It’s official! A Rose by Any Other Name, my novel about the story behind Shakespeare’s sonnets from the perspective of the Dark Lady, is available for preorder with a cover and official release date. The novel will be available wherever books are sold on July 16, 2024! The cover design has been getting a lot of love:
Isn’t it stunning?
The rose, candle, and jar of dried herbs hint at the witchcraft in the novel; the celestial details evoke Rose’s astrology business; and the spherical object in the foreground is a ring Rose’s father gives her early in the book. Armillary sphere finger rings like this one, which unfold into a miniature model of the heavens, were status symbols for 16th century astrologers. My editor was obsessed with the ring and had the publisher buy a replica so they could shoot it in studio!
Here is the official jacket copy:
From the author of The Book of Gothel comes the lush, magical story behind Shakespeare’s sonnets, as told by one of his most famous subjects—the incendiary and mysterious Dark Lady.
My name has only been whispered, heretofore…
England, 1591. Rose Rushe’s passion for life runs deep—she loves mead and music, meddles with astrology, and laughs at her mother’s warnings to guard her reputation. When Rose’s father dies and a noble accuses her and her dear friend Cecely of witchcraft, they flee to the household of respected alchemists in London. But as their bond deepens, their sanctuary begins to feel more like a cage. To escape, they turn to the occult, secretly casting charms and selling astrological advice in the hopes of building a life together. This thriving underground business leads Rose to fair young noble Henry and playwright Will Shakespeare, and so begins a brief, tempestuous, and powerful romance—one filled with secret longings and deep betrayals.
In this world of dazzling masques and decadent feasts, where the stars decide futures, Rose will write her own fate instead.
If you pre-order the novel, you will receive my endless gratitude, a signed bookplate, other secret pretty things, and a limited edition bookmark featuring gorgeous historical portraits I’ve chosen to represent the four main characters:
If you’re not familiar with the sonnets, here’s a quick rundown: They address two characters: a beautiful young man called the Fair Youth, and a mysterious woman called the Dark Lady. There is a centuries-long debate over whether these characters are fictional or inspired by real people. The majority of critics insist that they’re made up, but that hasn’t stopped everyone from wondering. There are theories that the Fair Youth was Henry Wriothesley or William Herbert, that the Dark Lady was poet Aemilia Bassano or a brothel owner named Luce Morgan. The first seventeen poems encourage the Fair Youth to marry and produce an heir, a theme so different from the hundred-plus poems that follow, many critics think they were written on commission. Something changes at sonnet eighteen. Shakespeare starts writing the Fair Youth gorgeous, passionate love poems—over a hundred of them. There are only twenty-six sonnets about or addressed to Shakespeare’s infamous mistress. Some of them praise her dark beauty and declare the speaker’s love for her, but others are more ambiguous, and many have deep veins of bitterness and misogyny running through them. The speaker blames his mistress for stealing the Fair Youth away from him, accuses her of giving them venereal disease, and even insinuates that she might have made a pact with the devil…
This novel was born of my fascination with the woman who might have inspired those poems.
If it sounds as exciting to you as it does to me, please pre-order! The U.K. link isn’t up yet, but U.K./world folks can pre-order from Waterstones. Here’s the link to the pre-order campaign form to fill out so I can send you the extra goodies for preordering (yes, that’s open internationally) after release week. In the meantime, you can follow me on Goodreads for giveaways and release news, subscribe to my quarterly newsletter on Substack where I will be giving away advance copies to subscribers, or follow me on socials where I’ll be giving away advance copies too. I’m on Instagram, X, Threads, and Facebook!
MARY MCMYNE 