Deborah Hopkinson

A well-craft­ed mys­tery about an intre­pid young girl’s quest to foil a plot to assas­si­nate Queen Eliz­a­beth I.

Emil­ia Bas­sano is a girl who rel­ish­es the music of words. Although she plays the lute and writes poet­ry, Emil­ia nur­tures a dream: to hear her words come alive on stage. Emil­ia wants to write solil­o­quies for heroes and kings and queens of old, fash­ion fierce vil­lains to make audi­ences howl, and try her hand at com­e­dy and romance. Most of all, she wants to cre­ate unfor­get­table women characters.

On one of her trips to the the­ater, an unfor­tu­nate series of events leaves her pen­ni­less, with no way of watch­ing the show. That is until a boy by the name of Will Shake­speare helps her sneak in to see the play. They real­ize they’re both aspir­ing play­wrights and Emil­ia con­vinces Will to join her in her efforts to win a play­writ­ing com­pe­ti­tion at the palace of Queen Eliz­a­beth I.

How­ev­er, when Emil­ia acci­den­tal­ly uncov­ers a plot to kill the queen, she is giv­en the job of trav­el­ing to the cas­tle where Mary Queen of Scots is being held cap­tive, to dis­cov­er who is respon­si­ble for the plan to mur­der Queen Elizabeth—and to thwart it! Can Emil­ia and her friends stop the plans of a dis­guised mur­der­er on the loose?