Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
All characters reduced
Shadowplay - A Novel - cover

Shadowplay - A Novel

Joseph O'Connor

Publisher: Europa Editions

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Summary

A West End theater in London is shaken up by the crimes of Jack the Ripper in this novel by the New York Times–bestselling author of The Star of the Sea. 
 
Henry Irving is Victorian London’s most celebrated actor and theater impresario. He has introduced groundbreaking ideas to the theater, bringing to the stage performances that are spectacular, shocking, and always entertaining. When Irving decides to open his own London theater with the goal of making it the greatest playhouse on earth, he hires a young Dublin clerk harboring literary ambitions by the name of Bram Stoker to manage it. As Irving’s theater grows in reputation and financial solvency, he lures to his company of mummers the century’s most beloved actress, the dazzlingly talented leading lady Ellen Terry, who nightly casts a spell not only on her audiences but also on Stoker and Irving both. 
 
Bram Stoker’s extraordinary experiences at the Lyceum Theatre, his early morning walks on the streets of a London terrorized by a serial killer, his long, tempestuous relationship with Irving, and the closeness he finds with Ellen Terry, inspire him to write Dracula, the most iconic and best-selling supernatural tale ever published. 
 
A magnificent portrait both of lamp-lit London and of lives and loves enacted on the stage, Shadowplay’s rich prose, incomparable storytelling, and vivid characters will linger in readers’ hearts and minds for many years. 
 
“A vibrantly imaginative narrative of passion, intrigue and literary ambition set in the garish heyday of a theater. . . . Artfully splicing truth with fantasy, O’Connor has a glorious time turning a ramshackle and haunted London playhouse into a primary source for Stoker’s Gothic imaginings.” —Miranda Seymour, The New York Times Book Review 
 
“A gorgeously written historical novel about Stoker’s inner life. . . . I wasn’t prepared to be awed by his prose, which is so good you can taste it. . . . O’Connor dazzles.” —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post 
 
“And Mr. O’Connor’s main characters—Stoker, Irving and the beloved actress Ellen Terry—are so forcefully brought to life that when, close to tears, you reach this drama’s final page, you will return to the beginning just to remain in their company.” —Anna Mundow, The Wall Street Journal 
 
“This novel blows the dust off its Victorian trappings and brings them to scintillating life.” —Publishers Weekly, PW Picks, Starred Review 
 
FINALIST 2019 COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR 
 
FINALIST 2020 DALKEY LITERARY AWARD 
 
2020 WALTER SCOTT PRIZE
Available since: 06/16/2020.
Print length: 328 pages.

Other books that might interest you

  • Deep in the Forest - cover

    Deep in the Forest

    Erina Reddan

    • 1
    • 13
    • 0
    What lies behind the gates of the Sanctuary?
    'Urgent. Come tomorrow. Can't wait any longer.'
    Charli Trenthan plans to leave her hometown of Stone Lake. But when she receives a cryptic message from a member of the Sanctuary, a conservative closed community nestled in the forest, she is determined to find answers.
    A gruesome discovery soon lands Charli in hot water with the police, but how is the Sanctuary connected? As she digs deeper, dark secrets are uncovered and the fight to prove her innocence turns into a fight for her life.
    A gripping thriller with a shocking conclusion that will leave you spellbound, Deep in the Forest raises questions about who we trust and why.
    Show book
  • A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond - A Novel - cover

    A History of the...

    Percival Everett, James Kincaid

    • 1
    • 2
    • 0
    “A truly funny sendup of the corrupt politics of academe, the publishing industry and politics, as well as a subtle but biting critique of racial ideology.” —Publishers Weekly 
     
    This “hilarious high-concept satire” (Publishers Weekly), by the PEN/Faulkner finalist and acclaimed author of Telephone and Erasure, is a fictitious and satirical chronicle of South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond’s desire to pen a history of African-Americans—his and his aides’ belief being that he has done as much, or more, than any American to shape that history. An epistolary novel, The History follows the letters of loose cannon Congressional office workers, insane interns at a large New York publishing house and disturbed publishing executives, along with homicidal rival editors, kindly family friends, and an aspiring author named Septic. Strom Thurmond appears charming and open, mad and sure of his place in American history. 
     
