Description
A mysterious portrait ignites an antiquarian bookseller‚Äôs search‚Äîthrough time and the works of Shakespeare‚Äîfor his lost love. Guaranteed to capture the hearts of everyone who truly loves books, The Bookman‚Äôs Tale is a former bookseller‚Äôs sparkling novel and a delightful exploration of one of literature‚Äôs most tantalising mysteries with echoes of Shadow of the Wind and A.S. Byatt’s Possession. Hay-on-Wye, 1995. Peter Byerly isn‚Äôt sure what drew him into this particular bookshop. Nine months earlier, the death of his beloved wife, Amanda, had left him shattered. The young antiquarian bookseller relocated from North Carolina to the English countryside, hoping to rediscover the joy he once took in collecting and restoring rare books. But upon opening an eighteenth-century study of Shakespeare forgeries, Peter is shocked when a portrait of Amanda tumbles out of its pages. Of course, it isn‚Äôt really her. The watercolour is clearly Victorian. Yet the resemblance is uncanny, and Peter becomes obsessed with learning the picture‚Äôs origins. As he follows the trail back first to the Victorian era and then to Shakespeare‚Äôs time, Peter communes with Amanda‚Äôs spirit, learns the truth about his own past, and discovers a book that might definitively prove Shakespeare was, indeed, the author of all his plays.
