Tuesday Intros No. 9: The Bookman's Tale, by Charlie Lovett

Welcome to First Chapter, First Paragraph Tuesday Intros,

hosted by Diane @

Bibliophile By The Sea!!

Every Tuesday, each participant
shares the first paragraph 

(sometimes two) from a book
they're reading,

or thinking about reading.

The book I've picked this week is...

 The Bookman's Tale
Charlie Lovett
Hardcover, 352 pages 
Viking
May 28, 2013
Contemporary Fiction, Historical Fiction, 
Literary Fiction, Mystery, Romance,
Thriller

About the Book
  
A mysterious portrait ignites an antiquarian bookseller’s search through time and the works of Shakespeare for his lost love.

Hay-on-Wye, 1995. Peter Byerly isn’t sure what drew him into this particular bookshop. Nine months earlier, the death of his beloved wife, Amanda, had left him shattered. The young antiquarian bookseller relocated from North Carolina to the English countryside, hoping to rediscover the joy he once took in collecting and restoring rare books. But upon opening an eighteenth-century study of Shakespeare forgeries, Peter is shocked when a portrait of Amanda tumbles out of its pages. Of course, it isn’t really her. The watercolor is clearly Victorian. Yet the resemblance is uncanny, and Peter becomes obsessed with learning the picture’s origins.

As he follows the trail back first to the Victorian era and then to Shakespeare’s time, Peter communes with Amanda’s spirit, learns the truth about his own past, and discovers a book that might definitively prove Shakespeare was, indeed, the author of all his plays.

Guaranteed to capture the hearts of everyone who truly loves books, The Bookman’s Tale is a former bookseller’s sparkling novel and a delightful exploration of one of literature’s most tantalizing mysteries, with echoes of Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind and A.S. Byatt’s Possession.=



Hay-on-Wye, Wales, Wednesday,
February 15, 1995 

Wales could be cold in February. Even without snow or wind the damp winter air permeated Peter's topcoat and settled in his bones as he stood one of the dozens of bookshops that crowded the narrow streets of Hay. Despite the warm glow in the window that illuminated a tantalizing display of Victorian novels, Peter was in no hurry to open the door. It had been nine months since he had entered a bookshop; another few minutes wouldn't make a difference. There had been a time when this was all so familiar, so safe; when stepping into a rare bookshop had been a moment of excitement, meeting a fellow book lover a part of a grand adventure.

Peter Byerly, was, after all, a bookseller. It was the profession that had brought him to England, again and again, and the profession that brought him to Hay-on-Wye, the famous town of books just over the border in Wales, on this dreary afternoon. He had visited Hay many times before, but today was the first time he had ever come alone. 
  

This novel immediately caught my eye
when I saw it on Amazon recently.
I was waiting for a better price, 
when, lo and behold, 
I found it in the bargain section at
Barnes & Noble last weekend!!
At $5.98 + tax, I just couldn't
pass it up!! And I LOVE the subject
matter, of course!   
From what I've posted above, 
would you say that
I should keep reading?