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    Interred with Their Bones
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    Interred with Their Bones
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    Interred with Their Bones
    Audiobook13 hours

    Interred with Their Bones

    Written by Jennifer Lee Carrell

    Narrated by Kathleen McNenny

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    "A feverishly paced action adventure" (The New York Times) about a long-lost Shakespeare work and a killer who reenacts the Bard's most bloody murders

    Jennifer Lee Carrell's highly acclaimed debut novel is a brilliant, breathlessly paced literary adventure. The action begins on the eve of the Globe's production of Hamlet when Shakespeare scholar and theater director Kate Stanley's eccentric mentor Rosalind Howard gives her a mysterious box, claiming to have made a groundbreaking discovery. Before she can reveal it to Kate, the Globe is burned to the ground and Roz is found dead…murdered precisely in the manner of Hamlet's father.

    Inside the box Kate finds the first piece in a Shakespearean puzzle, setting her on a deadly, highstakes treasure hunt. From London to Harvard to the American West, Kate races to evade a killer and solve a tantalizing string of clues hidden in the words of Shakespeare, which may unlock one of history's greatest secrets.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateSep 20, 2007
    ISBN9781429585989
    Unavailable
    Interred with Their Bones
    Author

    Jennifer Lee Carrell

    Jennifer Lee Carrell holds a Ph.D. in English and American literature from Harvard University and is the author of The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox. In addition to writing for Smithsonian magazine, Carrell has taught in the history and literature program at Harvard and has directed Shakespeare for Harvard’s Hyperion Theatre Company. She lives in Tucson, Arizona.

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    Reviews for Interred with Their Bones

    3.5/5

    526 ratings52 reviews

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    • 2/5
      This book was released hot on the heals of The DaVinci Code. I have read a few Dan Brown novels and have also started in on Steve Berry's works, and usually find their ancient mystery thrillers quite entertaining. Carrell's book was a slightly different story.

      Carrell is a literary history scholar, specialising in, you guessed it, Shakespeare. This of course had absolutely no influence on the book and its plot (sarcasm warning). The overburdening of the narrative with various debates about Shakespeare and history are evidence of not being able to discern the difference between a thriller novel and a dissertation. This was the major flaw with the book and really stopped me from enjoying it more.

      Having said that, underneath this was an interesting and well played out plot, with some characters that were well put together (if somewhat generic). Overall it was an enjoyable read, but you can't help but think it could have been done better.

