DARK RENAISSANCE: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival, I'm picturing Rupert Everett from Shakespeare in Love

DARK RENAISSANCE: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival
STEPHEN GREENBLATT
W.W. Norton (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.99 ebook, available now

The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Non-Fiction For the week ending September 16, 2026

Rating: 4.9* of five

The Publisher Says: The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Will in the World reveals the daring and subversive life of Christopher Marlowe—Shakespeare’s contemporary, inspiration, and rival.

In brutally repressive sixteenth-century England, artists had been frightened into dull conventionality; foreigners were suspect; popular entertainment largely consisted of coarse spectacles, animal fights, and hangings. Into this crude world came an ambitious cobbler’s son with an uncanny ear for Latin poetry—a torment for most schoolboys, yet for a few, a secret portal to beauty, visionary imagination, transgressive desire, and dangerous skepticism. What Christopher Marlowe found on the other side of that door, and what he did with it, brought about a spectacular explosion of English literature, language, and culture, enabling the success of his collaborator and rival, William Shakespeare.

With propulsive narrative flair and brilliant literary criticism, Stephen Greenblatt reconstructs the youthful involvement with the queen’s spy service that shaped Marlowe’s brief, troubling life and gave us his Tamburlaine and Faustus—dramatic masterpieces on power and its costs. And with detailed historical insight, Greenblatt explores how the people Marlowe knew, and the transformations they wrought, birthed the economic, scientific, and cultural power of the modern world—involving Faustian bargains with which we reckon still.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The Swerve was a life-defining read for me in 2012. In it, Author Greenblatt took a horrendously complicated, unpleasantly difficult classical Latin poem about atomism and made it into a living document that gave form to a way of thinking that defines modernity in the 21st century.

If anyone can make a sea of "maybe"s and "perhaps"es into a life story, it is him. And he does.

Kit Marlowe is of enduring interest to many of us for lots of 21st-century reasons, including his apparent sexual interest in other men, his apparent involvement in anti-catholic espionage, and his very obvious murder in what we think was a tavern brawl before he turned thirty; but there's enough uncertainty about all of it that one can't pin him down. His plays survive him; Tamburlaine the Great and The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta and The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus shocked then, shock now four hundred years later, and likely delight in their transgressiveness to the same degree though for very different reasons in both ages. Marlowe knew how to use the prejudices of the world he wrote to entertain to deliver pointed messages well beyond the obvious scope of his story.

A provocateur's work is never done. He can still raise a rage-filled shout.

I think that would delight Kit Marlowe. I know he's not as revered as Shakespeare, his contemporary; but that's down to chance, the unpredictable lightning of luck (and probably Shakespeare's longer life thus larger surviving body of work). It could also be that Marlowe's authorship of The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England, with the Tragical Fall of Proud Mortimer, making the homoerotic subtext of male loving friendship that was so celebrated in Elizabethan times into blaring text, had a little something to do with it. Homophobia is an evergreen form of hate, powerfully corrosive to even the most wonder-inspiring talents' gifts. If the ewww-ick response is your default response to gay sex, why are you thinking about it?

Imponderables like this float through my mind as I read this fantabulous work of stitchery that sews a bit here, a scrap there, none of them large, into a very interesting if unclear portrait of a man whose unapologetic purpose was to confront and discomfit the world he so obviously saw in perfect clarity, then whipped out his microscope to look more closely at its flaws.

Dark Renaissance is well titled...the renaissance of a dark figure, the Renaissance's dark side considered then and now, the renaissance of darkness in Marlowe's lifetime and his life and times...layers, layers like an onion, gleaming, and making one tear up as the essential oils of a man's very skin hit your eyes.

LARRY McMURTRY: A LIFE, and what a life it was!

LARRY McMURTRY: A LIFE
TRACY DAUGHERTY
St. Martin's Press
$35.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A biography of the late Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and screenwriter Larry McMurtry from New York Times bestselling author Tracy Daugherty.

In over forty books, in a career that spanned over sixty years, Larry McMurtry staked his claim as a superior chronicler of the American West, and as the Great Plains’ keenest witness since Willa Cather and Wallace Stegner. Larry McMurtry: A Life traces his origins as one of the last American writers who had direct contact with this country’s pioneer traditions. It follows his astonishing career as bestselling novelist, Pulitzer-Prize winner, author of the beloved Lonesome Dove, Academy-Award winning screenwriter, public intellectual, and passionate bookseller. A sweeping and insightful look at a versatile, one-of-a-kind American writer, this book is a must-read for every Larry McMurtry fan.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: First, I want to salute Tracy Daugherty, fellow Texan and indefatigable researcher. This is a thoroughly sourced book withe compendious endnotes hyperlinked in the DRC I read. Some things didn't really need so much sourcing, being opinions of interviewees, but too much beats too little all hollow in non-fiction. More especially in the notes because reading them is entirely optional. I do it because I'm a fussbudget. I don't often comment about it either way, but here it's appropriate...a William Zinsser opinion from The American Scholar Magazine impressed me by being so niche a quote and being checkably sourced, I felt compelled to bring it up.

