Booklists: suggested reading

 

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Shakespearean Stars

 

Fiction and Nonfiction tied to Shakespeare, his plays, etc.

 

Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless noted.

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Fiction

• Saints of Big Harbour
  Author: Coady, Lynn
  Publisher: Houghton $ 24 ISBN: 0618119760 Date: 2002
  Library Journal
  Coady's third book, her first to be published in the United States, portrays a small community in Nova Scotia and the power of gossip and violence within it. Guy Boucher, a fatherless teenager, finds himself at the center of an ugly rumor involving a girl idealized by her town. Through his eyes and the stories of those who surround him, several versions of truth emerge and combine.
  Updated 11.20.02
• Nicholas Cooke: Actor, Physician, Priest
  Author: Cowell, Stephanie
  Publisher: Norton $ 24 ISBN: 0393035433 Date: 1993
  PW Kirkus
  Born in the cathedral town of Canterbury at the end of the 16th-century, Nicholas Cooke makes his way to London where he meets Christopher Marlowe and eventually joins a company of actors, among whom is one Will Shagspere of Stratford. "Utterly delightful".--Madeleine L'Engle.
  Updated 6.6.05
• The Physician of London: Nicholas Cooke
  Author: Cowell, Stephanie
  Publisher: Norton $ 23 ISBN: 0393038734 Date: 1995
  PW
  Set in exquisitely civilized London of the early seventeenth century, this is the second book of the acclaimed seventeenth-century English trilogy about the physician and priest Nicholas Cooke. It is 1617, and Nicholas, now in his mid-thirties, is living in a small parish within the walled city of London; the annulment of his marriage and loss of his children a few years before have left him alone. On a wintry day he comes to the assistance of a young man, Thomas Wentworth, a landowner from Yorkshire, who has fainted in the snow outside his house. The two become close friends and, joined by several other gifted acquaintances, they form a science society with an extraordinary and beautiful woman called Cecilia who is educated in law. She will marry one of the men and love them both, at various times bringing them together and driving them apart. Nicholas is both a dedicated priest and a serious researcher, determined to build a successful magnifying instrument. The young hothead Wentworth goes another way, rising to become the King's most powerful minister, upholding the divine right of the sovereign against the growing animosity of gentry and landowners. The devoted friends who form the science society will in time be divided by religious controversy over the struggle for power between landowner and crown, and finally by the English Civil War. Both Nicholas Cooke and Thomas Wentworth will face the loss of everything they love, including their lives, in their determination to preserve their world. - Publisher Marketing.
  Updated 6.6.05
• The Players: A Novel of the Young Shakespeare
  Author: Cowell, Stephanie
  Publisher: Norton $ 24 ISBN: 0393041077 Date: 1997
  Before he was William Shakespeare, playwright and poet, he was simply Will, a glover's son roaming the fields of Stratford, hungry for knowledge and restless to escape the boundaries of his small town and loveless marriage. American Book Award-winning writer Stephanie Cowell gives us a graceful and well-researched historical novel tracing Shakespeare's momentous path of self-discovery, both as a writer and as a young man.
  Updated 6.6.05
• Love in Idleness
  Author: Craig, Amanda
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385507763 Date: 2003
  LJ Kirkus
  Craig spins the ever-resonant themes of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream into a modern-day tale of love and lies, set against the magical landscape of Tuscany. It will appeal to readers of The Nanny Diaries and other pitch-perfect social satires.
  Updated 6.19.03
• Pale Companion: Shakespearean Murder Mystery
  Author: Gooden, Philip
  Publisher: Carrol & Graf $ 24 ISBN: 078671008x Date: 2002
  Booklist
  Nick Revill and his fellow actors are journeying across the Wiltshire Downs for a country-house presentation of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." But what should be a pleasant jaunt gets worse, with a sinister arranged marriage, a possible suicide, and a case of outright murder against an ancient backdrop of Stonehenge.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Mystery Stars
  Updated 5.9.02
• Alms for Oblivion
  Author: Gooden, Philip
  Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 24 ISBN: 07786711426 Date: 2003
  Booklist
  An actor is dead, and the cast of suspects grows, but the finger of the coroner is pointing at amateur detective Nick Revill. With as many twists to its plot as a Shakespearean play and betrayals compounded as often as in Troilus and Cressida, Gooden offers, as Library Journal notes, "authentic settings and a solid and intriguing plot Ythat? result in a fine historical mystery."
  Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens | Historical Crime Fiction Stars
  Updated 5.14.03
• Mask of Night
  Author: Gooden, Philip
  Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 24 ISBN: 0786713127 Date: 2004
  Booklist
  Elizabeth I approaches the end of her illustrious reign, the plague is raging in London, and the Privy Council has ordered the theaters closed. Still, author Philip Gooden's fifth novel in the popular Shakespearean series brings us a great mystery as actor-sleuth Nick Revill and the Chamberlain's Men travel to Oxford, where a local physician, Dr. Hugh Fern, has commissioned a private performance of Romeo and Juliet. While Fern's motive is obscure-an attempt to reconcile two feuding families to the prospect of a marriage, perhaps; or maybe simply a ploy to get himself a role in the production-his fate is not. Indeed, he is decidedly dead, when his body is discovered during a performance at the Golden Cross Inn. No matter that the deceased lies inside a locked room or that the pestilence has followed the Chamberlain troupe from London, Revill is convinced Fern has not succumbed to natural causes. Nor is Fern's death the only one that rouses Revill's suspicions. The mysteries multiply as a strange band of men in cowls patrols the town at night, a simple carter meets a baffling end, and a corpse changes its shoes. - Publisher Marketing.
  Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens
  Updated 2.23.04
• Thirteenth Night: A Medieval Mystery
  Author: Gordon, Alan
  Publisher: St Martins Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0312200358 Date: 1999
  Booklist
  In the 13th -century Europe, a secret organization - The Fool's Guild - existed to influence events behind the scene, and one such manipulation was recorded by Shakespeare, in altered form, in his play Twelfth Night. But now, may years later, the Duke of Orsino is murdered. Feste, a jester with the Fool's Guild, must return to once again match wits with his advserary Malvolio - agent of Saladin and sworn enemy of the Guild.
  
