Dark Aemilia: A Novel of Shakespeare’s Dark Lady

O’Reilly’s U.S. debut is a lush what-if about the Dark Lady of Shakespeare’s sonnets that mesmerizes with its descriptions of the Bard’s London from 1592 to 1616, the year of his death. The novel posits that celebrated real-life poet Aemilia Lanyer was Shakespeare’s inspiration for that mysterious figure. O’Reilly chronicles a secret affair between Aemilia—the mistress of a rich, elderly courtier to Queen Elizabeth I, and, later, wife of a court musician—and the up-and-coming playwright, as they fall in and out of love, eventually reconnecting when Shakespeare stages Macbeth and a deadly curse plays out. In this telling, it’s Aemilia who contributes some of the play’s most famous lines. She is presented as a prototypical feminist, challenging convention as she tries to save the son that she had with Shakespeare. O’Reilly casts her story with witches, doomed royals, evil courtiers, and star-crossed lovers, as if it were a Jacobean play. But her finest accomplishment is not the tribute she pays to these historical figures, but the bold imagination she displays in bringing them together. (June)