In 1986, Charles Nicholl travels through Thailand to learn about the spiritual traditions of forest Buddhism in the north of the country. But interesting things have a habit of getting in the way. When Nicholl meets Harry, an old French Indochina hand, on the night train north with his tales of Kachin jade and Shan opium it leads to a journey along the banks of the Mekong, into the Golden Triangle and then across the border into Burma, in the company of the book s Thai heroine, Kitai.

Rimbaud was the original enfant terrible. A poetic genius, he destroyed all those who attempted to befriend him, most notoriously wrecking the marriage and sanity of the poet Verlaine. Having conquered the literary world of Paris, he abandoned France and in the dogdays of August 1880 he disembarked in Aden, on the coast of Yemen, a lean twenty-five-year-old Frenchman carrying only a brown suitcase fastened with four leather straps and a touch of fever. The subsequent period, the lost years , is the subject of this biographical quest.

In 1612, Shakespeare gave evidence in a court case at Westminster-and it is the only occasion on which his actual spoken words were recorded. In "The Lodger Shakespeare," Charles Nicholl applies a powerful biographical magnifying glass to this fascinating but little-known episode in the Bard's life. Drawing on evidence from a wide variety of sources, Nicholl creates a compellingly detailed account of the circumstances in which Shakespeare lived and worked amid the bustle of early seventeenth-century London. This elegant, often unexpected exploration presents a new and original look at Shakespeare as he was writing such masterpieces as "Othello, Measure for Measure," and "King Lear."

History leaves traces of the people - Byron, Shakespeare, Rimbaud, Leonardo - living through it, in portraits, documents and books. In Traces Remain, Charles Nicholl, the acclaimed author of The Reckoning, The Lodger: Shakespeare on Silver Street and Leonardo da Vinci: The Flights of the Mind, transforms these glimpses through time into comic and poignant vignettes, and curious, intriguing puzzles. From a mysterious painting found in a Hereford house to the death of an alchemist, and from a new Jack the Ripper suspect to a gold hunt in El Dorado, Nicholl's twenty-five fascinating essays take in two murders, three disappearances and a missing Shakespeare play to show the marvel and tenacity of these wonderful historical traces. 'Our finest literary and historical detective ... Deliciously readable' Financial Times 'Charles Nicholl confirms his role as literature's historic Holmes ... thoroughly captivating' Scotsman 'Some writers are so good at what they do that they can take you anywhere. Charles Nicholl is one of them' Irish Times

In 1612 Shakespeare gave evidence at the Court of Requests in Westminster - it is the only occasion his spoken words are recorded. The case seems routine - a dispute over an unpaid marriage-dowry - but it opens up an unexpected window into the dramatist's famously obscure life-story. Charles Nicholl applies a powerful biographical magnifying glass to this fascinating episode in Shakespeare's life. Marshalling evidence from a wide variety of sources, including previously unknown documentary material on the Mountjoys, he conjures up a detailed and compelling description of the circumstances in which Shakespeare lived and worked, and in which he wrote such plays as Othello, Measure for Measure and King Lear.

Leonardo is the greatest, most multi-faceted and most mysterious of all Renaissance artists, but extraordinarily, considering his enormous reputation, this is the first full-length biography in English for several decades. Prize-winning author Charles Nicholl has immersed himself for five years in all the manuscripts, paintings and artefacts to produce an intimate portrait' of Leonardo. He uses these contemporary materials - his notebooks and sketchbooks, eye witnesses and early biographies, etc - as a way into the mental tone and physical texture of his life and has made myriad small discoveries about him and his work and his circle of associates. Among much else, the book identifies what Nicholl argues is an unknown portrait of the artist hanging in a church near Lodi in northern Italy. It also contains new material on his eccentric assistant Tomasso Masini, on his homosexual affairs in Florence, and on his curious relationship with a female model and/or prostitute from Cremona. A masterpiece of modern biography.

The Reckoning is the first full-length investigation of the killing, tracing Marlowe's shadowy political dealings, his involvement in covert intelligence work, and the charges of heresy and homosexuality against him. Critical new evidence is uncovered about his three companions on that last day in Deptford, and about the sinister role of the informer Richard Baines. But more than that, The Reckoning is an enthralling revelation of the whole extraordinary underworld of Elizabethan crime and espionage, a 'secret theatre' in which nearly every historical figure familiar to us, from hack poet to queen's high minister, seems to have played a part.

Here, in a tour-de-force of precise scholarship and dazzling ingenuity, Charles Nicholl penetrates four centuries of obscurity to expose not only a complex and unsettling story of entrapment and betrayal, chimerical plots and sordid felonics, but also a fascinating vision of the underside of an entire culture.

"This brilliantly written reconstruction of Sir Walter Raleigh's 1595 South American journey combines painstaking scholarship, vivid travelogue, and an intuitive sensitivity for the many meanings of the El Dorado myth. . . . Nicholl brings this six-week expedition to life. . . . A rare treat for both intellect and imagination."--"Kirkus Reviews"
"Walter Raleigh . . . was one of those Elizabethan all-rounders who still seem staggeringly larger than life. . . . Mr. Nicholl's cogent reconstruction of the journey uses Raleigh's own account, 'The Discoverie of Guiana'--part truth, part advertising, part rhapsody--and much well-found ancillary material."--Anthony Bailey, "New York Times"
"Like "The Reckoning," his brilliant account of the murder of Christopher Marlowe, Nicholl's new book might be called an exercise in historical conjuring. The Creature in the Map is an effort not only to analyse but also to call into presence the lived experience of the voyage Raleigh undertook in 1595 to the Orinoco Delta in what is now Venezuela."--Stephen Greenblatt, "Times Literary Supplement"
"Charles Nicholl belongs to an elite company, that of historians who know how to make research into arcane matters and distant times as engrossing as "In Cold Blood" or "All the President's Men,""--Michael Dirda, "Washington Post"