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Will of Avon; or,
The Bard, Re-mixed |
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William Shakespeare has remained popular for over 400 years. His works have been produced as period pieces, musicals, and reinterpreted in every possible way.
Enjoy these Shakespeare stories, retold as fiction titles from just about every genre. |
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by Ros Barber
Exiled writer Christopher Marlowe shares the story of his life from his humble youth as a cobbler's son who counted nobles among his friends to his adult misadventures as a Queen's spy, fickle lover and religious skeptic whose talent for plays, poetry and trouble led him to hide his identity behind the name William Shakespeare.
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by Eleanor Brown
Unwillingly brought together to care for their ailing mother, three sisters who were named after famous Shakespearean characters discover that everything they have been avoiding may prove more worthwhile than expected.
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by Jennifer Lee Carrell
On the eve of the Globe’s production of Hamlet, Shakespeare scholar and theater director Kate Stanley’s eccentric mentor Rosalind Howard gives her a mysterious box, claiming to have made a groundbreaking discovery. But before she can reveal it to Kate, the Globe burns to the ground and Roz is found dead . . . murdered precisely in the manner of Hamlet’s father.
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by Andrea Chapin
Katharine de L'Isle, a 31-year-old widow living at Lufanwal Hall during Queen Elizabeth's brutal persecution of the English Catholics in 1590, is thrown into turmoil when the family priest is murdered and a new schoolmaster named William Shakespeare arrives, whose verse forever changes her life.
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by Bernard Cornwell
The estranged younger brother of William Shakespeare observes the first production of A Midsummer Night's Dream while navigating a high-stakes game of duplicity and betrayal that threatens his acting career, his potential fortune and the lives of his fellow players.
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by Anne Fortier
After she visits Italy per the instructions of her late aunt's will, Juliet Jacobs is thrust into a centuries-old feud, uncovering the story of her ancestor, Giulietta, whose love for a man named Romeo proved ill-fated, and finding herself under threat after the past and present begin to resemble one another.
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by Carol Goodman
Drawn by a letter from a student who dies under mysterious circumstances, literature professor Rose Asher journeys to the rustic Italian villa where she had first met her one-time lover Bruno Brunelli and finds herself caught up in the dangerous search for a missing folio containing what some believe are some long-lost sonnets penned by William Shakespeare. |
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by Michael Gruber
Desperately typing out the details of a case that puts him at the center of a deadly conspiracy that could mean his imminent demise, intellectual property lawyer Jake Mishkin recounts how a bookstore fire led to the discovery of a cache of encrypted seventeenth-century letters revealing the whereabouts of one of the most valuable historical items in the world.
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by Matt Haig
Introduced to the Dead Fathers Club of murdered men by the ghost of his late father, eleven-year-old Philip Noble learns that his uncle, who has designs on Philip's mother, murdered Philip's father in order to get his hands on the family pub.
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by Karen Harper
Her engagement to William Shakespeare broken by his forced marriage to a pregnant Anne Hathaway of Shottery, Anne Whateley pursues a clandestine and dangerous affair with the bard that is further complicated by Elizabeth I's campaign to eradicate Catholicism.
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by Charles C Lovett
Relocating to the English countryside after the death of his wife, antiquarian book enthusiast Peter Byerly discovers an 18th-century study of Shakespeare forgeries that contains a Victorian portrait strongly resembling his late wife, a finding that sparks an obsessive search through the bard's historical period.
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by Emily St. John Mandel
The sudden death of a Hollywood actor during a production of King Lear marks the beginning of the world's dissolution, in a story told at various past and future times from the perspectives of the actor and four of his associates.
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by Isaac Marion
Told from the perspective of a zombie named R - who can remember nothing about the life he lost - describes R's growing sentience and his decision to save the life of teenage Julie and take her under his protection.
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by Robin Maxwell
Juliet Capelletti must choose between a traditionally loveless marriage to her father's business partner or fulfillment of her poetic dreams in this new take on the story of the woman who inspired Shakespeare's most famous female character.
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by Christopher Moore
Here's the Cliff's Notes you wished you'd had for King Lear -- the mad royal, his devious daughters, rhyming ghosts and a castle full of hot intrigue -- in a cheeky and ribald romp that both channels and chides the Bard.
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by Robert Nye
An old man named Pickleherring, living in Restoration-era London and claiming to be the actor in Shakespeare's troupe who originally played the Bard's most famous female roles, offers an instructive, salacious, and altogether delightful reminiscence of the Shakespeare he knew.
