Shelfology Book Pairing

A Novel

by Natalie Haynes

"Haynes is master of her trade . . . She succeeds in breathing warm life into some of our oldest stories."--Telegraph (UK) The national bestselling author of A Thousand Ships and Pandora's Jar returns with a fresh and stunningly perceptive take on the story of Medusa, the original monstered woman. They will fear you and flee you and call you a monster. The only mortal in a family of gods, Medusa is the youngest of the Gorgon sisters. Unlike her siblings, Medusa grows older, experiences change, feels weakness. Her mortal lifespan gives her an urgency that her family will never know. When the sea god Poseidon assaults Medusa in Athene's temple, the goddess is enraged. Furious by the violation of her sacred space, Athene takes revenge--on the young woman. Punished for Poseidon's actions, Medusa is forever transformed. Writhing snakes replace her hair and her gaze will turn any living creature to stone. Cursed with the power to destroy all she loves with one look, Medusa condemns herself to a life of solitude. Until Perseus embarks upon a fateful quest to fetch the head of a Gorgon . . . In Stone Blind, classicist and comedian Natalie Haynes turns our understanding of this legendary myth on its head, bringing empathy and nuance to one of the earliest stories in which a woman--injured by a powerful man--is blamed, punished, and monstered for the assault. Delving into the origins of this mythic tale, Haynes revitalizes and reconstructs Medusa's story with her passion and fierce wit, offering a timely retelling of this classic myth that speaks to us today.

by Maggie O'Farrell

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Now a major motion picture starring Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, and Joe Alwyn, directed by ACADEMY AWARD® winner Chloé Zhao. The bestselling author of The Marriage Portrait delivers a deeply moving novel about the death of Shakespeare’s eleven-year-old son, Hamnet, and the years leading up to the production of his great play. "Miraculous. . . . Brilliant. . . . A novel told with the urgency of a whispered prayer—or curse. . . . A richly drawn and intimate portrait of 16th-century English life set against the arrival of one devastating death." —Ron Charles, The Washington Post England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young alike. The end of days is near, but life always goes on. A young Latin tutor—penniless and bullied by a violent father—falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is just taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever. Hamnet is mesmerizing, seductive, impossible to put down--a magnificent leap forward from one of our most gifted novelists.