Why am I passionate about this?

While I taught Shakespeare’s plays all my teaching career, I stayed in my lanes: Hamlet, Othello, The Merchant of Venice, King Lear. As a poetry teacher, I used his sonnets as examples of metaphor and form, but never did I consider myself an expert. However, when the idea for my novel popped into my head, I realized I had some serious reading to do. Not only did I study the facts, I delved into the fiction. While some of these books came out during my writing and others after, I didn’t lose my interest, picking up whatever new Shakespeare book appeared. These are some of my favorites.


I wrote

The Play's the Thing

By Jessica Barksdale Inclan,

Book cover of The Play's the Thing

What is my book about?

Shakespeare professor Jessica Randall time travels back to 1598 and lands in the rooms of her favorite writer. However, things…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Shakespeare in Love: A Screenplay

Jessica Barksdale Inclan Why did I love this book?

This is the screenplay of the movie that caught all our hearts. Until this film was made, most people imagined William Shakespeare as a balding, portly man who wrote plays that no one could understand then or now.

But in this film, Shakespeare is a (handsome) man, questing for love as well as a writer whose words speak to everyone’s heart. Plus there’s mistaken identities, subplots, intrigue, and Queen Elizabeth. What’s not to love?

By Marc Norman, Tom Stoppard,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Shakespeare in Love as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The screenplay to the critically acclaimed film which New York Newsday called one of the funniest, most enchanting, most romantic, and best written tales ever spun from the vast legend of Shakespeare. Marc Norman and renowned dramatist, Tom Stoppard have created the best screenplay of the year according to the Golden Globes and the New York Film Critics Circle.


Book cover of Hamnet

Jessica Barksdale Inclan Why did I love this book?

We know the expression behind every great man is a woman. But here, in Hamnet, the great woman is in front of the man, and then together they forge their life together. This book really works around the traditional Shakespeare story, focusing on family, love, identity, and loss—and the worst loss, that of a child. We learn so much about Agnes (Anne Hathaway) and her dreams and hopes and steer around the known stories of the plays and who wrote them. So moving. Such beautiful language. I could read it again right now.

By Maggie O'Farrell,

Why should I read it?

42 authors picked Hamnet as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

WINNER OF THE 2020 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION - THE NO. 1 BESTSELLER 2021
'Richly sensuous... something special' The Sunday Times
'A thing of shimmering wonder' David Mitchell

TWO EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE. A LOVE THAT DRAWS THEM TOGETHER. A LOSS THAT THREATENS TO TEAR THEM APART.

On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a sudden fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home?

Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London.

Neither…


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Book cover of We Had Fun and Nobody Died: Adventures of a Milwaukee Music Promoter

We Had Fun and Nobody Died By Amy T. Waldman, Peter Jest,

This irreverent biography provides a rare window into the music industry from a promoter’s perspective. From a young age, Peter Jest was determined to make a career in live music, and despite naysayers and obstacles, he did just that, bringing national acts to his college campus atUW-Milwaukee, booking thousands of…

Book cover of The Secret Life of William Shakespeare: A Novel

Jessica Barksdale Inclan Why did I love this book?

One of the best ways to learn about a character is to listen to what other characters say (or think) about him, in this case, Shakespeare. As with Hamnet, much of this book focuses on Anne Hathaway, and we learn about Shakespeare as a very young man making his way in the world—not only as a writer—but as a lover and husband. Once in the writing world, we see the ripple effects of his writing, as fellow playwrights Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson provide their perspectives. A great look into Shakespeare and Elizabethan England.

By Jude Morgan,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Secret Life of William Shakespeare as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The greatest writer of them all, brought to glorious life.

How well do you know the man you love? How much do you think you know about Shakespeare? What if they were one and the same? He is an ordinary man: unwilling craftsman, ambitious actor, resentful son, almost good-enough husband. And he is also a genius. The story of how a glove-maker from Warwickshire became the greatest writer of them all is vaguely known to most of us, but it would take an exceptional modern novelist to bring him to life. And now at last Jude Morgan, acclaimed author of…


Book cover of Shakespeare After All

Jessica Barksdale Inclan Why did I love this book?

This is a hefty tome, and Garber knows her Shakespeare. I used much of this in my research, and I was impressed by the breadth of her knowledge. Why should I have been surprised? Garber teaches at Harvard, so, well, duh. But what works so well here is that she approaches the plays in chronological order. We watch Shakespeare develop as a writer—his skills and themes deepening, growingas he grapples with comedy and tragedy. This is a book to dip in and out of but never does it disappoint.

By Marjorie Garber,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Shakespeare After All as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A brilliant and companionable tour through all thirty-eight plays, Shakespeare After All is the perfect introduction to the bard by one of the country’s foremost authorities on his life and work.

Drawing on her hugely popular lecture courses at Yale and Harvard over the past thirty years, Marjorie Garber offers passionate and revealing readings of the plays in chronological sequence, from The Two Gentlemen of Verona to The Two Noble Kinsmen. Supremely readable and engaging, and complete with a comprehensive introduction to Shakespeare’s life and times and an extensive bibliography, this magisterial work is an ever-replenishing fount of insight on…


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Book cover of Native Nations: A Millennium in North America

Native Nations By Kathleen DuVal,

A magisterial history of Indigenous North America that places the power of Native nations at its center, telling their story from the rise of ancient cities more than a thousand years ago to fights for sovereignty that continue today

Book cover of The Tutor

Jessica Barksdale Inclan Why did I love this book?

With this piece of historical fiction, we are back to “Who is Shakespeare,” and did he write all those plays? We are asked to consider parts of Shakespeare’s life where there is no historical record at all. In this novel, he did pen his plays and poems, but he had a lot of help from a smart, learned woman. Yes, another great woman behind the man story. And yet, we are allowed into not only Will’s and Katherine’s collaborative writing process but into their love story. Thus we end this list as we started with Shakespeare in love.

By Andrea Chapin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Tutor as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A bold and captivating novel about love, passion, and ambition that imagines the muse of William Shakespeare and the tumultuous year they spend together. 

The year is 1590, and Queen Elizabeth’s Spanish Armada victory has done nothing to quell her brutal persecution of the English Catholics. Katharine de L’Isle is living at Lufanwal Hall, the manor of her uncle, Sir Edward. Taught by her cherished uncle to read when a child, Katharine is now a thirty-one-year-old widow. She has resigned herself to a life of reading and keeping company with her cousins and their children. But all that changes when…


Explore my book 😀

The Play's the Thing

By Jessica Barksdale Inclan,

Book cover of The Play's the Thing

What is my book about?

Shakespeare professor Jessica Randall time travels back to 1598 and lands in the rooms of her favorite writer. However, things don’t go very well, as both their lives are in turmoil. Can they save each other and find a way for Jessica to return home? And will she want to? Will Shakespeare let her go? More importantly, how can they both use time to fix the wrongs in both their lives?

Book cover of Shakespeare in Love: A Screenplay
Book cover of Hamnet
Book cover of The Secret Life of William Shakespeare: A Novel

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