"For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright; Who art as black as hell, as dark as night." —William Shakespeare, Sonnet 147 In the boldest imagining of the era since Shakespeare in Love and Elizabeth, a finalist for the Italian Premio del Castello del Terriccio, this spellbinding novel of witchcraft, poetry, and passion, brings to life Aemilia Lanyer, the "Dark Lady" of Shakespeare's Sonnets—the playwright's muse and his one true love. The daughter of a Venetian musician but orphaned as a young girl, Aemilia Bassano grows up in the court of Elizabeth I, becoming the Queen's favorite. She absorbs a love of poetry and learning, maturing into a striking young woman with a sharp mind and a quick tongue. Now brilliant, beautiful, and highly educated, she becomes mistress of Lord Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain and Queen's cousin. But her position is precarious; when she falls in love with court playwright William Shakespeare, her fortunes change irrevocably. A must-read for fans of Tracy Chevalier (Girl With a Pearl Earring) and Sarah Dunant (The Birth of Venus), Sally O'Reilly's richly atmospheric novel compellingly re-imagines the struggles for power, recognition, and survival in the brutal world of Elizabethan London. She conjures the art of England's first professional female poet, giving us a character for the ages—a woman who is ambitious and intelligent, true to herself, and true to her heart.

A natural storyteller with a vision of his own. THE DARK LADY, Akala's debut novel for teens, will enthuse and entertain teenagers and young adults, showing that reading is a true super-power. A PICKPOCKET WITH AN EXCEPTIONAL GIFT A PRISONER OF EXTRAORDINARY VALUE AN ORPHAN HAUNTED BY DREAMS OF THE MYSTERIOUS DARK LADY Henry is an orphan, an outsider, a thief. He is also a fifteen-year-old invested with magical powers ... This brilliant, at times brutal, first novel from the amazing imagination that is Akala, will glue you to your seat as you are hurled into a time when London stank and boys like Henry were forced to find their own route through the tangled streets and out the other side.

A trio of not-yet-famous young detectives must solve what appears to be a mysterious murder.

Amelia Bassano Lanier is proved to be a strong candidate for authorship of Shakespeare's plays: Hudson looks at the fascinating life of this woman, believed by many to be the dark lady of the sonnets, and presents the case that she may have written Shakespeare's plays.

In Dark Lady, Richard North Patterson displays the mastery of setting, psychology, and story that makes him unique among writers of suspense, and one of today's most original and enthralling novelists. In Steelton, a struggling Midwestern city on the cusp of an economic turnaround, two prominent men are found dead within days of each other. One is Tommy Fielding, a senior officer of the company building a new baseball stadium, the city's hope for the future. The other is Jack Novak, the local drug dealers' attorney of choice. Fielding's death with a prostitute, from an overdose of heroin, seems accidental; Novak is apparently the victim of a ritual murder. But in each case the character of the dead man seems contradicted by the particulars of his death. Coincidence or connection? The question falls to Assistant County Prosecutor Stella Marz. Despite a traumatic breach with her alcoholic and embittered father, she has risen from a working-class background to become head of the prosecutor's homicide unit. A driven woman, she is called the Dark Lady by defense lawyers for her relentless, sometimes ruthless, style: in seven years only one case has gotten away from her, and only because the defendant took his own life. She has earned every inch of both her official and her off-the-record titles, and recently she's decided to go after another: to become the first woman elected Prosecutor of Erie County. But that was before the brutal murder of her ex-lover--Jack Novak. Novak's death leads her into a labyrinth where her personal and professional lives become dangerously intertwined. There is the possibility that Novak fixed drug cases for the city's crime lord, Vincent Moro, with the help of law enforcement personnel, and perhaps with someone in Stella's own office . . . the bitter mayoral race which threatens to undermine her own ambitions . . . her attraction to a colleague who may not be what he seems . . . the lingering, complicated effects of her painful affair with Novak . . . the growing certainty that she is being watched and followed. Making her way through a maze of corruption, deceit, and greed, trusting no one, Stella comes to believe that the search for the truth involves the bleak history of Steelton itself--a history that now endangers her future, and perhaps her life. For his uncanny dialogue, subtle delineation of character, and hypnotic narrative, critics have compared Richard North Patterson to John O'Hara and Dashiell Hammett. Now, in the character of the Dark Lady, he has created a woman as fascinating as her world is haunting. Dark Lady is his signature work.

The Victorian era was full of majestic beauty and scandalous secrets—a time when corsets were the least of a woman’s restrictions, and men could kill or be killed in the name of honor.… Lord Ian Blake has returned from India a broken man. Years ago, he pledged to Lady Eva Carin—his childhood companion and first love—that he would bring her husband back alive. His failure haunts him. But even his jaded soul can’t anticipate the shocking sight of beautiful, independent Eva confined in a madhouse.… Locked in an asylum, forgotten by society, Eva is adrift in both body and mind. For Ian to break her free, they must cross a powerful enemy—and prove her sanity to England’s unforgiving aristocracy. But the biggest danger of all may come when the secrets of Eva’s tragic past are finally unlocked....

An alien art expert is caught in a dangerous hunt for an enigmatic beauty in this science fiction classic by a five-time Hugo Award–winning author. For thousands of years the Dark Lady has appeared in portraits across the galaxy, but very little is known about her. She wears only black. She has been seen by many but known by few. And if you do see her, it will be after you’ve taken your last breath . . . Alien art historian Leonardo has seen paintings of the Dark Lady before and sees her image again when he comes to work at a human art gallery. There he meets a wealthy old collector who hires him to track down portraits of the mysterious woman. However, Leonardo is not alone in his search. There’s an art thief out to make some money, and a man desperate to see the model herself in the flesh. Legend says that the Dark Lady summons men to great deeds or to their demise. As Leonardo’s search begins, his obsession with the woman grows. She will either be the key to his salvation or his destruction . . .

2017-2018 Sarton Women's Book Awards Winner in Historical Fiction 2018 International Book Awards Finalist in Fiction: Historical Emilia Bassano has four strikes against her: she is poor, beautiful, female, and intelligent in Elizabethan England. To make matters worse, she comes from a family of secret Jews. When she is raped as a teenager, she knows she probably will not be able to make a good marriage, so she becomes the mistress of a much older nobleman. During this time she falls in love with poet/player William Shakespeare, and they have a brief, passionate relationship—but when the plague comes to England, the nobleman abandons her, leaving her pregnant and without financial security. In the years that follow, Emilia is forced to make a number of difficult decisions in her efforts to survive, and not all of them turn out well for her. But ultimately, despite the disadvantaged position she was born to, she succeeds in pursuing her dreams of becoming a writer—and even publishes a book of poetry in 1611 that makes a surprisingly modern argument for women’s equality.

Chief Inspector Charlie Woodend will have to rely on his observational gifts to have a ghost of chance in solving his latest murder case. The night after the mysterious appearance of the legendary Dark Lady on the road outside Westbury Park, a German efficiency expert, Gerhard Schultz, is found battered to death in the woods and Chief Inspector Charlie Woodend is faced with his most puzzling case yet. Why did Schultz seem so frightened when on his colleagues mentioned the legend of the Dark Lady? Did the workers at the BCI chemical factory—many of whom are known to hate the Germans—have anything to do with his death? How could Fred Foley, the tramp whose bloodstained overcoat was found close to the scene of the crime, have completely disappeared? And is this murder connected with one which occurred in Liverpool nearly twenty years earlier? “A very successful British procedural, nicely complicated by leftovers from both local lore and the war.” —Library Journal “Excellent work from a too-little-known author.” —Booklist