A mysterious portrait ignites an antiquarian bookseller's search - through time and the works of Shakespeare - for his lost love.

Guaranteed to capture the hearts of everyone who truly loves books, The Bookman's Tale is a former bookseller's sparkling novel and a delightful exploration of one of literature's most tantalising mysteries with echoes of Shadow of the Wind and A.S. Byatt's Possession.

Hay-on-Wye, 1995. Peter Byerly isn't sure what drew him into this particular bookshop. Nine months earlier, the death of his beloved wife, Amanda, had left him shattered. The young antiquarian bookseller relocated from North Carolina to the English countryside, hoping to rediscover the joy he once took in collecting and restoring rare books. But upon opening an eighteenth-century study of Shakespeare forgeries, Peter is shocked when a portrait of Amanda tumbles out of its pages. Of course, it isn't really her. The watercolour is clearly Victorian. Yet the resemblance is uncanny, and Peter becomes obsessed with learning the picture's origins.

As he follows the trail back first to the Victorian era and then to Shakespeare's time, Peter communes with Amanda's spirit, learns the truth about his own past, and discovers a book that might definitively prove Shakespeare was, indeed, the author of all his plays.

Charlie Lovett is a writer, teacher, and playwright whose plays for children have been seen in over 3000 productions worldwide. He served for more than a decade as writer-in-residence at Summit School in Winston-Salem, NC. He is a former antiquarian bookseller, and he has collected rare books and other materials related to Lewis Carroll for more than 25 years. He and his wife, Janice, split their time between Winston-Salem and Kingham, Oxfordshire.

'With The Bookman's Tale, Charlie Lovett tells us a terrific story - there's mystery and suspense, murder and seduction - but more importantly, he shows us how it's all connected, all of this: the reading and the keeping and the sharing of books. It forms a chain long and strange enough to tie a heartbroken young scholar from North Carolina back to the Bard himself, who might or might not have been William Shakespeare. Every link along the way is a bookman's tale all its own, and Lovett tells them all, except the very last, of course: because that's you, about to read this book right now.' Robin Sloan, author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

'This book has it all: antiquarian books, deceit, love, murder, passion, Shakespeare, death...and (spoiler alert) a secret passage. What more could you ask for?' Herald Sun

'Author Charlie Lovett meticulously merges love, despair and mystery in this enchanting ode to literature.' Limelight

'The Bookman's Tale is a homage to antiquarian book collectors, a journey in grief, a whodunnit and more rolled into one.' Courier Mail

'For bibliophiles everywhere, this is a joyous mystery from the present day to Victorian England and back to Shakespearean England. Charlie Lovett's The Bookman's Tale is about the thrill of the chase, obsession, love, passion and the joy of discovery.' The Hoopla

'One has to admire the author's audacity in how he fits in dastardly Victorians, Dickensian maidens, present-day outspoken American women, stereotypical British gents and families of vast fortune...It tells a great mystery and is hard to put down.' Otago Daily Times

'Author Charlie Lovett, a former antiquarian bookseller himself, dives effortlessly between centuries and characters as he tells the story of the portrait, and though this novel has a love...