Then, I want to diss Larry McMurtry, petulant whiny adolescent of great age. No matter where he was, he was dissatisfied by it; no matter who he knew, he critiqued them with a flensing-knife of an eye; yest his curmudgeonliness gave the world some impressive art and a lot of filler. He had honesty enough to know it, though, that's a saving grace.

He was an inveterate lover of women. Married or not, he was always glad to meet another lady...with predictable results for the existing relationship...but he wasn't always sexually involved with them. He really just loved women as beings. His writing partner was Diana Ossana, and their closeness created a collaboration that made Annie Proulx's story "Brokeback Mountain" into a delight of a screenplay (one well worth reading on its own). He was friends with Merry Prankster and fellow novelist Ken Kesey, whose widow Faye he married in 2011—a decade after Kesey's death in 2001. This was a man who, in spite of a pretty spiky personality, could sustain a friendship!

He identified as a Texan. That in spite of his flensing-knife eye seeing, and his venom-filled pen chronicling, the failings of his fellow Texans in the gloriously angry The Last Picture Show, and his honest appraisal of Texas's self-aggrandizing mythology in the most famous book of his career Lonesome Dove. I think it's weird that people misinterpret Lonesome Dove as a celebration of the West, but that's another project that I can't tackle here. I rated this book more highly than my enjoyment of its subject would've led me to do because I so enjoyed reading McMurtry's opinions of the fans of his books. I'm not going into details because spoilers but this was one serious curmudgeon.

That's where I ran into a problem. I ended up knowing McMurtry better but not liking him more. This wasn't promised to me, so I'm not complaining that I was led to believe something was going to be offered that was not. I wasn't his biggest fan, actively disliking Texasville and the sequels to Lonesome Dove; but I always admired his clearsightedness. Now I know what I do about him as a person, I don't see it as clearsightedness any more. He was a chronic fault-finder who made, so far as I could tell or the author reported to me, no effort to use this in any constructive way in his own life. The consequences are predictable, and largely suffered by others.

That moody snort aside, I am sure that my world is enriched by his work, and I'm glad that this fascinating, difficult man came along to tell us all about our dirty, grubby, grasping, grouchy selves. I expect my Young Gentleman Caller is on to something when he remarked, "he reminds me of you."

BANDERSNATCH, a group portrait of the Inklings

BANDERSNATCH: CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings
DIANA PAVLAC GLYER, illustrated by JAMES A. OWENS
Black Squirrel Books/Kent State University Press
$24.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Inklings met each week to read and discuss each other's work-in-progress, offering both encouragement and blistering critique. How did these conversations shape the books they were writing? How does creative collaboration enhance individual talent? And what can we learn from their example?

Featuring original illustrations by James A. Owen, Bandersnatch offers an inside look at the Inklings of Oxford, and a seat at their table at the Eagle and Child pub. It shows how encouragement and criticism made all the difference in The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, and dozens of other books written by the members of their circle. You'll learn what made these writers tick, and more: inspired by their example, you'll discover how collaboration can help your own creative process and lead to genius breakthroughs in whatever work you do.

THE PUBLISHER PROVIDED A REVIEW COPY AT MY REQUEST. THANK YOU.

My Review: Author Glyer is a past mistress of explication, as witness her previous Inkings study The Company They Keep. That book was more about who, when, and where among the English old boys' club we know as the Inklings: JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Roger Lancelyn Green, Owen Barfield, Hugo Dyson, et alii. This book delves into the how and the why of the Inklings' writing community. If literary criticism isn't your jam, this book will bore you silly. If you've never read any literary criticism, I'd encourage you to start here. Author Glyer is a dab hand at writing and a scholar to be reckoned with, two things that don't frequently coincide.

So the sugar coating is the story of the Inklings, two of whom became internationally famous for the works they made in this writers' group for the ages. The meat of the tale is, though, how this incredible group *failed* its members. Tolkien, for example, was subjected to humiliating and deeply personal insults by Hugo Dyson who detested his elves and orcs and such-like goins-on; Lewis did as well; but Lewis was quiet while Dyson was not and, in the cumulative effect of one noisy nastymonger on a group, Tolkien was driven to silence.

In a group of writers wanting to make their art better, that is Death. Shameful that it should have been allowed. And let's not fail to see the irony of the insulter being utterly and completely forgotten by History while the insulted literally changed the world.