      In conclusion, it was ok. If you want an interesting take on Shakespeare based upon facts then this could entertain you.
    • 3/5
      2.5 stars. Read as part of a group discussion here on Shelfari, unfortunately it sank like a stone! Marvellous premise for a book but poorly delivered.
    • 3/5
      Jennifer Carrell's first novel, Interred with their Bones, is (as I see others have noted) a mixed blessing. In many ways it is a fun romp, but too many questions are unanswered: why is it Kate immediately distrusts the police? What IS Ben's relationship to Roz? The Shakespeare conspiracy theories with which she plays are real, and she applies them deftly as she goes along. It is certainly interesting to have them all reviewed in one spot. But she is over-indebted to Dan Brown and A.S. Byatt for her plot lines, and her characters come off as pre-fab types more than as convincing possible people. Her breadth of knowledge is admirable, and her erudition certain; with luck Dr. Carrell's plotting will become more independent and her characters more convincing as she continues to write.
    • 5/5
      I resented having to put this book down to eat, do necessary chores and to sleep. It starts with a fire at the Globe Theatre on the same day and date that it originally burned after which Kate Stanley's estranged mentor is found dead in Kate's office after leaving her a package and telling Kate that she'd found something. Once that horse's out of the barn it becomes an international search for clues as to what her mentor had found proof of, who killed her mentor, who was Shakespeare, and try not to get killed while she's going about it. I just hope there was some connivance between Ben Pearl and Inspector Sinclair otherwise the way they slipped though international security is worrisome. A fast and enjoyable read.
    • 3/5
      During rehearsals for Hamlet at London's Globe Theatre, director Kate Stanley is surprised when her former mentor, Roz Howard, drops in to see her. Although they were once close, the two women haven't spoken in several years. Roz presents Kate with a mysterious package and warns her not to open it unless she's prepared to follow wherever it leads. Roz promises to tell Kate more that evening but she is killed before Kate can learn any more from her. Her only clue is inside the package. Its contents set Kate on the trail of 400-year-old secrets concerning William Shakespeare's life and a lost play. As Kate hops from London to Boston to the Southwest U.S. she must stay one step ahead of the killer, who just might be one of the few people she's trusted to help her in her quest.Each chapter ends on a cliffhanger, making it hard to put the book down once you've started. The plot is a lot like the movie National Treasure. Just substitute a Shakespearean play for the Declaration of Independence. Readers need to be willing to suspend disbelief. For example, Kate is allowed into her office in the Globe within a few hours of a fire without any protective clothing. This would never happen that quickly in real life.Almost every conversation turns into an information dump. By the end of the book, readers have been exposed to most of the controversies about Shakespeare's identity, the history of the Globe, the religious wars between Catholics and Protestants, the work of prominent Shakespearean scholars in various centuries, etc. Authors often make the mistake of including everything they know in their first novel without editing out details that don't add anything to the plot.My biggest problem with the book is why it was necessary for Kate to do all that globetrotting. Her dissertation research supposedly uniquely qualified her to unravel the mystery, yet the killer was either hot on her trail or waiting at the next destination without the benefit of the clues she found. These problems are all fixable and I'm willing to give the sequel a chance since historical thrillers are among my favorites for escape reading.
    • 2/5
      I was confused through most of this book. Pages of lecture on Shakespearean legend/folklore,with bursts of action that wouldn't quite make sense. Dual descriptions (read: confusing) of so many scenes with hidden doors and secret passages, It was a little like Nancy Drew with violence thrown in,but not particularly well written. Perhaps a better editor?
    • 3/5
      Jennifer very cleverly conjoined her plot in two different times--1600`s and present. The action was very swashbuckling, reminding one of the DaVinci Code. The historic links with Shakespearean times were very accurate as far my limited knowledge could tell. She is a very learned author.
    • 4/5
      It was too long. I became weary after about 400 pages. I finished it but it was anticlimactic.
    • 4/5
      An interesting combination of a murder mystery and literary thriller. The action and questions revolve around the search for a lost Shakespeare play and the tnatalizing question of who really wrote the plays. Both plot lines are highly detailed and well-researched. There are lots of twists and turns here. In the class of the Dan Brown works, but more cleverly plotted.
    • 2/5
      It was impossible to miss the plot wheels turning, the characters were almost non-existent and I figured out the 'twist' within the first 100 pages, but I still enjoyed it. The Shakespeare conspiracy theory was fun - it is what I enjoyed about the book - but if you're not interested in that much literary history be warned because it overwhelms the very thin plot.
    • 4/5
      Please. No more Temples or Templars! Despite this exclamation from main character Kate Stanley, Interred With Their Bones by Jennifer Lee Carrell is a rollicking adventure in the style of The DaVinci Code and all the other great-scandals-of-history books that have flooded the marketplace in recent years. No Templars here, though, but another history-mystery, all about the “Sweetest Swan of Avon,” the Bard himself, William Shakespeare.

      The story begins with Kate Stanley, a former Shakespearean scholar who has ditched life in academia in favor of directing the man’s plays at the Globe in London, much to the dismay of her mentor, Roz Howard. Kate knows something’s up when Roz visits her in London, gives her a mysterious box, and then is promptly killed, all while the Globe burns on the anniversary of it’s destruction by fire in 1613. As Kate begins to unravel the mystery, she discovers that it centers on a lost play of Shakespeare’s, Cardenio, which was performed only twice before it disappeared for good. Kate’s search for answers takes her to nearly every important depository of Shakespearean scholarship on the planet, all the while accompanied by mysterious Ben Pearl, who appears just in time to save Kate from an even more mysterious and deadly stalker.