• An Antic Disposition: A Medieval Mystery
  Author: Gordon, Alan
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312300964 Date: 2004
  PW
  In 1204 A.D., The Fool's Guild, on the run from an enraged Innocent III and the Papal troops, has established a secret guildhall in the Black Forest. While laying low, one of the great stories of the Guild's history is revealed--how in 1157 A.D., the Guild intervened in a complicated, soon to be bloody dispute over the crown of Denmark.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Crime Fiction Stars
  Updated 12.29.03
• The Dead Fathers Club
  Author: Haig, Matt
  Publisher: Viking $ 23.95 ISBN: 9780670038336 Date: 2007
  PW Kirkus Booklist
  Eleven-year-old Philip Noble has a big problem. It all begins when his dad appears as a ghost at his own funeral and introduces Philip to the Dead Fathers Club. Philip learns the truth about ghosts: the only people who end up ghosts are MURDERED. So begins Philip's quest to avenge his dad. Hilariously funny, it is full of poignant insights into the strange workings of the world seen through the eyes of a child.
  An offbeat ode to Hamlet - Overbooked Note
  Suggested Reading: All Stars | Ghosts
  Updated 12.1.06
• A Mystery of Errors
  Author: Hawke, Simon
  Publisher: Forge $ 22.95 ISBN: 0312873727 Date: 2000
  LJ
  Symington Smythe, a would-be thespian, and William Shakespeare meet in a tavern on the road to London and become traveling companions. Once in London, they debut as amateur detectives on a case of matrimony, mayhem, and possible murder.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Mystery Stars
  Updated 1/18/01
• The Slaying of the Shrew
  Author: Hawke, Simon Publisher: Forge $ 23.95 ISBN: 031287894x Date: 2001
  Booklist
  Shakespeare and Smythe join the ranks of Wolfe and Goodwin, Holmes and Watson, and, at times, Abbott and Costello, as this light-hearted pair of amateur detectives stumble in and out of danger and use their wits to survive both the conspiracies at hand and the cutthroat business of the Elizabethan theater.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Mystery Stars
  Updated 11/21/01
• Ill Met by Moonlight
  Author: Hoyt, Sarah A.
  Publisher: Ace $ 21.95 ISBN: 0441008607 Date: 2001
  This enchanting fantasy debut begins with the disappearance of young Will Shakespeare's wife and newborn daughter--a mystery that draws the Bard into a realm beyond imagination.
  Updated 6.6.05
• All Night Awake
  Author: Hoyt, Sarah A.
  Publisher: Ace $22.95 ISBN: 0441009735 Date: 2002
  With the same blend of romance and magic that made Ill Met By Moonlight "a delightful fantastic speculation" ("Booklist"), Hoyt offers a new novel about the greatest playwright of all time--and the passions that inspired him.
  Updated 6.6.05
• Any Man So Daring
  Author: Hoyt, Sarah A.
  Publisher: Ace $ 23.95 ISBN: 044101092x Date: 2003
  Booklist
  The final book in the Shakespeare fantasy trilogy by the author of All Night Awake. Shakespeare's success comes with a price--his son Hamnet has disappeared in the realm of the Elven King. Now Will must face the powers of darkness to rescue him.
  Updated 11.12.03
• Clerical Errors
  Author: Isler, Alan
  Publisher: Scribner $ 24 ISBN: 0743210603 Date: 2001
  LJ Kirkus PW
  From the award winning author of The Prince of West End Avenue comes an irreverent tale of a formerly Jewish--and now decidedly errant--Catholic priest.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars | Humorous Fiction
  Updated 6/8/01
• Me and Orson Welles
  Author: Kaplow, Robert
  Publisher: Macadam $ 18.50 ISBN: 1931561494 Date: 2003
  Kirkus
  Set in the 1930s, this is the story of 17-year-old Richard Samuels whose theatrical dreams are answered when Welles offers him a small role in his Broadway debut of Julius Caesar.
  Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens | Historical Fiction Stars
  Updated 5.9.05
• The Quality of Mercy
  Author: Kellerman, Faye
  Publisher: Morrow $ 19.95 ISBN: 1557100276 Date: 1989
  Rebecca Lopez, the daughter of Queen Elizabeth's physician, guards secrets she dares not reveal. She is a Jew who practices her prohibited religion clandestinely and helps others of her banned faith escape persecution and death. But Rebecca's love of excitement sparks a romantic passion with would-be playwright Will Shakespeare, and plunges them both into a viper's nest of intrigue and murder.
