The Book of Air and Shadows

The Book of Air and Shadows
by Michael Gruber

The Book of Air and Shadows
List Price: $24.95
Our Price: $4.95
You Save: $20.00 (80%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.44 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions


(Click here)
Buy this book at online book store in your country
Canada | UK | Germany | France

Book Summary Information

Author: Michael Gruber
Edition: Hardcover
Published: 2007-04-01
ISBN: 0060874465
Number of pages: 480
Publisher: William Morrow

Book Reviews of The Book of Air and Shadows

Book Review: Could have been good...
Summary: 2 Stars

After finally finishing this messy, plodding, self-conscious book, I read reviews by others, including the biggies...Washington Post, etc. It seems that everyone else loved this book that, for me, fell so far short of air and shadows that I was tempted to skip the ending and move on to something better. The topic is compelling. I'm a fan of the literary thriller in general and this could have been really good; that is, if you took out all the dull character studies where, I swear, I could hear Michael Gruber thinking of ways to sound intellectual and profound. It was Dan Brown with a broader vocabulary and a bigger ego. Yuck. A waste of a good idea.

Summary of The Book of Air and Shadows

A distinguished Shakespearean scholar found tortured to death . . .

A lost manuscript and its secrets buried for centuries . . .

An encrypted map that leads to incalculable wealth . . .

The Washington Post called Michael Gruber's previous work "a miracle of intelligent fiction and among the essential novels of recent years." Now comes his most intellectually provocative and compulsively readable novel yet.

Tap-tapping the keys and out come the words on this little screen, and who will read them I hardly know. I could be dead by the time anyone actually gets to read them, as dead as, say, Tolstoy. Or Shakespeare. Does it matter, when you read, if the person who wrote still lives?

These are the words of Jake Mishkin, whose seemingly innocent job as an intellectual property lawyer has put him at the center of a deadly conspiracy and a chase to find a priceless treasure involving William Shakespeare. As he awaits a killer—or killers—unknown, Jake writes an account of the events that led to this deadly endgame, a frantic chase that began when a fire in an antiquarian bookstore revealed the hiding place of letters containing a shocking secret, concealed for four hundred years. In a frantic race from New York to England and Switzerland, Jake finds himself matching wits with a shadowy figure who seems to anticipate his every move. What at first seems like a thrilling puzzle waiting to be deciphered soon turns into a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse, where no one—not family, not friends, not lovers—is to be trusted.

Moving between twenty-first-century America and seventeenth-century England, The Book of Air and Shadows is a modern thriller that brilliantly re-creates William Shakespeare's life at the turn of the seventeenth century and combines an ingenious and intricately layered plot with a devastating portrait of a contemporary man on the brink of self-discovery . . . or self-destruction.

General Books

Book Subjects
Most talked about in These Will Get Your Heart Racing
Touchstone ImageTouchstone
by Laurie R. King
Bantam; Published: 2007-12-26; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $6.20
Price in other shops: $24.00
The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel ImageThe Thirteenth Tale: A Novel
by Diane Setterfield
Atria; Published: 2006-09-12; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $2.45
Price in other shops: $26.00
Blue Heaven ImageBlue Heaven
by C.J. Box
St. Martin's Minotaur; Published: 2008-01-08; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $8.35
Price in other shops: $24.95
Blood Trail (Joe Pickett Novels) ImageBlood Trail (Joe Pickett Novels)
by C. J. Box
Putnam Adult; Published: 2008-05-20; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.47
Price in other shops: $24.95
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Indiana Jones) ImageIndiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Indiana Jones)
by James Rollins
Del Rey; Published: 2008-05-20; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.89
Price in other shops: $26.00
You've Been Warned ImageYou've Been Warned
by James Patterson, Howard Roughan
Little, Brown and Company; Published: 2007-09-10; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $2.00
Price in other shops: $27.99
The Demon of Dakar: A Mystery (Ann Lindell Mysteries) ImageThe Demon of Dakar: A Mystery (Ann Lindell Mysteries)
by Kjell Eriksson
St. Martin's Minotaur; Published: 2008-04-29; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.89
Price in other shops: $24.95
The Paper Moon (Inspector Montalbano Mysteries) ImageThe Paper Moon (Inspector Montalbano Mysteries)
by Andrea Camilleri
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2008-04-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.74
Price in other shops: $13.00
Blaze: A Novel ImageBlaze: A Novel
by Richard Bachman
Scribner; Published: 2007-06-12; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $1.00
Price in other shops: $25.00
Midnight Rambler: A Novel of Suspense ImageMidnight Rambler: A Novel of Suspense
by James Swain
Ballantine Books; Published: 2007-09-25; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.67
Price in other shops: $24.95
Similar Books and other products
Valley of Bones ImageValley of Bones
by Michael Gruber
HarperCollins Publishers; Published: 2005-01-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $11.76
Price in other shops: $24.95
Tropic of Night ImageTropic of Night
by Michael Gruber
Published: 2003-03-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $9.14
Price in other shops: $24.95
Night of the Jaguar: A Novel ImageNight of the Jaguar: A Novel
by Michael Gruber
William Morrow; Published: 2006-04-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $6.56
Price in other shops: $24.95
Christine Falls: A Novel ImageChristine Falls: A Novel
by Benjamin Black, John Banville
Henry Holt and Co.; Published: 2007-03-06; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $7.93
Price in other shops: $25.00
Mistress of the Art of Death ImageMistress of the Art of Death
by Ariana Franklin
Berkley Trade; Published: 2008-01-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.99
Price in other shops: $15.00
What the Dead Know ImageWhat the Dead Know
by Laura Lippman
Harper; Published: 2008-03-01; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.64
Price in other shops: $7.99
The Forgery of Venus: A Novel ImageThe Forgery of Venus: A Novel
by Michael Gruber
William Morrow; Published: 2008-04-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.39
Price in other shops: $24.95
In the Woods ImageIn the Woods
by Tana French
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2008-05-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.61
Price in other shops: $14.00
The Savage Garden ImageThe Savage Garden
by Mark Mills
Berkley Trade; Published: 2008-05-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.04
Price in other shops: $14.00
Ghostwalk ImageGhostwalk
by Rebecca Stott
Spiegel & Grau; Published: 2008-06-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.44
Price in other shops: $14.95
Book store. Illustrated catalog of books on different categories