Shakespeare's Champion
From Charlaine Harris, the #1 New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author behind HBO’s hit series True Blood and NBC’s Midnight, Texas, the second installment in a mystery series that pulls no punches... When Lily Bard agrees to open the gym for her sometime-boyfriend, it’s a sign of something she’s rejected for years—connection. Trust. The beginnings of being part of a community. And when she finds the corpse of a murdered bodybuilder waiting for her, it’s a sign she doesn’t know nearly as much about the home she’s chosen as she thought. Shakespeare, Arkansas has seen three unsolved, seemingly unconnected murders in two months, and the town is tense with suspicion and rage. Lily’s contact on the police force develops an ulterior agenda. An anonymous white supremacist group is papering cars and threatening worse to come. And there’s a new man in town, someone whose face reminds Lily of the darkest time in her past... Shakespeare needs answers, and Lily can’t rest until she has them. But there’s no telling how deep the rot spreads. And if she can’t trust anyone, she’ll be facing it down alone.
Shakespeare's Trollop
Welcome back to Shakespeare - a charming Arkansas town with endless back roads, an eclectic mix of residents, and a dollop of noir. Featuring cleaning woman/karate expert Lily Bard, Charlaine Harris's series puts a unique spin on the traditional cozy to create mysteries that "work on every level. The writing and plotting are first rate [and] Lily is appealing in her own prickly way" --Washington Times In this installment, Lily discovers lifelong Shakespeare resident Deedra Dean murdered inside a car parked in a woodsy area outside town. Determined not to get involved, Lily wants to leave the police work to Sheriff Marta Schuster and her team of deputies, and concentrate on cleaning, high kicks, and her boyfriend Jack's impending visit. But when Deedra's notoriously promiscuous lifestyle provides an extensive list of suspects but very few clues, Lily has no choice but to resume the roll of amateur detective and join the investigation. In Shakespeare's Trollop, the fourth book in Charlaine Harris's highly acclaimed and darkly compelling series, Lily Bard delivers a hard-hitting mix of Southern charm and street smarts, a combination so alluring that long-time readers and newcomers will be dying to visit Shakespeare again.
Shakespeare's Christmas
From Charlaine Harris, the #1 New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author behind HBO’s hit series True Blood and NBC’s Midnight, Texas, the third in a series that proves death never takes a holiday... For Lily Bard, the idea of “going home for Christmas” summons nothing but dread. She wants to stay in her real home in Shakespeare, Arkansas, where her friendships are blooming, nobody dares mess with her, and her new private-eye boyfriend could make it a very cozy holiday indeed. Back in Bartley, all people see when they look at Lily is a victim. But her sister is getting married, and Lily’s determined to give her family what they want. She’ll be present, be pleasant, and let her sister have the spotlight. Or so she thinks, until she discovers her boyfriend in town on a case, chasing a lead that could blow up the whole celebration. One of the little girls in Bartley isn’t who she thinks she is. And one of the town’s respectable parents is a cold-blooded kidnapper ready to kill to hide their secrets. For her sister—and her sister’s eight-year-old stepdaughter-to-be—Lily will find the truth. Even if it means she’ll never go home again...
Perspective in Shakespeare's English Histories
Larry S. Champion examines Shakespeare's English history plays and describes the structural devices through which Shakespeare controls the audience's angle of vision and its response to the pattern of historical events. Champion observes the experimentation between stage worlds and the significance of a dramatic technique unique to the history play—one that combines the detachment of a documentary necessary for a broad intellectual view of history and the simultaneous engagement between character and spectator. Champion sees a conscious bifurcation occurring in Shakespeare's dramaturgy after Richard II. In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare continues to focus on the psychological analysis and internalized protagonist which lead to his major tragic achievements. In King John and Henry IV, the playwright develops a middle ground between the polarities of Henry VI, in which the flat, onedimensional characters essentially serve the purposes of the narrative, and the tragedies, in which the spectator's consuming interest is in the developing centralfigure whose critical moments they share. Champion sees Henry V as the culmination of Shakespeare's e fforts in the English history play.
Shakespeare's Landlord
From Charlaine Harris, the #1 New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author behind HBO’s hit series True Blood and NBC’s Midnight, Texas, the first in a series of mysteries that hits as hard as its heroine... Lily Bard has no illusions about her little town being safe, or peaceful, or full of goodness. Shakespeare, Arkansas, was nothing but a name on a map when she moved here. But Lily has kept her head down in Shakespeare for four years: cleaned houses, blocked unwelcome memories, and honed her body into a weapon with goju karate. It’s as long as she’s lasted anywhere since the nightmare that changed her life, and she’s willing to dust around the skeletons in her neighbors’ closets—provided they mind their business about her past, too. But when a dead body is dumped practically in her front yard, she can’t look away and leave it to innocents to find. And as the investigation creeps closer to Lily, her clients, and the secrets they all keep, she knows her hard-fought peace is in danger. She’s living in close quarters with a murderer. The police are sniffing around her history. And once again, all eyes are on Lily Bard. She could leave town, and give up on the home she’s begun to make. Or she could stay, and root out the killer herself...
