“This utterly contemporary reimagining of Marlowe’s final days dazzles. It delves into forbidden desire and the cost of genius, culminating in a tragic and haunting conclusion that leaves the reader wanting more. A stunning debut that is masterfully researched and written.”
—Rachel Barenbaum, author of Atomic Anna and A Bend in the Stars
“In Lightborne, which explores the mysterious last days of Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe, Hesse Phillips plunges us into a dark world of intrigue and betrayal—but one also punctuated by glimmers of poetry, lust, and love. Phillips’s novel is a masterpiece of heart-stopping suspense—a truly amazing debut.”
—Nancy Crochiere, author of Graceland
“Lightborne is dark and propulsive, simmering with violence, desire, and intrigue. Rigorously researched but as gripping as a thriller, it makes a sometimes familiar period feel fresh and alive. It’s a sensationally good read and a vital queering of the Elizabethan narrative—I adored it.”
—Kerry Andrew, author of Skin and We Are Together Because
“Set against a backdrop of plague fires and palace intrigue, this stunning debut speculates on the last days of Elizabethan poet Christopher Marlowe. Phillips’s curiosity about this enduring historical mystery is the readers’ reward. With deft storytelling and exquisite prose, Phillips offers an absorbing and devastating tale of men living passionately in a perilous age.”
—Kelly J. Ford, author of The Hunt and Cottonmouths
“Life and death stakes are introduced from the very first line of Lightborne, an Elizabethan-era page-turner that vividly portrays the final weeks of Christopher Marlowe’s life. It’s the author’s singular ability to fully inhabit Marlowe and the treacherous company he kept that makes the book such a compelling read. Lightborne offers a vibrant, urgent, harrowing account of the playwright’s life and death, and marks the impressive debut of a gifted new writer.”
—Lisa Borders, author of The Fifty-First State and the forthcoming Last Night at the Disco
“Phillips’s dazzling Lightborne returns us to a world of more moral certainty but considerably more physical danger, telling the story of Christopher ‘Kit’ Marlowe, the Elizabethan dramatist and spy, with a thrillingly intense sense of period. As a gay man, Kit is especially vulnerable to blackmail, tangling with malevolent agents of the state while attempting to write his masterpieces. The novel is a hugely impressive, visceral and moving portrait of one of the era’s most captivating and mysterious characters.”
—The Financial Times
“In lush, galloping, impeccable prose, Phillips’s Lightborne not only immerses us in Marlowe’s world as zestfully as a summer bath, it has made of Marlowe—long-dead and godlike figure as he is—a character we instantly feel kinship with, whose passions and fears are at their most human and very like our own. Phillips not only rescues the man from history’s prejudices, we feel propelled to throw ourselves inside his world and revisit his life and work again and again.”
—Michelle Hoover, author of Bottomland
“Full of intrigue, intensely atmospheric, and exquisitely dark, Lightborne takes readers on the breathless lead-up to Kit Marlowe’s notoriously mysterious death, offering a richly drawn, superbly researched dive into the conspiratorial shadows of Tudor England, replete with sharp insights into its theatre scene, queer subcultures, and ruthless inquisitions.”
—Aube Rey Lescure, author of River East, River West
“A savage, poetic intrigue drenched in betrayal and longing. Hesse Phillips writes the backstabbers and double-dealers, the playwrights and pawns with studied precision and pluck, smoothly invoking the Elizabethan period without overwhelming the narrative. While the weaving in of historical detail is both subtle and masterful, it is the arresting storytelling in all its queer wonder that kept me gasping and had me blubbering into a pillow by the end. A beauty.”
—Susan Donovan Bernhard, author of Winter Loon
“Other works of fiction have been written about the turbulent life and still not fully explained death of the Elizabethan dramatist Christopher Marlowe. None has demonstrated the erudition and intensity of Hesse Phillips’s debut novel. Phillips’s Marlowe is a haunted, driven man, more involved in the dangerous world of espionage than the theatre. Told in vivid, punchy prose, Lightborne is a brilliantly original take on a familiar story.”
—The Sunday Times (London), “Pick of the Month”
“A thoroughly contemporary take. Phillips links not only Marlowe’s killing, but also the great conspiracy of his time, the Jesuit ‘Babington Plot’ against Elizabeth I, to betrayed homosexual love. A fast-paced narrative chain of theatrical scenes breathes new life into familiar images of the period.”
—The Irish Times