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Title details for The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber - Wait list

The Book of Air and Shadows

A Novel

by Michael Gruber
Stephen Hoye
Audiobook
0 of 2 copies available
Wait time: About 2 weeks
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0 of 2 copies available
Wait time: About 2 weeks
"Tap-tapping the keys and out come the words on this little screen, and who will read them I hardly know. I could be dead by the time anyone actually gets to read them, as dead as, say, Tolstoy. Or Shakespeare. Does it matter, when you read, if the person who wrote still lives?"


These are the words of Jake Mishkin, whose seemingly innocent job as an intellectual property lawyer has put him at the center of a deadly conspiracy and a chase to find a priceless treasure involving William Shakespeare. As he awaits a killer—or killers—unknown, Jake writes an account of the events that led to this deadly endgame, a frantic chase that began when a fire in an antiquarian bookstore revealed the hiding place of letters containing a shocking secret, concealed for four hundred years. In a frantic race from New York to England and Switzerland, Jake finds himself matching wits with a shadowy figure who seems to anticipate his every move. What at first seems like a thrilling puzzle waiting to be deciphered soon turns into a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse, where no one—not family, not friends, not lovers—is to be trusted.


Moving between twenty-first-century America and seventeenth-century England, The Book of Air and Shadows is a modern thriller that brilliantly re-creates William Shakespeare's life at the turn of the seventeenth century and combines an ingenious and intricately layered plot with a devastating portrait of a contemporary man on the brink of self-discovery...or self-destruction.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 15, 2007

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781400124497
      • File size: 543934 KB
      • Duration: 18:53:11

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Stephen Hoye takes a calculated, possibly fatal, risk in his approach to narrating this thriller about a lost Shakespeare manuscript. His portrayal of the protagonist, Jake Mishkin, a self-loathing intellectual property lawyer, is arid to the point putting off the listener. It's a reasonable choice for a character we are not meant to like but does not create a person one looks forward to spending hour after hour with. It doesn't help that Hoye affects an annoying, sometimes disappearing, Queen's accent for the other major character, a young would-be screenwriter who is drawn into the dangerous search for the missing manuscript. Happily, Gruber himself comes to the rescue, with colorful characters and clever, intricate plotting. M.O. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from January 29, 2007
      In this ingenious literary thriller from Gruber (The Witch's Boy
      ), the lives of two men are changed forever by William Shakespeare and the letters of Richard Bracegirdle, a 16th-century English spy and soldier. Jake Mishkin, a Manhattan intellectual property attorney and a bit of a rake, goes on the run from Russian gangsters. Albert Crosetti, an aspiring filmmaker working for an antiquarian bookstore, finds that life is more exciting than movies—perhaps too exciting. Together, Mishkin and Crosetti travel to England in search of a previously unknown Shakespeare manuscript mentioned by Bracegirdle. Though the pace sometimes slows to allow Mishkin, Crosetti and Bracegirdle to divulge interesting aspects of their personal lives, these digressions only make the story more engaging. The suspense created around the double-crosses and triple-crosses works because of the close connection readers forge with Crosetti in particular. The mysterious murder of a Shakespearean scholar, shootouts in the streets of Queens and an unlikely romance all combine to make for a gripping, satisfying read.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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