Author Glyer offers a few prescriptions for the potential breeding grounds of today's Tolkiens in consideration of her analysis of the Inklings' failures. They are trenchant and they are excellent. If I have a grump with the book, it's the revolting Jesusy tone of a lot of it. It's inevitable, I suppose, given the endemic, emetic christianity of the group's members. I found I could read the book, not usually the case with Jesusy stuff, because it was so much more than a tract.

One facet of the book that stands out, and that merits an entire review of its own, is the beautiful illustrations by James A. Owen. The cover illustration should give you the tone Owen takes throughout the book. These are beautiful artworks and could be reason enough right there to buy the book, simply to make your eyes happy and your heart glad.

HAD SHE BUT KNOWN, an American predecessor to Agatha Christie as Queen of Mystery Fiction

HAD SHE BUT KNOWN: A Biography of Mary Roberts Rinehart
CHARLOTTE MacLEOD
Open Road Media
$8.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Before Agatha Christie, there was America’s Mistress of Mystery. This is the story of her life and creative legacy, from the butler who did it to Batman.

In the decades since her death in 1958, master storyteller Mary Roberts Rinehart has often been compared to Agatha Christie. But while Rinehart was once a household name, today she is largely forgotten. The woman who first proclaimed “the butler did it” was writing for publication years before Christie’s work saw the light of day. She also practiced nursing, became a war correspondent, and wrote a novel—The Bat—that inspired Bob Kane’s creation of Batman.

Born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, before it was absorbed into Pittsburgh, and raised in a close-knit Presbyterian family, Mary Roberts was at once a girl of her time—dutiful, God-fearing, loyal—and a quietly rebellious spirit. For every hour she spent cooking, cleaning, or sewing at her mother’s behest while her “frail” younger sister had fun, Mary eked out her own moments of planning, dreaming, and writing. But becoming an author wasn’t on her radar . . . yet.

Bestselling mystery writer Charlotte MacLeod grew up on Rinehart’s artfully crafted novels, such as the enormously successful The Circular Staircase—“cozies” before the concept existed. After years of seeing Christie celebrated and Rinehart overlooked, MacLeod realized that it was time to delve into how this seemingly ordinary woman became a sensation whose work would grace print, stage, and screen. From Rinehart’s grueling training as a nurse and her wartime interviews with a young Winston Churchill and Queen Mary to her involvement with the Blackfoot Indians and her work as doctor’s wife, mother of three, playwright, serialist, and novelist, this is the unforgettable story of America’s Grande Dame of Mystery.

My Review: I don't suppose knowing who Mary Roberts Rinehart is is as common as it used to be. She was the American doyenne of mystery writers for about 40 years, her books were serialized in The Saturday Evening Post, she lived a glamourous Republican life and never ever stopped writing until age forced her to. She was seventy-seven when her last book was published!

This book, by fellow mystery writer Charlotte MacLeod, was published in 1994. Even then, twenty-plus years ago, MacLeod was amazed and impressed that Rinehart's mysteries were still being read. (Me too!) And they're even still being republished every so often. My local library system has most of the titles in it, and all but two of them were checked out last time I looked. (I then checked out the two that weren't already gone.) The plots and characters are simply timeless, which also means that they're not overly fresh; but hey! Neither are Dame Agatha's.

Most of the book's effort is spent on Mary's early years, as a daughter, wife, and mother. The reason is that another biographer took care of the widow and doyenne years in detail. This focus on the time that Mary spent as a student nurse, the Covenanter (a species of Presbyterian without the joie de vivre for which those folk are known) wife of an up-and-coming surgeon and tuberculosis expert, and then the primary breadwinner of the household after her husband developed crippling rheumatoid arthritis in his hands. With contracts for her serials running $50,000 and up in the 1920s, she was doin' them all proud.

Mary's life with her husband, Stanley Rinehart, was apparently a lot of fun. They traveled, they entertained, they made the lives of their three sons very happy...they were each strong personalities, so no doubt there were problems, but they were able to solve them and stay more or less happily married for thirty-six years. Impressive in any day and age, given their natures. Mary's travel articles show the fun side of the relationship clearly, They were collected into books, of course, as was Mary's WWI reportage, and all are really worth reading.

Charlotte MacLeod's chops were honed in the mystery tradition that Rinehart helped pioneer. She writes pleasingly and engagingly about her subject. And best of all, she makes one care about the life of this long-dead entertainer of a bygone era. It somehow matters to the reader that Mary's plays, with one notable exception in The Bat, were complete flops; that Mary suffered agonies of self-doubt about life's goodness to her; that her mother and father were so disappointingly inept.

All writers should have as biographers the writers they themselves inspire. It makes for a top-notch reading experience.

