Michael Blanding is an investigative journalist and best-selling author of The Map Thief and In Shakespeare’s Shadow (previously published as North by Shakespeare, Hachette Books, 2021). The book follows a renegade scholar’s computer-assisted hunt to solve the mysteries behind Shakespeare’s plays—leading him to the enigmatic Elizabethan courtier Sir Thomas North.

Read an excerpt published in the Boston Globe Magazine— “How a college dropout in New Hampshire found a Shakespeare secret all the PhDs missed”

NEW: Read my latest in LitHub: “Tracing an Obsession with the Authorship Question

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Entertaining… energetic… highly enjoyable… It’s almost as much fun as sitting in a theater.
— Bookpage