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by Dexter Clarence Palmer
With his only companions being his insane lover and her cryogenically frozen father, greeting card writer Harold Winslow must come to terms with the madness of a genius inventor and his quest to create a perpetual motion machine, in a story set in a fantastical future where nearly anything is possible.
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by Arthur Phillips
When their long-imprisoned con-artist father reaches the end of his life, Arthur and his twin sister become the owners of an undiscovered play by William Shakespeare that their father wants published, a final request that represents either a great literary gift or their father's last great heist.
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by Alisha Rai
One night. No one will know. That was the deal. Every year, Livvy Kane and Nicholas Chandler would share one perfect night of illicit pleasure. The forbidden hours let them forget the tragedy that haunted their pasts -- and the last names that made them enemies. Until the night she didn't show up. |
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by Jeanne Ray A deliciously funny and wickedly sexy novel of love found (finally!) and love threatened (inevitably) by the families who claim to love us best. Romeo Cacciamani and Julie Roseman are rival florists in Boston, whose families have hated each other for as long as anyone can remember (what they can't remember is why). |
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by Mary Sharratt
Disguising herself as a man to escape her loveless marriage and enjoy the exclusive freedoms of men, aspiring 16th-century writer Aemilia falls in love and runs away with ragged poet William Shakespeare, with whom she secretly writes plays that bring him fame years later.
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by Jane Smiley
This powerful twentieth-century reimagining of Shakespeare's King Lear centers on a wealthy Iowa farmer who decides to divide his farm between his three daughters. When the youngest objects, she is cut out of his will. This sets off a chain of events that brings dark truths to light and explodes long-suppressed emotions.
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by Grace Tiffany
The daughter of England's greatest dramatist, angered over her father's callousness regarding a family tragedy and her own grief, heads for London, intent on sabotaging his new play.
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by John Updike
Set in the Denmark of Shakespeare's Hamlet before the action in the play, this novel of Hamlet's parents speculates on the forces that led Gertrude into a middle-aged affair with her husband's younger brother.
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by David Wroblewski
Born mute, speaking only in sign, Edgar Sawtelle leads an idyllic life with his parents on their farm in remote northern Wisconsin. For generations, the Sawtelles have raised and trained a fictional breed of dog whose thoughtful companionship is epitomized by Almondine, Edgar's lifelong friend and ally.
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by Alexi Zentner
Inspired by the plot of King Lear, describes the story of a family who has reaped the sea's bounty on Loosewood Island for 300 years, but pays for it with the loss of every firstborn son.
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The Hogarth Shakespeare project sees Shakespeare’s works retold by acclaimed and bestselling novelists of today. |
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by Jeanette Winterson
A debut entry in an international series designed to retell the Bard's most renowned plays in 21st-century settings as written by leading modern authors reimagines The Winter's Tale in modern London and a storm-ravaged America in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
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by Howard Jacobson
In a magnificent modern re-imagining of one of Shakespeare’s most provocative characters — Shylock — Simon Strulovitch, riddled with grief after the death of his wife, struggles with his daughter Beatrice’s betrayal of family and his daughter Jessica’s rejection of her Jewish roots.
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by Anne Tyler
A modern retelling of The Taming of the Shrew follows the experiences of a preschool teacher who alienates others by speaking her mind and who manages her family's home before she is expected by her eccentric father to marry his assistant to prevent the young man's deportation. |
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by Margaret Atwood
A psychologically charged story inspired by Shakespeare's The Tempest, reimagined by the award-winning author of The Handmaid's Tale, follows the retribution plot of a deposed artistic director who teaches prison inmates while consulting with a fantasy child who has taken the place of the daughter he lost years earlier.
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by Tracy Chevalier
The best-selling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring presents an imaginative retelling of Shakespeare's Othello that places events in 1970s America and follows the experiences of two diverse children who navigate themes of love, betrayal, racism and revenge on the playground of their all-white school. |
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by Edward St. Aubyn
A modern reimagining of Shakespeare's King Lear follows the experiences of a man who in the wake of an orchestrated public mental breakdown is sent to a Switzerland sanatorium by the daughters who would seize his fortune, a plot he resolves to foil with the assistance of a colorful sidekick.
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by Jo Nesbø
A modern retelling of Macbeth by the award-winning author of the Harry Hole series is set in a run-down industrial town in the 1970s and follows the efforts of a popular but increasingly corrupt police officer and his calculating casino owner girlfriend to work with a powerful local drug dealer to murder a professional rival and set up his best friend.
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