      Eventually, the age-old question of the true authorship of Shakespeare’s plays comes into the story. That gnarly question, combined with a few flashback chapters to 1598 – 1612 which feature a mysterious dark woman, an angelic blond boy and the Great Man Himself, serve to muddy the waters. Although a generally ripping good tale, the author introduced way too many characters in both present and past time. By the end of the book, I really didn’t care who Shakespeare was, who he slept with, who could have written the plays, or how many children he fathered. I only wanted to know who killed all the Shakespearean scholars that litter the pages of this book.

      The author handled the present-day story skillfully and kept the action moving right up to the surprising ending. I confess, I skimmed over much of the “who wrote the plays” business and concentrated on Kate’s quest to find the missing play. And really, that was enough to keep my interest….the rest was superfluous. Overall, a tasty mystery with a decent dose of history. No Templars, but plenty of intrigue. Recommended.
    • 5/5
      Interred With Their Bones is not light reading. It is packed with fact and fiction about the plays of William Shakespeare. Wait, maybe the plays of Francis Bacon or Christopher Morley or, or, or. Kate Shelton is busy directing Hamlet at the New Globe Theatre in London when Roz, her old college professor shows up. They haven't seen each other since Kate abandoned her life in academia for the wild and wooly life in the theatre. Roz gives her a brooch and asks her to help her find out if there really is a copy of one of the lost plays of Shakespeare.When Roz is killed that same day Katie becomes determined to follow the leads to then end of the earth. She spends time in England, the U.S. southwest, Harvard, and Spain. She is aided and hindered by various people along the way.While I loved the book and the story I do wish I had more knowledge of the controversy about Shakespeare and the arguments about who actually wrote the plays. I read a lot of Shakespeare while in high school and college but haven't looked at any of the plays recently so I felt at a disadvantage. There are plenty of explanations and you don't get lost while trying to follow the story but you do have to pay attention because there is just so much information given.Highly recommended if you like your mysteries dense with lots of history and some wonderful plot twists and turns.
    • 5/5
      By far the best book I've ever read. Had my heart racing my page 23 and it never let up. Couldn't put it down. Jennifer Lee Carrell has created in Kate a smart, sexy independent character and it is a pleasure to spend several hundred pages with her. And Ben Pearl, let's just say Edward Cullen should be worried because Ben is even more attractive. I'm no Shakespeare scholar, but I was able to keep up and never felt stupid. The plot is meticulously paced. Simply amazing. Will be reading this one over and over!
    • 1/5
       Dear Lord! This was BAD!!! Picked up from the rather eclectic collection of books at work, to read at lunch time. interesting surmise - that there's a Shakespeare play out there that was supressed in the First folio and has lain hidden ever since. Muddying the waters of the search, there's a murderer who kills in the style of Shakespeare's victims and some very muddled thinking. Really really awful. Not suspenseful, not a thriller, not even a coherent detective plot. Awful, just awful. I should have known there was something wrong when the blurb on the back said it was a plot worthy of the Da Vinci code...
    • 3/5
      Captivating and eventful academic murder mystery. Author's expertise in English literature makes the book interesting and gives credibility to details.
    • 4/5
      Publishers are all mad. I used to work in publishing, and even I don't understand them. This is a decently written, quite tightly plotted little thriller (its main fault is its author's obsession with describing the heroine's every change of clothes in full detail, and her rather wholesale tendency to burn down/blow up the Globe Theatre, University libraries, etc), weaving in all sorts of interesting Shakespearian facts and myths, originally entitled, quite logically, 'Interred in Their Bones' and published under the author's full name. The publishers clearly retitled it to hitch it onto the 'The Da Vinci Code' bandwagon and, thereby, tarred it with the same brush. It may – possibly did - have improved sales, but a decent publicity campaign (and the customary huge bribes to the major bookshop chains) would have achieved the same end. Anyway! A ripping yarn, and hugely enjoyable.
    • 2/5
      I picked this up on the bargain shelf at the bookstore a few months ago with the idea that it would be a fun read for a trip when I wanted to read a lot without thinking too much. Well, I got one out of two. I read it during a relaxing camping trip a few weeks ago and it was definitely a page turner. The novel is a page turner mystery about people searching for the original manuscript of one of Shakespeare's lost plays. The concept was good but the plot was unbelievably convoluted and I had trouble following it at times.
