“By Any Other Name”
Submitted photo
The following items are available at the Hancock County Public Library, 900 W. McKenzie Road. Descriptions are provided by the publisher, unless otherwise noted. For more information on the library’s collection or to reserve a title, visit hcplibrary.org.
Fiction: “By Any Other Name” by Jodi Picoult
As an undergraduate, Melina Green had a rare opportunity to have one of her first plays judged by famous theater critic Jasper Tolle, only to be publicly humiliated by a harsh and biased critique. Ten years later, her confidence as a playwright has never recovered, although she has just completed a work that she thinks is her best yet. It is based on the life of her ancestor Emilia Bassano, the first published female poet in England – and rumored to be the “Dark Lady” of Shakespeare’s sonnets – but whom some scholars suspect may be the real author of a number of his plays. Melina wonders if she dares risk failure again, and then her best friend takes the decision out of her hands and submits it to a festival under a male pseudonym. In 1581, the young orphan Emilia Bassano is being raised in the ways of English aristocracy by the Baron Willoughby and his sister. Her lessons on languages, reading, and writing have endowed her with a sharp wit and a gift for storytelling. But like most women of her day, she has no control over her fate, and is ripped from her old life and forced to become a courtesan to Lord Hunsdon, a man knighted by Queen Elizabeth as the Lord Chamberlain in charge of all theater in London. Though she has no other freedoms, and inspired by the work of the most brilliant playwrights of the time, she pseudonymously sets her own pen to paper to tell a story.
Nonfiction: “Out of the Darkness: The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers” by Ian O’Connor
Drawing on original interviews to answer the most penetrating questions about the league’s most enigmatic player, a New York Times best-selling author takes on four-time the NFL MVP, revealing all sides of an all-time great and delivering a portrait of a complex man that will forever shape the way he’s viewed.
Youth: “The Marvellers” by Dhonielle Clayton
Eleven-year-old Ella Durand is the first Conjuror to attend the Arcanum Training Institute, a magic school in the clouds, but when she falls under suspicion for helping a criminal escape
prison she must, with the help of her new friends and her own growing powers, find a way to clear her family’s name.
