A social history of how murder was committed, investigated, and punished in Stuart England examines a range of specific cases while discussing the seventeenth-century public's fascination with violence as reflected in its overflowing courtrooms and numerous crime-inspired works of art.

Kit Marlowe was the bad boy of Elizabethan drama. His ‘mighty line’ of iambic pentameter transformed the miracle plays of the Middle Ages into modern drama and he paved the way for Shakespeare and a dozen other greats who stole his metre and his ideas. When he died, stabbed through the eye in what appeared to be a tavern brawl in Deptford in May 1593, he was only 29 and many people believed that he had met his just deserts. ​ But Marlowe’s death was not the result of a brawl. And it did not take place in a tavern. The facts tell a different story, one involving intrigue, espionage, alchemy and the highest in the land. ​ Born the son of a shoemaker in Canterbury, Marlowe read Theology at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and was destined for a career in Elizabeth I’s new Church of England. But in 1583, he moved to London and wrote dazzling new plays like Dido, Queen of Carthage, Tamburlaine, the Jew of Malta and Doctor Faustus. He was the ‘Muse’s darling’, ‘all fire and air’ and the crowds flocked to his dramas at the Curtain, the Theatre and the Rose. ​ But even before he left Cambridge, Kit Marlowe was recruited into the dangerous and murky world of espionage, perhaps by Nicholas Faunt, secretary to the queen’s spymaster, Francis Walsingham. The religious world was split between Catholic and Protestant and there was a price on the queen’s head - the pope himself had ordered the assassination of the English whore, the Jezebel, who had betrayed Catholicism. Walsingham’s efforts and those of ‘intelligencers’ like Marlowe, were all designed to keep the queen and her country safe. ​ Marlowe was a maverick, a whistle-blower, with outspoken views on religion, the government for which he worked and he was critical of the norms of behaviour. Almost certainly homosexual, at a time when that meant execution, he claimed that Christ had a homosexual relationship with John the Baptist. Or did he? Was all that merely propaganda, invented by the ever-growing list of enemies building up by 1593? This book offers a different interpretation to the death in Deptford. Marlowe knew too much about the Privy Council, the gang of four who effectively ran England under the queen. He openly defied them in his last plays – the Massacre at Paris and Edward II. And they, in turn, were keen to destroy him – ‘His mouth must be stopped’ – and stopped it was by a trio of agents operating at the highest level. ​ The brutal murder of a young playwright at the peak of his powers has intrigued and captivated for over 400 years. This compelling journey through the evidence allows us to know, for the first time, who killed him.

William Shakespeare lived in violent times; his death passed without comment. By the time he was adopted as the national poet of England the details of his life had been concealed. He had become an invisible man, the humble Warwickshire lad who entertained royalty and then faded into obscurity. But his story has been carefully manipulated. In reality, he was a dissident whose works were highly critical of the regimes of Elizabeth I and James I. Who Killed William Shakespeare? examines the means, motive and the opportunity that led to his murder, and explains why Will Shakespeare had to be 'stopped'. From forensic analysis of his death mask to the hunt for his missing skull, the circumstances of Shakespeare's death are reconstructed and his life reconsidered in the light of fresh discoveries. What emerges is a portrait of a genius who spoke his mind and was silenced by his greatest literary rival.

This new investigation unravels the evidence to suggest a new answer to a murder that has puzzled us for over 4 centuries.

Fledgling playwright Will Shakespeare and Symington Smythe, ostler and would-be thespian, and are now firmly ensconced in their theater company . . . But due to the plague, all of London's theaters have been closed, its players now broke, forcing our intrepid duo to seek employment in other lines of work--Smythe smithing and Will poeting. Then a murder rocks all of London. Shakespeare and Smythe decide to solve the crime, but they must rely on their wits to survive both the conspiriacies and the cutthroat business of Elizabethan theater

When a directorial debut turns deadly, it falls to costume designer Charlotte Fairfax to unmask the culprit in award-winning author Elizabeth J. Duncan’s third Shakespeare in the Catskills mystery Charlotte Fairfax has another murder on her hands as she prepares for the latest performance of the Catskills Shakespeare Theater Company, Much Ado About Nothing. The company’s steady growth enables them to cast star British actress Audrey Ashley, who arrives on scene to play the lead role of Beatrice. But things immediately get more complicated when Audrey insists the company replace the current director with new, up and coming British director Edmund Albright. Edmund plans to change the popular romantic comedy, which alienates several people associated with the production. And the list of people he upsets only grows: the laid off former director, the hotel owner’s secretary, and even Audrey herself. Just as Edmund’s plans are about to come to fruition, his body is discovered on his sofa, holding a gun in his hand. His death is quickly ruled a suicide but Charlotte thinks otherwise. Why would Edmund, on the brink of greatness, kill himself? With a whole cast of characters to investigate, Charlotte is determined to unmask each one before it’s final curtain call on the whole production.