A long-lost work of Shakespeare, newly found.
A killer who stages the Bard's extravagant murders as flesh-and-blood realities.
A race to find literary gold, and just to stay alive…

On the eve of the Globe's production of Hamlet, Shakespeare scholar and theater director Kate Stanley's eccentric mentor, Rosalind Howard, gives her a mysterious box, claiming to have made a groundbreaking discovery. But before she can reveal it to Kate, the Globe burns to the ground and Roz is found dead - murdered in the strange manner of Hamlet's father. Inside the box Kate finds the first piece in a Shakespearean puzzle, setting her on a deadly, high-stakes treasure hunt.

From London to Harvard to the American West, Kate races to evade a killer and decipher a tantalizing string of clues, hidden in the words of Shakespeare, that may unlock literary history's greatest secret…