Some Notable Trades from The Poisoned Pen

Interred with Their Bones by Jennifer Lee Carrell

A long-lost work of Shakespeare, newly found.
A killer who stages the Bard’s extravagant murders as flesh-and-blood realities.
A desperate race to find literary gold, and just to stay alive. . . .

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. Inside the box Kate finds the first piece in a Shakespearean puzzle, setting her on a deadly, high-stakes treasure hunt.

From London to Harvard to the American West, Kate races to evade a killer and decipher a tantalizing string of clues, hidden in the words of Shakespeare, that may unlock literary history’s greatest secret. At once suspenseful and elegantly written, Interred with Their Bones is poised to become the next bestselling literary adventure in the tradition of The Thirteenth Tale and The Historian.

Ingenious Edgar Jones by Elizabeth Garner

Set in nineteenth-century Oxford, and shot through with a powerful sense of magic, Elizabeth Garner's new novel will appeal both to fans of historical fiction and to the huge fanbase of authors like Philip Pullman. In nineteenth-century Oxford, an extraordinary child is born - Edgar Jones, a porter's son with a magical talent. Though his father cannot see beyond his academic slowness, his abilities as a metalworker and designer are quickly noticed, and become a source of tension within the family. When Edgar comes to the attention of a maverick professor at work on a museum of the natural sciences, Edgar is at once plucked from obscurity and plunged into the heart of a debate which threatens to tear apart the university. Edgar's position is a dangerous one - will he be able to control the rebellious spirit that fires his inventiveness, but threatens to ruin him and to break up his family once and for all?


Waiting for the End of the World by Andrew Taylor

It's a difficult time for William Dougal - he's given up smoking. To make matters worse, a touch of blackmail persuades him into doing a job for his old adversary James Hanbury. Nothing complicated - all he has to do is keep an eye on Dr Vertag, the leader of a lunatic fringe survival group, The Sealed Servants of the Apocalapse. But he has hardly started when the barman who tried to warn him off is murdered. Suddenly - coincidentally? - Zelda appears from Dougal's murky past. Zelda is big, black and very beautiful. Just as suddenly she is kidnapped from his flat. Dougal's natural desire to rescue her plunges him into a maelstrom of criminal activities. And then there's Malcolm - an aficionado of Proust, a convicted drug-dealer, a man with the moral code of a large and violent toddler. Fortunately, on the whole, he thinks of Dougal as a friend. The shadow of James Hanbury hangs over everything. Like truth itself, Hanbury is rarely pure and never simple...