Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23216 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 432 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Plot twists worthy of The Da Vinci Code dominate this agile first novel from Carrell (The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox), a thriller involving a lost Shakespeare play, The History of Cardenio. On a June day in 2004, at London's rebuilt Globe theater, Rosalind Howard, flamboyantly eccentric Harvard Professor of Shakespeare, gives her friend Katharine Stanley, who's directing a production of Hamlet at the Globe, a small gold-wrapped box. That evening, a fire damages the Globe, where Roz is found murdered in the same manner as Hamlet's father. Roz's mysterious gift, which contains a Victorian mourning brooch decorated with flowers associated with Ophelia, propels Kate on a wild and wide-ranging quest that takes her to Utah; Arizona; Washington, D.C.; and back to London. Every step of the way, as the bodies pile up, Kate narrowly escapes becoming the next murder victim. From Shakespeare conferences to desert mines, from the present to the past, this spirited and action-packed novel delivers constant excitement. Foreign rights sold in 20 countries. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
Kathleen McNenny narrates this action-filled mystery about long-lost Shakespeare manuscripts in an able and entertaining manner. Admittedly, the action is farfetched, but McNennys smooth voice and upbeat pacing remind us its also lots of fun. When American Shakespeare scholar Kate Stanley receives a mysterious box from a friend who is soon murdered, she sets off to solve the mystery and the crime. McNenny portrays Kate with the right mix of academic navet and breathless enthusiasm. She has fun with a range of British accents and is particularly skilled at creating believable male characters, from a seductive private detective to a posh church official. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

About the Author
Jennifer Lee Carrell holds a Ph.D. in English and American literature from Harvard University and is the author of The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox. In addition to writing for Smithsonian magazine, Carrell has taught in the history and literature program at Harvard and directed Shakespeare for Harvard’s Hyperion Theatre Company.

Customer Reviews

What if?
A good, fast-moving mystery by a fine writer who knows her history. Highly recommended!

A no holds 'Bard' thriller....
Jennifer Lee Carrell has done herself in injustice with delivering 'Interred With Their Bones' as her debut novel. A story rife with Shakespearean darkness and mystery, and built upon centuries old fact and legend; Ms. Carrell will find it difficult, I can well imagine, to surpass herself with a sophomore outing.

Centuries after the fire which destroyed the original Globe Theater, home to the dramatis personae of the works of Mr. William Shakespeare, fledgling director Kate Stanley finds herself (while rehearsing 'Hamlet' at a rebuilt Globe) visited by an old/former friend, Roz Howard, with a simple, yet intriguing, revelation...'I've found something'....

With these words Roz lures her former protege, Kate, into a mystery with roots deeply embedded in the masterful works of Shakespeare himself. Kate agrees to meet Roz Howard later that same night, which shares the date of the burning of the original Globe, and witnesses history repeating itself as the theater is once again engulfed in flames. The theater is saved.....Roz Howard is not so lucky.

Kate then sets off, with the help of old friends and new on a quest to find what Roz intended to reveal to her, and finds herself 'chasing Shakespeare' across the Atlantic to New England, back to Great Britain, on to Spain, and finally to the American Southwest, hoping to find at the end of her quest a prize that, while it may not glitter, is certainly literary 'gold'.

An masterfully exectuted tour-de-force of storytelling which will delight and thrill fans of 'The Bard' and fans of stories rooted in such literary legend as the undocumented life of one of theater's greatest talents. I give Ms. Carrell five stars for ensnaring me in her web, and offer her a hearty standing ovation, and a cry of 'encore' in anticipation of her next outing.

In-your-face fun; check your credulity at the door
First-novelist Carrell writes with all the subtlety of a big in-your-face roller coaster and packs in every conspiracy and canard in the Shakespeare history. It makes for a guilty pleasure ride that kept me going front to back in one day.

Its all here--a catalog of theories on who really wrote Shakespeare, who were Shakespeare's male and female paramours in the sonnets, who was Shakespeare himself, and of course a trail of missing manuscripts and letters that starts in London, then veers to Boston, Las Vegas, Washington DC, back to various points in England, Spain, then back to the American Southwest (Tombstone, Arizona as crazy as that sounds if you've been to any of these other places). Characters bound from one to the other apparently without sleep and with the author giving little sense of time passing or normal activities, apparently in one long day.

Ultimately, the kitchen-sink plot and the implausible actions and coincidences building throughout the novel reach such an absurd level that it isn't a really satisfying experience. If Carrell continues her fiction career she needs to learn to pay attention to time lines and downtimes, tone down the coincidences and implausibilities, and leave the kitchen sink out of the plot.

But it was fun.