Lisa Klein Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Picture Books

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Lisa Klein popularly referred, as Dr. Lisa Klein is an American author best known for the rewriting of popular Shakespearean works into “Lady Macbeth’s Daughter”, and “Ophelia” among several young adult titles. Klein was born to a biologist mother and a newspaperman father in Peoria, Illinois. She would attend Marquette University where she majored in Theology and English, but given that she could not make priest she opted to go back to school attending Indiana University, from where she graduated with a Ph. D. in literature. Her thesis on English Renaissance poetry was later published as a book and is to be found in the libraries of many universities in the US. After graduating from Indiana, she took up a job at Ohio University teaching Shakespeare and researching women’s needle works, Queen Elizabeth, and poetry for about eight years. She was so good in her research that she was granted an NEH grant for her work. But she was soon forced to leave when the university denied her tenure after she broke her leg. She left the university and turned back to writing accepting her church’s request to write its history. The assignment soon made her realize that she loved to tell stories and research, and it was not long before she published “Ophelia” her debut novel in 2006 that become a huge success among fans and critics. She published two more titles set in Roanoke Colony followed by another Shakespearean and several young adult titles. She currently lives in Columbus, Ohio with her family composed of her two sons and her husband.

Lisa Klein had never felt that any of the interpretations of Shakespeare’s Ophelia did the character any justice. Given that Shakespeare is long dead and could not come back to write of women characters with a little more strength and character, she took it upon herself to rewrite the Ophelia story. She did such a good job with “Ophelia” that the novel is set to be made into a movie and is taught in some schools as an alternative to Shakespeare’s original. For her second novel, Klein chose the historical site of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania as the setting for her novel. Traveling to Pennsylvania, she researched and made notes before writing a highly interesting even if factually accurate telling of the happenings during the historic battle. For her third novel, she went back to Shakespeare creating Lady Macbeth and her daughter as the lead characters. Even as she is the child of two of the most legendary of Shakespearean characters, Shakespeare never directly included the daughter in his original works. However, Klein asserts that it is clear that Lady Macbeth has a child since she speaks of nursing one in the original Macbeth. While it is never explicitly indicated if the child was male or female, Klein decided to make her character female, given her determination to include dominant female characters in the works of Shakespeare that for the most part had strong males. Given her penchant for feminist exploration movements and historical drama most of her works tells historical happenings from the feminist perspective.

Lisa Klein was greatly influenced by Shakespeare with the legendary writer forming the basis for two of her most popular novels. In fact, she has asserted that her two Shakespeare derived novels were written with a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary at hand, since she did not want to use words not in common usage during Shakespeare’s time. Overall, Klein does a good job of taking predominantly male stories, recreating, twisting, and telling them from the female perspective. Her works offer more depth to Shakespearean titles and give historical topics such as the Civil War a more feminine touch. She typically writes of independent and strong women who have to confront rattling truths or have to deal with major life decisions or change. Her major theme is feminism inserted into a time when women were treated as second-class citizens. Keeping her characterizations true to the spirit of the times in which they happened, she smoothly weaves in her perspectives into the story even as she writes a tantalizing back-story. Her most popular title is the story of Ophelia, which portrays a beautiful young woman that is desperately in love with a man unable to reciprocate without attracting undue attention. Even as Hamlet is a household name, the story is anything but the original Hamlet, even if it has all the madness, death, and treachery at court of the original work.

“Ophelia”, Lisa Klein’s debut novel is a delightful narrative of a young woman falling in love with an unattainable man. If you think you know the story of Hamlet, think again, as Klein reimagines Shakespeare’s Hamlet to make Ophelia the lead in the tragedy. Ophelia is a woman finding the strength to survive and searching for her place in the world while growing up motherless at Elsinore Castle, as the queen’s lady in waiting. Witty and ambitious for knowledge as well as beautiful, Ophelia soon learns how the court operates in a world where nothing is ever as it seems. When she catches the eye of Hamlet the dark-haired and captivating prince, it is love at first sight. But theirs is love in the shadows given their different statuses in life. Bloody deeds soon shatter Ophelia’s happiness as Denmark turns into a bloodbath. She now has to choose between saving her life and her love for Hamlet. Hatching a desperate plot, she plans to escape Elsinore forever taking with her one of the darkest secrets of the kingdom. The novel is a romantic, dark, sharp, and dramatic narrative that will have the readers in thrall right up to its heartrending conclusion.

“Cate of the Last Colony” is another delightful novel of Lisa Klein’s young adult novels. Lady Catherine used to be Queen Elizabeth’s favorite lady in waiting until her secret romance with Sir Walter Raleigh comes to light. The jealous queen in a fit of jealousy banishes the young Catherine to Roanoke Colony in the new world. Raleigh promises to come for her, but with the months rolling by she begins to doubt if she had made a mistake trusting his word and declaration of love. With the knight seemingly so far away, Cate and the colonists increasingly turn to a Croatoan Indian Manteo for help. Yet just as her longings for Raleigh and England begin to fade and her love for Manteo heightens, Raleigh sets sail for the new world. Weaving together a tantalizing tale of fiction interspersed with fact, Lisa Klein writes a historical drama spiced with forbidden love and adventure and kindled with one of America’s most famous mysteries. Just where did the Roanoke settlers who went missing without a trace four decades before the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth disappear to?