Dear Aunt Anna,

I can't work out what to get my younger sister for Christmas. She's 17 and she is really into period dramas. She has read all the classics and particularly loves Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre. She likes books with strong female characters.

Yours, Sarah.

Dear Sarah,

Has she read Anna Karenina? This is set in the same time period as Pride and Prejudice and features much of the same husband hunting. Both Anna and Kitty are very strong characters. Another book your sister might like is Wide Sargasso Sea - although it is a different style of writing to the books you have mentioned it casts a new light on the story of the madwoman in the attic in Jane Eyre. Finally, if she likes the Victorian-era but fancies something a little different, she could do worse than The Diary of a Nobody - a funny diary of a Victorian gentleman generally making a fool out of himself.

Hope this helps.

Aunt Anna