    “Outrageously funny . . . it could become a cult classic.” —Library Journal 
     
    “I think Percival Everett is a genius. I’ve been a fan since his first novel . . . He’s a brilliant writer and so damn smart I envy him.” —Terry McMillan, New York Times-bestselling author of It’s Not All Downhill from Here 
     
    “God bless Percival Everett, whose dozens of idiosyncratic books demonstrate a majestic indifference to literary trends, the market or his critics.”?The Wall Street Journal
    Show book
  • The Wrong'un - cover

    The Wrong'un

    Catherine Evans

    • 1
    • 3
    • 0
    Meet the Newells, a big family of good lookers and hard grafters. From their sleepy working class backwater, the siblings break into Oxford academia, London's high life, the glossy world of magazine publishing and the stratospheric riches of New York's hedge funds. Then there's Paddy, the wrong'un in their midst, who prefers life's underbelly. As things fall apart around his sister Bea, is Paddy behind it all? And why does matriarch Edie turn a blind eye to her son's malevolence? Will she stand by and watch while he wrecks the lives of her other children? Just how much is she willing to sacrifice to protect her son? The book opens with Edie, now in her seventies, who looks back on her early married life with her husband, George, and their ever-growing brood. She loved having babies, but resented their growth and increasing independence. She recalls the horror and confusion surrounding the death of her toddler son, Timmy. Even though it happened forty years ago, she still blames her brother, his uncle, for falling asleep while he was supposed to be looking after the children. Now, her favourite son, Paddy, has just been released from prison for dangerous driving. She is good at making excuses for him. All her other children are successful, and have done extremely well in their chosen careers, but it becomes apparent that she begrudges her only daughter's success. Why does she resent her daughter so much? Paddy is malevolent, violent, bullying, cruel... Edie has never forgiven herself for giving him up to the care system before she married George. He has never fitted in with his siblings, and is the bad apple that can ruin the whole batch. The only person he has ever cared about is his stepfather, George, who saw only too clearly what Edie has always been blind to. Bea, the only daughter in the family, has grown up knowing her mother doesn't love her. She is a successful journalist, and adores her husband, David, and her stepchildren, but longs for a baby of her own. Then suddenly David dies. In the midst of her grief, her glamorous cleaning lady, Lorena, flaunts her pregnancy. She insists that the baby is David's, and is willing to take a DNA test to prove it. Welcome to the world of the Newells, where nothing is as it seems.
    Show book
  • The Ministry of Pain - A Novel - cover

    The Ministry of Pain - A Novel

    Dubravka Ugrešic

    • 0
    • 3
    • 0
    Far from home, a fractured community of Yugoslav outcasts struggle with their lives in award–winning author Dubravka Ugrešić’s novel The Ministry of Pain.   Having fled the violent breakup of Yugoslavia, Tanja Lucic is now a professor of literature at the University of Amsterdam, where she teaches a class filled with other young Yugoslav exiles, most of whom earn meager wages assembling leather and rubber S&M clothing at a sweatshop they call the “Ministry.”   Abandoning literature, Tanja encourages her students to indulge their “Yugonostalgia” in essays about their personal experiences during their homeland’s cultural and physical disintegration. But Tanja’s act of academic rebellion incites the rage of one renegade member of her class—and pulls her dangerously close to another—which, in turn, exacerbates the tensions of a life in exile that has now begun to spiral seriously out of control.  “A shiningly weird and powerful novel. . . . [It] approaches perfection.” —Washington Post  “Soulful, often searing. . . . This is a work that comes from the gut, one that deserves to be read.” —New York Times Book Review  “Splendidly ambitious. . . . She is a writer to follow. A writer to be cherished.” —Susan Sontag
    Show book