Shakespeare S Secret

A missing diamond, a mysterious neighbor, a link to Shakespeare—can Hero uncover the connections?

In this Junior Library Guild Selection, Broach weaves an intriguing literary mystery full of historical insights and discoveries, as a young girl tries to uncover the connections between a missing diamond, a mysterious neighbor, and a link to Shakespeare.

Hero changed into a T-shirt, grabbed a book, and padded barefoot into her sister's room. The large windows overlooked the backyard. She could see the moonlight streaming over the trees and bushes, making long, crazy shadows across the grass. Was there a diamond hidden out there somewhere? She looked at Beatrice, already settled under the covers. She wanted to tell her about the Murphys, but at the same time, she didn't. She wanted to keep the secret. To have something that belonged only to her. A missing diamond, a mysterious neighbor, a link to Shakespeare-can Hero uncover the connections? When Hero starts sixth grade at a new school, she's less concerned about the literary origins of her Shakespearean name than about the teasing she's sure to suffer because of it. So she has the same name as a girl in a book by a dusty old author. Hero is simply not interested in the connections. But that's just the thing; suddenly connections are cropping up all over, and odd characters and uncertain pasts are exactly what do fascinate Hero. There's a mysterious diamond hidden in her new house, a curious woman next door who seems to know an awful lot about it, and then, well, then there's Shakespeare. Not to mention Danny Cordova, only the most popular boy in school. Is it all in keeping with her namesake's origin-just much ado about nothing? Hero, being Hero, is determined to figure it out. In this fast-paced novel, Elise Broach weaves an intriguing literary mystery full of historical insights and discoveries. A JUNIOR LIBRARY GUILD SELECTION

Named One of Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Books of 2014 There are so few established facts about how the son of a glove maker from Warwickshire became one of the greatest writers of all time that some people doubt he could really have written so many astonishing plays. We know that he married Anne Hathaway, who was pregnant and six years older than he, at the age of eighteen, and that one of their children died of the plague. We know that he left Stratford to seek his fortune in London, and eventually succeeded. He was clearly an unwilling craftsman, ambitious actor, resentful son, almost good-enough husband. But when and how did he also become a genius? The Secret Life of William Shakespeare pulls back the curtain to imagine what it might have really been like to be Shakespeare before a seemingly ordinary man became a legend. In the hands of acclaimed historical novelist Jude Morgan, this is a brilliantly convincing story of unforgettable richness, warmth, and immediacy.

A modern serial killer - hunting an ancient secret. A woman is left to die as the rebuilt Globe theatre burns. Another woman is drowned like Ophelia, skirts swirling in the water. A professor has his throat slashed open on the steps of Washington's Capitol building. A deadly serial killer is on the loose, modelling his murders on Shakespeare's plays. But why is he killing? And how can he be stopped? A gripping, shocking page turner, The Shakespeare Secret masterfully combines modern murder and startling true revelations from the life of Shakespeare. It has been acclaimed as one of the most compulsively readable thrillers of recent years.

As David Ovason reveals, many leading esoteric writers - alchemists, occultists and Rosicrucians -contributed to this 'Secret booke'. Among the more outstanding English literary figures who used the code were the mysterious adviser to Elizabeth I, John Dee, the turbulent author of The Alchemist, Ben Jonson, and the more classically-minded Edmund Spenser, whose poem 'The Faerie Queene' is the best-known esoteric work of the period. Shakespeare's Secret Booke reveals many other literary figures who together form a remarkable underground literary movement, including the most influential esotericist of the period, Jacob Boehme, and alchemists such as the English polymath Robert Fludd. Another was Shakespeare's contemporary, the youthful Johann Valentin Andreae, credited as author of The Chymical Wedding - a Rosicrucian work replete with sophisticated examples of encoding. --

"The Da Vinci Code" meets Nancy Drew in this galloping middle-grade mystery about 12-year old Colophon Letterford and the ancient treasure left to her literary publishing family. Illustrations.

Shakespeare's Catholic context was the most important literary discovery of the last century. No biography of the Bard is now complete without chapters on the paranoia and persecution in which he was educated, or the treason which engulfed his family. Whether to suffer outrageous fortune or take up arms in suicidal resistance was, as Hamlet says, 'the question' that fired Shakespeare's stage. In 'Secret Shakespeare' Richard Wilson asks why the dramatist remained so enigmatic about his own beliefs, and so silent on the atrocities he survived.Shakespeare constructed a drama not of discovery, like his rivals, but of darkness, deferral, evasion and disguise, where, for all his hopes of a 'golden time' of future toleration, 'What's to come' is always unsure. Whether or not 'He died a papist', it is because we can never 'pluck out the heart' of his mystery that Shakespeare's plays retain their unique potential to resist.This is a fascinating work, which will be essential reading for all scholars of Shakespeare and Renaissance studies.