The Mystery of Things

Debra Murphy’s first novel, The Mys­tery of Things, was pub­lished in Decem­ber 2004 by Idylls Press. A lit­er­ary thriller for adults, The Mys­tery of Things is a provoca­tive updat­ing of the myth of St. George-and-the-Dragon and an unusual con­tem­po­rary mix of Shake­spearean, Arthurian and Catholic themes.

Set in Mil­wau­kee, on the shores of Lake Michi­gan, this is the story of James Ire­ton, a gifted young Shake­speare scholar haunted by a tragic past and recur­ring night­mares of a Knight, a Lady and a vicious Dragon. James thinks they’re just dreams, uncon­nected to the chaos of his wak­ing life; but when two peo­ple close to him fall vic­tim in a seem­ingly motive­less series of bru­tal mur­ders, James dis­cov­ers there may be a very mod­ern sort of Dragon prey­ing in the shad­ows of his life. Worse, if he doesn’t find a bit of St. George in him­self, the woman he loves may prove the Dragon’s ulti­mate victim.

The title of the book comes from Act V of Shakespeare’s King Lear:

…Come, let’s away to prison: We two alone will sing like birds i’the cage: When thou dost ask me bless­ing, I’ll kneel down And ask of thee for­give­ness: so we’ll live And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded but­ter­flies, and hear poor rogues talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too, who loses and who wins, who’s in, who’s out; And take upon’s the mys­tery of things,as if we were God’s spies: and we’ll wear out, in a wall’d prison, packs and sects of great ones that ebb and flow by the moon.

The Mys­tery of Things is the first book in Debra Murphy’s planned Ash­land Grail Cycle, a series of nov­els inspired by Shake­speare, Arthurian romance, and the mod­ern mys­tery thriller.Debra is work­ing on the sec­ond book in the series, All the World’s a Stage, set in Ash­land, Ore­gon, home of the Ore­gon Shake­speare Fes­ti­val. No pub­li­ca­tion date has been set yet for the book.

ORDERING OPTIONS:

The Mys­tery of Things is avail­able in two edi­tions, the sec­ond edi­tion paper­back with maps and a lim­ited num­ber of first edi­tion hardcovers.

Auto­graphed copies are avail­able upon request when ordered directly from Idylls Press (see below). The larger online retail­ers usu­ally have copies of the book, new and used, at a discount.

PAPERBACK edi­tion, with maps (5½ x 8½, 436 pages)
ISBN-10: 1–59597-014–2)
ISBN-13: 978–1-59597–014-5
Retail price: $18.95

• auto­graphed by author from Idylls Press (free ship­ping! Be sure to say how you’d like the book auto­graphed in the “spe­cial requests” box of the order­ing page)
• from your local indie bookstore
• from Powell’s
• from Ama­zon
• from Amazon.co.uk

FIRST EDITION HARDCOVER (6 x 9, 388 pages)
ISBN-10: 1–59597-000–2
ISBN-13: 978–1-59597–000-8
Retail price: $21.95

• auto­graphed by author from Idylls Press (free ship­ping! Be sure to say how you’d like the book auto­graphed in the “spe­cial requests” box of the order­ing page)
• from Ama­zon

MORE ABOUT THE BOOK:

read reviews
read an excerpt
about the author
Q & A with the author about The Mys­tery of Things
peo­ple, places & things fea­tured in the book