    • 4/5
      Fans of Dan Brown, rejoice! Here’s a fast-paced mystery that’ll hold your attention. The scholar is a Harvard-educated authority on Shakespeare, the goal is to find the long-lost manuscript and may be even find out the true identity of the legendary poet. There’s murder, a handsome stranger, cryptic letters serving as breadcrumbs showing the way and friends who may be enemies and vice versa. It is a satisfying read that keeps you turning the pages despite all the many Williams of Shakespeare’s time that are so hard to keep track of. I enjoyed the fact that it was written in the format of a play with acts and interludes and that the villain wasn’t who I thought it was (oh, I thought I was so clever!). I think I would have enjoyed it more if the author gave us glimpses of the villain along the way, the way Dan Brown does. This device serves to speed up the pace and with the entire story done from the perspective of the scholar it got bogged down in the academic explanations a couple of times. All in all it is a very good debut novel and I can only hope that one day textbooks will be written in a similar style – we’d have so many more erudite people if they were!
    • 2/5
      Although the author is obviously talented, I had trouble following the story. For this novel, you have to be a huge Shakespeare fan AND know many of the works credited to him and know something about his contemporaries or the story tends to jumble up in a bunch of disjointed facts and theories (at least it did for me). It read very much like a Dan Brown novel but with much less of the common knowledge to follow on. It may be a better read for the more literary scholars, but for me I could not finish it.
    • 2/5
      In this book you get to know Kate Stanley, a post-doctorate academic specialized in Shakespeare, now a director of Hamlet at the Globe in London. The murder of her old mentor, drags Kate in to a race where her own life and a long lost Shakespeare play is at stake.This book turned out to be quite a page-turner, reading so fast I lost track of theories and plot turns a few times. This may also be a result of my poor knowledge of Shakespeare's magnificent works (yes, I do admit never to have read any of his plays, though this might be like swearing in church. Though I've seen The Merchant of Venice at the theater, a film theater version of Hamlet, and of course Romeo & Juliet with Leo and Claire!). There's one thing that sort of bugs me with these kinds of book, the hero/heroine is always so bloody smart. Have you ever seen an episode of Grey's anatomy or House, where the interns shouts out all kinds of diagnosis along with a good justification for it? They're all so smaaaart and you almost feel stupid for not thinking about it too, though there's no reason you should actually know this in the first place. The main character in this book, Kate, is one of these really smart heroines, but one of her biggest flaws is being so naive. There's a murderer out there trying to kill her, and she just trusts everybody.To put is short, if you don't like conspiracy theories and "out of this world clever" heroes/heroines, don't read this book. But if you're up for some excitement and like a good, high-speed mystery, you're in for a treat.
    • 4/5
      Starts out with fast paced action and cliffhangers at the end of each chapter. However, Shakespearean theories difficult to follow as clues and connections developed. Otherwise, fun read.
    • 3/5
      Interred with Their Bones is a fun, fluffy read for Shakespeare enthusiasts. The more you know your Shakespeare, the more you will enjoy the book, as quotes and references abound, and the best part is trying to place which plays or poems they are from. Having said that, the plot is pretty corny, and the last third of the book is rather convoluted. Bottom line - if you're willing to take your normally intellectual brain out for a while, you're in for a good time.
    • 4/5
      Very interesting. It's always fun to listen to all the mysteries surround Shakespeare. I love Shakespeare, always have and I don't feel the need to try and see if he was just one man from Stratford. He was a poetic genius, and I am so glad I never became a Shakespearian! This book had some great ideas, and making the story into a murder mystery 400 years after the fact was a good idea. I wish I had liked Kate more. Sometimes it seemed like she forgot she's smart. Some things were a little too convenient - and I hate it when the heroine falls for it. Good twists, a bit dark, and no cheesy romance slowing the plot down. I definitely recommend.
    • 1/5