IVY, The Life of I. Compton-Burnett is a dry dry dry book

IVY: THE LIFE OF I. COMPTON-BURNETT
HILARY SPURLING
Columbia University Press
$22.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 2* of five

The Publisher Says: It is a real cause for celebration when the best and most subtle literary biography of our time comes back into print, and in a single volume instead of the original two. What Hilary Spurling does, in a beautifully-written book, is to relate the life of Ivy Compton-Burnett intimately to the work and show in fascinating details, and with wonderful perception, how her subjects characters mirror aspects of her own nature. The book sends one back to read or re-read the novels - unfashionable, toweringly original tragic-comedies - the most individual novels, it may be, of our time.

My Review: Why would I, a charter member of the “Eradicate Ivy Compton-Burnett” Society, have and read this book? It all started as a joke.

I once lived with someone whose dislike of Icky Crumpet-Burnoose matched or exceed my own. What better way to cause her pain than to cause her to see Icky's malevolent mug on her nightstand, with a note attached: “For relief of insomnia”?

Gratifying shrieks of outrage and stomps of fury from her bedroom assured me of the success of my evil plot. Subsequent hurling of this massive artifact at me (no mean feat! Must weigh 5lbs!) let me know that my humor was properly received and appreciated.

So why not just return the damned thing to the liberry and call it good, a prank well done? I got curious. So many bad things happen when I get curious that you'd think I'd've learned not to scratch that bump. Ha.

Turns out that Icky had a more interesting life than any portrayed in her fiction! (Not that this is a difficult feat.) The oldest child of a Victorian homeopath's second family, she was a bossy, albeit cheerful and fun older sister to her family, gradually losing all semblance of humor and kindness as her extremely weird mother made ever-increasing demands on her to run the family. Her eventual position as head of household was a disaster for her personally, resulting in the suicides of her two youngest sisters and her (far too) belovèd brother's alienation from her by marriage to a woman she didn't seem to like a whole lot. He then dies in WWI, and she drifts personally and professionally for a good long time. She has no money worries, so it's only on the emotional side that this matters.

So then she meets an older woman, more established than she as an independent professional writer and historian of furniture, called Margaret Jourdain. Their love affair lasted some 35 years, spent living together and traveling together and going to parties together. And, according to Spurling, not having sex. They said they didn't, protests Spurling! And yet, in other instances, the mere saying of something is determined by Spurling to be simple misdirection, Icky saying something to deflect or distract someone from learning details she didn't want to give. Other people said they weren't, corroborates Spurling! And yet, in other instances, eyewitness reports are discounted because the people involved were prejudiced or insufficiently informed or what-have-you.

Now, I don't belong to the school of readers who want salacious details of characters's lives, even subjects of biographies. I don't need to know what others do in their bedrooms, any others, unless in some way it expands my knowledge and appreciation of a character. And I am actively revolted by the idea of lesbian sex, unlike most males; I outgrew my juvenile need for female genitalia a long time ago and would prefer not to be reminded of them at all, thank you. I am also not one of those gay people who seeks spurious validation in claiming people from earlier times as members of the gay community before such an identity, let alone community, existed.

But if Ivy and Margaret weren't big ol' dykes, who on this earth is? And why should we for a moment believe that they never so much as kissed? Women, contrary to what most men and their female converts seem to think, have intense erotic urges that (in my experience, at least) they very very very badly want to satisfy. Most men are inept at doing so, sadly, so the myth goes on that these urges are nonexistent. Spurling does these women, raised in a homophobic and reticent culture, a disservice by denying them (posthumously) even a suggestion of a sex life. I think it's bosh, and I think it's dishonest, and Spurling and her ilk should be ashamed that their minds can't encompass the idea that two women in love could find satisfaction and pleasure in each others's bodies without wanting to make it a public display or even discuss it with others. There are anecdotes of Icky saying she'd never made love, and then going on to have quite thoroughly informed and detailed conversations with married women about sex and desire. This, says Icky's biographer, is a testament to the authoress's imaginitve powers.

Oh for God's sweet sake! Grow up, woman, and realize she wasn't that imaginitive!! NO ONE IS. You can't, even in today's world of instant and astoundingly diverse gratification, know what desire and its satisfactions are about until you've been there! Really now.

But oddly enough, I was interested enough in this life to keep reading about this writer whose tiny talents I disparage with vim and vigor at every opportunity. I wouldn't recommend it to any but her most ardent dupes, I mean fans, because it's simply too long to be useful to anyone only mildly curious. Spurling's style is clear, I suppose, though I can't say much more for it than that. It was no great pleasure to read, but it was a life lived on her own terms in a time and place where that was a very, very novel (!) and difficult achievement.