Haunt Me Still - Hardcover

Jenifer Lee Carrell has a Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Harvard University, as well as degrees from Oxford and Stanford universities. Her first Shakespearean thriller, Interred with Their Bones, was a New York Times and BookSense bestseller.

The quest for knowledge, particularly forbidden knowledge, is at the heart of this literary thriller based on the premise that Shakespeare’s Macbeth originally included magical rites omitted by the playright after a young actor died before the play’s premiere. Acclaimed actress Lady Nairn recruits Kate Stanley, academic-turned-Shakespearean-director, to find the original manuscript and stage the play, immersing Kate in a deadly hunt involving the occult. Trying to save Nairn’s granddaughter from unseen forces that also want the manuscript, Kate travels from Scotland to London to New York and back, with timely assistance from her former lover, security expert Ben Pearl. The foreboding atmosphere, during which brutal ritual murders are committed, is interrupted by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century accounts that build the case for the novel’s thesis, based on Carrell’s considerable research (as explained in an afterword). While Shakespeare scholars may quibble (as they did with the author’s previous novel, Interred with Their Bones, 2007) and while explication of arcane information occasionally impedes action, general readers are likely to be swept along as the level of danger increases, with the ongoing relationship between Kate and Ben a bonus. --Michele Leber