"In 1583, the nineteen-year-old Christopher Marlowe---with a reputation as a brawler, a womanizer, a genius, and a social upstart at Cambridge University---is visited by a man representing Marlowe's benefactors. There are rumors of a growing plot against her majesty Queen Elizabeth I, and the Queen's spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, has charged young Marlowe with tracking down the truth. The path to that truth seems to run through an enigmatic prisoner...

"In 1583, young Christopher Marlowe--student, brawler, rakehell, and would-be playwright--has had a dreadful evening. The first performance of his play in the corner of a very disreputable Cambridge bar is a humiliating flop, and then he's attacked on the streets while in the company of Thomas Kyd. So when Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth's spymaster, sends for him, Marlowe is only too happy to go. The assignment is go to Holland, where England's...

Folklorist and academic Fever Devilin, a native of the Georgia Appalachians, is drawn into a strange mystery that has its roots deep in the hills of Blue Mountain. After a spat during a church supper, Able Carter and his fiancee, Truevine Deveroe, are missing. A bit later, a body is found in the ravine behind Fever's cabin and identified as the local mortician, Harding Pinehurst. Folks suspect Able Carter of the deed. A few -- like Truevine's drunken,...