  Updated 6.6.05
• Prospero's Daughter
  Author: Nunez, Elizabeth
  Publisher: One World $ 24.95 ISBN: 0345455355 Date: 2006
  Kirkus
  Loosely based on Shakespeare's play The Tempest, this new novel by American Book Award- winning author Nunez tackles the issues of race, class, science, and passion- and interweaves the English, African, and Caribbean influences Nunez is known for.
  Updated 11.22.05
• Mrs. Shakespeare: The Complete Works
  Author: Nye, Bobert
  Publisher: Arcade $ 23.95 ISBN: 1559705523 Date: 2000
  Kirkus PW
  In this humorous and bawdy fictional memoir, Shakespeare's wife Anne Hathaway reminisces about her famous husband seven years after his death.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Biographical Fiction
  Updated 8/31/00
• Falstaff
  Author: Nye, Robert
  Publisher: Arcade $ 25.95 ISBN: 1559705914 Date: 2001
  PW
  In this raucous, rollicking romp, the most beloved comic figure in English literature tells his own unbuttoned story to set the record straight.
  Updated 9/17/01
• Voyage of the Destiny
  Author: Nye, Robert
  Publisher: Arcade $ 24.95 ISBN: 1559706465 Date: 2003
  PW
  The acclaimed author of The Late Mr. Shakespeare scores again with a thrilling depiction of the Elizabethan era through the eyes of the legendary Sir Walter Raleigh.
  Updated 12.16.02
• A Thousand Acres
  Author: Smiley, Jane
  Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 0394577736 Date: 1991
  PW Kirkus
  A prospering Iowa farm in the late 1970s turns suddenly ominous in Jane Smiley's new novel, her most ambitious and compelling to date. Without warning, a land-rich farmer declares his intention to divide his vast holdings among his three daughters, and tremors are set in motion that bring discoveries of the past, after which there is no forgiveness.
  Updated 6.6.05
• A Citizen of the Country
  Author: Smith, Sarah
  Publisher: Ballantine $ 24.95 ISBN: 0345433025 Date: 2000
  Kirkus
  In the ancient, bloody region of French Flanders looms Montfort castle, home of Count Andre du Monde, owner of a famous Parisian horror theater. To repair his fortunes, he marries an heiress. Then the Grand Necropolitan Theater is suddenly stricken with disasters.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Mystery Stars | Paris Stars
  Updated 6/6/00
• My Father Had a Daughter: Judith Shakespeare's Tale
  Author: Tiffany, Grace
  Publisher: Berkley $ 21.95 ISBN: 042519003x Date: 2003
  LJ
  After a family tragedy, Judith Shakespeare discovers a copy of her father's new play, which seems to make light of her grief. Furious, she follows him to London, intent on sabotaging the performance--but instead, she discovers that she and her father have more in common than she imagined.
  Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens
  Updated 5.19.03
• Will
  Author: Tiffany, Grace
  Publisher: Berkley $21.95 ISBN: 0425195961 Date: 2004
  A vivid, compelling narrative of the life of William Shakespeare from the Shakespearean scholar and novelist whose spirited debut, My Father Had a Daughter, was hailed as "richly detailed" and "enthralling" ("Library Journal").
  Updated 6.6.05
• The Turquoise Ring
  Author: Tiffany, Grace
  Publisher: Berkley $23.95 ISBN: 0425202488 Date: 2005
  A revisiting of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice is told from the perspective of five unusual women.
  Updated 6.6.05
• Ruled Britannia
  Author: Turtledove, Harry
  Publisher: NAL $ 24.95 ISBN: 0451207173 Date: 2002
  Booklist PW
  The year is 1597. The Spanish invasion was a success. King Phillip holds the English throne captive while Elizabeth I languishes in the Tower of London. And in the streets of that city, a stranger approaches a young playwright named William Shakespeare and makes him an offer that could change the course of history.
  Suggested Reading: Alternative History Stars
  Updated 10.24.02
• Gertrude and Claudius
  Author: Updike, John
  Publisher: Knopf $ 23 ISBN: 0375409084 Date: 2000
  PW
  Updike's 19th novel brings to life the story of Gertrude and Claudius, King and Queen of Denmark, before the action of Shakespeare's Hamlet begins.
  
