A mysterious portrait ignites an antiquarian bookseller's search-through time andthe works of Shakespeare-for his lost love.
Guaranteed to capture the hearts of everyone who truly loves books, The Bookman's Tale is aformer bookseller's sparkling novel and a delightful exploration of one of literature's mosttantalising mysteries with echoes of Shadow of the Wind and A.S. Byatt's Possession.
Hay-on-Wye, 1995. Peter Byerly isn't sure what drew him into this particular bookshop. Ninemonths earlier, the death of his beloved wife, Amanda, had left him shattered. The youngantiquarian bookseller relocated from North Carolina to the English countryside, hoping torediscover the joy he once took in collecting and restoring rare books. But upon opening aneighteenth-century study of Shakespeare forgeries, Peter is shocked when a portrait of Amandatumbles out of its pages. Of course, it isn't really her. The watercolour is clearly Victorian. Yetthe resemblance is uncanny, and Peter becomes obsessed with learning the picture's origins.
As he follows the trail back first to the Victorian era and then to Shakespeare's time, Petercommunes with Amanda's spirit, learns the truth about his own past, and discovers a book thatmight definitively prove Shakespeare was, indeed, the author of all his plays.