Meet Your Baker by Ellie Alexander is the debut in the new cozy Bakeshop Mystery series where a recent culinary school grad returns home to help her mother run a bakery (available December 30, 2014). Welcome to Torte—a friendly, small-town family bake shop where the treats are so good that, sometimes, it’s criminal… After graduating…
The public image of Richard Burton (1925-1984), for better or for worse, will forever be intertwined with Elizabeth Taylor (who he married twice) and for a lifetime struggle with alcohol. But at his Hollywood start, Burton established himself as a top Shakespearean actor on par with Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud. Poor film choices—a number…
The theater world has long been a prime setting for mystery and mayhem. Shakespeare, that homicidal scribe, virtually carpeted the stage with slain corpses. The murderers he created are numerous: Richard III, Othello, Titus Andronicus, Lear’s daughter Goneril, Macbeth (both He and She) and a whole squad of Caesar-skewering assassins—whose best-known member, Brutus, made this…
From Shakespeare to Sherlock, Hercule Poirot to James Bond, London has always had a rich literary history. And now you can sit on it! Thanks to The National Literacy Trust, along with its public art promotor Wild in Art, 50 benches have been commissioned that will be painted to look like open books portraying scenes…
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest… In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the role of Yorick the court jester is little more than a cameo (you couldn’t properly call it a “walk-on”); a nonspeaking role that wouldn’t even qualify you for membership in Actors’ Equity. Yet plenty of people have wanted…
It is a painful experience to watch a story come apart. From that moment during the telling of a pointless anecdote when the speaker realizes no laughter is forthcoming, to the most sweeping epic tales that end up cracking apart at their close, a bad ending always leaves a bad taste in the mouth, and…
“Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting, and it seems drank too hard; for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted.” The Vicar of Stratford-upon-Avon, 1661 He was 52 years old on the day he died, the richest man in his hometown, the greatest playwright of his age. But even now, nearly 400…
This is just a little movie to bring a bit of joy to your day. It’s a handmade homage to books and love and death in felt and embroidery stop-motion animation by Spike Jonze, Simon Cahn and Olympia Le-Tan. It’s called Mourir Auprès de Toi (To Die By Your Side), and we dare you not…
In a lively market town in Warwickshire during the 1570’s, a leather merchant and glovemaker, formerly very prosperous, was edging toward financial ruin. The courts prosecuted him–or perhaps only threatened to–for illegally trading in large quantities of wool and for usury, money-lending. By 1576 he had to forfeit his public office. There is almost no…
Within the last thirty years, readers have been exposed to several new versions of William Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon, versions that take us far afield from the Shakespeare that tradition has presented us. And primarily, those variations have been seen in historical mysteries and romantic suspense. We are given a view of Shakespeare as…
