Dead Romance is an original novel by Lawrence Miles, originally published as part of the Virgin New Adventures series. The New Adventures were a spin-off from the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Though part of the sequence of stories that featured the fictional archaeologist Bernice Summerfield, this was released as something of a standalone, and she is not in it. The main character and narrator Christine Summerfield are not connected to her in any way. A former New Adventures Seventh Doctor companion, Chris Cwej, does appear. The Seventh Doctor briefly appears as "the Evil Renegade" in Chris's tampered memories.
The novel is partly an exploration of Miles's "bottle universe" concept that places Virgin Publishing's Virgin New Adventures series within a bottle universe inside the BBC Books Eighth Doctor Adventures universe (and by extension these bottles are within a larger one containing all televised serials). This concept is most fully explored in Miles's two-book cycle Interference.
Christine Summerfield reappears as Cousin Eliza/Godmother Quelch in the Faction Paradox audio plays (also by Miles), voiced by Emma Kilbey.
A second edition of Dead Romance was published by Mad Norwegian Press in 2004. This contained some minor alterations which made the book more consistent with Miles's later Faction Paradox mythos.
Famous quotes containing the words dead and/or romance:
“I held it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in diverse tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older—the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)