Gina has an impossible task: three months to write a book in the style of Jane Austen.

If Jane Austen could write a hundred-and-sixty-thousand-word word novel on that tiny polished table, in the midst of family life, with a quill pen dipped into an inkstand, then she, Georgina Jackson, could turn out a hundred and twenty thousand words, in her own room, with the power of Apple and Microsoft at her elbow.

She’s beset by problems in the shape of writer’s block and its best friend, procrastination; a nasty attack of RSI; and visitations from another time. All of which are nothing compared to

the agent from hell, Livia Harkness:

“Read through what I gave you, sign the contracts I’m about to courier round to you, cancel any appointments you may have for the next three months and get writing.”
“No. No, no no. a thousand times, no!”
“Shut up and listen. I’m an A-list agent. For about a fortnight, you were an A-list author. Now you’re heading for the Z slot. I don’t do Z-list authors. You take this commission or you find yourself a new agent. Clear?”

and a ruthless publisher, Dan Vesey:

“Holy shit, what are you doing here?” was his friendly greeting over coffee in the drawing room. It was an enchanting room of chintz and velvet; at least enchanting until Dan Vesey came over and joined her on a sofa. “You haven’t got time to hang around the English social circuit, you’ve got a book to write. I’ve got a lot riding on this book, and here you are, out in the sticks with your arm in a sling. What the hell do you think you’re up to?”

She has allies, though, like her housemate, Henry:

The next morning, his head whirling, Henry closed his computer and sat back in his chair. He flicked a pencil between his fingers, and looked at the textbook awaiting his attention. Solar Astronomy in H-alpha. What an ordered and simple world that was compared to the strange realm inhabited by writers, who seems to suffer from all kinds of complaints, some of them obvious, like advanced sententiousness and chronic ego-inflation, some puzzling, such as only being able to write with your feet in a bucket of icy water, others dotty -- why would dangling a crystal in front of your screen do anything for your writing?
  His eyes fell on another book, Foundations of Quantum Chromo-dynamics: An Introduction to Perturbative Mmethods in Gauge Theories. No, he was wrong, there were stranger places than inside a writer’s mind.

and his outspoken sister, Maud:

Maud; fourteen, going on thirty. An enchanting girl, but difficult. How time flew, it seemed only yesterday that she’d been setting off back to her boarding school. Maud sauntered down the stairs, a vision in a short black skirt with purple tights, her face starkly white and her lashes starkly black. She was holding up the phone. “Hi, Gina. Phone for you.”
  “Half-term?” Georgina mouthed, as she took the phone which was emitting squawking noises. “No, I ran away.”

Not to mention Henry’s Polish housekeeper, Anna, who has no doubts about right and wrong:

“There are novels and novels,” said Henry. “And she’s having to write in someone else’s voice. I suppose there are authors with the gift of pastiche, but it looks like Gina isn’t one of them.”
“Then what is to be done?”
“I just told her I’d been doing some research about the literary world. I think she needs a ghost.”
Anna let out an exclamation of dismay. “Ghost? You’re crazy! A spirit summoned from other realms? The Catholic church is completely opposed to such practices, they are extremely dangerous. And how would a spirit help?”
“Not a spook, a ghostwriter, Anna. Perfectly harmless.”
“Harmless? This is what happens in a country where everybody is an atheist. Gina cannot risk her immortal soul for the sake of a book! And besides, it’s impractical. How can you summon a ghostwriter? How do you know that the ghost of Jane Austen will speak in her ear? It could be Dostoyevsky, and then where would she be, with a story in Russian about doom and despair? You are not sensible, Henry.”