Found in the pages of Bookmarks Magazine

Every two months, I am treated to a little piece of book heaven, thanks to my best friend, Michelle. She gave me a subscription to Bookmarks Magazine for Christmas, and every issue gives me a serious case of the book covets. Here are the books I have added to my wish list from the May/June issue:

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters is a ghost story in which a doctor is summoned to a grand house in rural Warwickshire and confronts old family secrets.

This month, Bookmarks had a big spread on the works of Shakespeare, and literary works surrounding the world of Shakespeare and his plays. There were a lot of great titles suggested.

The Lambs of London by Peter Ackroyd takes place in the 19th century, before the real-life Mary Lamb murdered her mother and a decade before her brother, English essayist Charles Lamb, published Tales from Shakespeare. Charles, a young writer, and Mary, constrained by domesticity, escape their lives by reading the Bard. Then a young bookseller seduces the siblings with a “lost” Shakespearean play. But is it authentic – or a fantastic hoax?

The Quality of Mercy by Faye Kellerman. This novel historicizes the young actor-playwright William Shakespeare’s life. In Elizabethan England, Rebecca Lopez and her converso family (Spanish Jews posing as Anglicans and practicing their faith in secret) smuggle Jews out of Spain. At the same time, the young Will seeks revenge for the death of his mentor. Soon, Will and Rebecca meet in an unlikely place – and their lives change forever.

The Shakespeare Wars by Ron Rosembaum. Drawing on voluminous research and inside information on many key Shakespeare critics, scholars, and stage directors, Rosenbaum offers a treatise on Shakespeare’s body of work and its handling four centuries after the Bard’s death. He includes tales of messy and unsavory academic feuds over the sources of his plays – and yes, even his punctuation and spelling – as well as discussions on King Lear’s final words, the origins of Shakespeare’s characters, and the relative merits of film versus stage productions.

The magazine also had a profile on Jodi Picoult, and asked her for some book recommendations, one of which was The Story of Forgetting by Stefan Merrill Block. Picoult said, “It’s a terrific first novel about a boy whose mother has early onset Alzheimer’s and an old man who can’t forget the things he wishes he could. I loved the way the two story lines meshed.”