      I recently read Ms. Carrell's second book, Haunts Me Still so I wanted to go back and the first one. I'm so glad I read them in the order I did because if I read the first one first I never would've read the second and it's a great book.Interred with Their Bones is not a great book. In fact, it pretty much sucks. It desperately needed someone to cut about 250-300 pages out of it and to shorten up all the random travel. It is unnecessarily convoluted, requires a certain amount of knowledge of Shakespeare to really understand some of the plot details, and pretty much comes off as completely ridiculous. I persevered and finished, but I kept thinking to myself, "Oh god - when will it ever end?!" This is not a good thing to think when reading.Don't read this one, but definitely do read Haunt Me Still which balances the Shakespeare history nicely with gothic elements throughout and was a lot of fun. I know they usually call it sophomore slump, but this was definitely freshman slump. Yech.
    • 3/5
      it's the Da Vinci Code for Shakespeare! (Which I know totally helped the author get a book deal, but also probably really pisses her off. I heard an interview where she talks a little about this, but I forget exactly what she said.)
    • 3/5
      I couldn't wait to read this - historical mystery dealing with theatre - and more specifically the Shakespeare controversy. What a let down. The story was so convoluted and far-fetched that it was hard to follow. Starts off with a conspiracy of the burning of the Globe - then moves to the present with a fire at the Globe and a murder. The story jumps geographically all over the world. There are many murders - most of them were senseless except I guess it keeps the cops following the main character. In the end, a new Shakespeare play is produced at the Globe. For theatre scholars - disbelief; for mystery enthusiasts - confusing. Brush up your Shakespeare before reading this - and your English noblity history.
    • 4/5
      Format Review: This is an audiobook on a format known as Playaway, basically a self-contained audiobook on an MP3 player, all you need to listen to it are a pair of headphones and a AAA battery (or three over the lifetime of the audiobook). I love this format as I can listen and knit at the same time while travelling on a bus, though it's about six times as slow as my reading speed. There are some minor niggles about it (it can be a bit slow in responding to a pause request and it doesn't automatically go to the start of the word or sentence you were just listening to, and the rewind option can skip tracks if you're not careful but those are really minor niggles). The reader, Tara Ward was easy enough to listen to and her American and English (for flashbacks) accents rang fairly true.The Book Review: Kate or Katherine Stanley was a Shakespearian Scholar now she's a Shakespearian Director in the Globe. Her mentor, Rosalind Howard, from her academic days comes to visit with promises of a mystery and adventure. Kate finds herself reluctantly involved in the mystery when Ros turns up dead, her death has a Shakespearian echo. Through the quest she finds herself being trailed by corpses and a policeman. Theres rumours of a missing Shakespearian play.Kate is a lot like some of the academics I know, the quest is almost more important than the actual consideration of who to trust and why she should trust them. There are also chunks (that I would have skipped quickly through the physical book) of information about the various theories about Shakespeare and the lost plays. Overall not a bad book, I would read more by this author.
    • 3/5
      not my normal sort of book, but it did get to me. I wanted to read to the end, I cared about what happened at the end. i read sf so I can believe anything for the course of a book
    • 3/5
      Did William Shakespeare really write all of those masterpieces by himself? Are there missing plays? Did you like "The DaVinci Code"? If the first two make you curious and the answer to the last is yes, then you will really enjoy this book. It is fast-paced and well-written, but is full of a boatload of Shakespearian history and trivia, which can drag at times for the non-expert, such as myself. Not bad.
    • 4/5
      This was a hugely fun chase through Shakespeare's work and Shakespeare's lore, including the question of who wrote the works we give Shakespeare's name to.This book was exactly what it set out to be. Cryptic clues! Chases! Near Escapes! I know enough about Shakespeare that most of the references in the book rang a bell, but not enough that I could say if any of the conclusions they drew from the clues actually made sense. They all sounded good in the book, though.With any book of this sort, you have to suspend disbelief. Mostly, this isn't a problem for me. I did have one issue with this book, that still bothers me after finishing it. Once people continue to be murdered, why does Kate believe her new allies over the police? She realizes at various points that they will believe it isn't her if she talks to them then, and she realizes everyone she is talking to about her quest is being killed, but she still doesn't bring in the police! It seems out of character. The again, it is only a book.