Hamnet

<b>NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • <i>NEW YORK TIMES</i> BESTSELLER • The bestselling author of <i>The Marriage Portrait </i>delivers a<b> luminous portrait of a marriage, a family ravaged by grief, and a boy whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays of all time. <b>• </b></b>“Of all the stories that argue and speculate about Shakespeare’s life ... here is a novel ... so gorgeously written that it transports you." —<i>The Boston Globe</i> <br><br>Soon to be a major motion picture directed by Chloé Zhao and starring Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, and Joe Alwyn. <br><br></b>England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young alike. The end of days is near, but life always goes on. <br><br>A young Latin tutor—penniless and bullied by a violent father—falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is just taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.