The Bard may not have actually penned novels, but he has inspired three forthcoming ones. Take your pick from popular fiction, historical fiction and fantasy—each one features a character named William Shakespeare (and one actually has two characters with that famous name).
| My Name Is Will: A Novel of Sex, Drugs and Shakespeareby Jess Winfield (Twelve, July) | Willby Christopher Rush (Overlook, Sept.) | Hell and Earthby Elizabeth Bear (Roc, Aug.) | |
| Author | Founding member of the Reduced Shakespeare Company | Taught Shakespeare for 30 years | Spent five years researching Shakespeare |
| Takes place | Present-day California | England, March 1616 | England, late 1500s |
| Shakespeare is... | Willie Shakespeare Greenberg, a perpetually stoned grad student | A bedridden writer dictating his will to a gluttonous lawyer | Released from hell and fortifying Queen Elizabeth I with his poetry |
| Blurb | “Shakespeare in Love on magic mushrooms.”—Christopher Buckley | “[He has] done an impossible job surprisingly well.”—Alasdair Gray | “Bear proves... that she can fill a stage as well as any Elizabethan playwright.”—PW |