• The School of Night
  Author: Wall, Alan
  Publisher: St Martins $ 23.95 ISBN: 031228778X Date: 2002
  Booklist
  Sean Tallow has only two overriding desires in life. One is to step into the shoes of his glamorous friend Daniel Pagett, and the other is to establish the truth about the School of Night, a shadowy group of Elizabethans who clustered around Sir Walter Ralegh.
  Tallow pursues the School of Night and its entanglement in the question of whether the man from Stratford-on-Avon could really have written the plays ascribed to William Shakespeare. If he didn't, then who did? The harder he studies, the less light is thrown on this troublesome question, and the more his interest in the School of Night becomes a grim fixation. Just when it seems Tallow is ready to give up the quest, day becomes night and everything he once believed is turned on its head as he enters a fearful world where there are no longer any rules except survival. Like the original members of the School of Night, he finds himself treading on the wrong side of the law. - Publisher Marketing.
  Updated 2/24/02

Nonfiction

• Shakespeare: The Biography
  Author: Ackroyd, Peter
  Publisher: Nan Talese $ 30 ISBN: 0385511396 Date: 2005
  Booklist LJ
  With his magisterial and ingenious re-creations of the lives of Chaucer, Dickens, T.S. Eliot, William Blake, and Sir Thomas More, Peter Ackroyd has long been recognized as today's foremost practitioner of the literary biography. Now, in Shakespeare: The Biography, Ackroyd delivers his crowning achievement.
  Updated 8.24.05
• History Play: The Lives and Afterlife of Christopher Marlowe
  Author: Bolt, Rodney
  Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 24.95 ISBN: 1596910208 Date: 2005
  LJ Kirkus
  Rodney Bolt's delightful life of Marlowe plays out a surprising solution to an enduring literary mystery, bringing the spirit of Shakespeare alive as we've never seen it before.
  - Publisher Marketing.
  Updated 8.24.05
• A Mouthful of Air: Language, Langages . . . Especially English
  Author: Burgess, Anthony
  Publisher: Morrow $ 25 ISBN: 0688119352 Date: 1993
  Yeats once wrote of a poem, saying he had "made it out of a mouthful of air". Burgess advances this point by presenting a fascinating survey of language--how it operates, and how it will develop in the future--that ranges from Shakespearean pronunciation to the place of English in the world family of languages.
  Updated 6.6.05
• Me and Shakespeare: Adventures With the Bard
  Author: Gollob, Herman
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 26 ISBN: 0385498179 Date: 2002
  Kirkus
  One of the most entertaining and unusual books on Shakespeare ever written is a distinguished book editor's memoir that attests to the lifelong power of literature to enrich, enlarge, and exalt.
  Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
  Updated 6.30.02
• Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare
  Author: Greenblatt, Stephen
  Publisher: Norton $ 26.95 ISBN: 0393050572 Date: 2004
  PW
  Greenblatt interweaves a searching account of Elizabethan England with a vivid narrative of the playwright's life. Readers see Shakespeare learning his craft, starting a family, and forging a career for himself in the wildly competitive London theater world.
  Updated 7.19.04
• A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare
  Author: Shapiro, James
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 26.95 ISBN: 0060088737 Date: 2005
  Kirkus Booklist
  One of the most admired lecturers at Columbia University takes a single year of Shakespeare's life and interweaves history, biography, and literary criticism in a way that has never been done before.
  Updated 11.14.05
• Hamlet's Dresser: A Memoir
  Author: Smith, Bob
  Publisher: Scribner $ 24 ISBN: 0684852691 Date: 2002
  PW LJ
  In gorgeous and tender prose, Smith weaves together the story of his difficult childhood and his encounters with "the old people" to tell the story of a life shaped by poetry. Hamlet's Dresser is both a redemptive memoir of a man made whole by art, and an intimate encounter with the plays and sonnets of Shakespeare.
  Updated 5.3.02