The First Folio

·The first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, printed in 1623

·Actual title: Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies

·Contains 36 plays, 18 of which are not known to have been printed previously

·Dedicated to "the Incomparable Brethren," William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, and Philip Herbert, 1st Earl of Montgomery

·About 1,000 copies were printed. They sold for £1 each.

·228 copies survive, only 40 of them complete. The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., has the largest collection, with 79 copies. (Shakespeare's Globe, in London, does not own a copy, though I endow it with one in my novel.)

·The highest price recorded at auction was $5.6 million (then £3.73 million) at Christie's in New York in 2001. Sir Paul Getty is rumored to have paid £3.5 million in a private sale in 2003.

As Kate Stanley begins to suspect, that's more than enough to kill for….