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SHORTLISTED 2019 COSTA BOOK OF THE YEARIrish Book Awards NOVEL OF THE YEARShadowplay by New York Times best-selling author, Joseph O'Connor, is set during the golden age of West End theater in a London shaken by the crimes of Jack the Ripper.Henry Irving is Victorian London's most celebrated actor and theater impresario. He has introduced groundbreaking ideas to the theater, bringing to the stage performances that are spectacular, shocking, and always entertaining. When Irving decides to open his own London theater with the goal of making it the greatest playhouse on earth, he hires a young Dublin clerk harboring literary ambitions by the name of Bram Stoker to manage it. As Irving's theater grows in reputation and financial solvency, he lures to his company of mummers the century's most beloved actress, the dazzlingly talented leading lady Ellen Terry, who nightly casts a spell not only on her audiences but also on Stoker and Irving both.