2d

Author Bio:

Stephanie Cowell has been an opera singer, balladeer, founder of Strawberry Opera and other arts venues including a Renaissance festival in NYC.

She is the author of seven novels including Marrying Mozart, Claude & Camille: a novel of Monet, The Boy in the Rain and The Man in the Stone Cottage. Her work has been translated into several languages and adapted into an opera. Stephanie is the recipient of an American Book Award. 

Author Links:

Website: https://stephaniecowell.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stephanie.cowell.14

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cowell.stephanie/

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/stephaniecowell

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/197596.Stephanie_Cowell