The Raft (titled The God of Spring in the U.S.) by Arabella Edge (2006), about French artist Théodore Géricault and his painting 'The Wreck of the Medusa,' inspired by a shipwreck off Mauritania in 1816. Other historical novels about shipwrecks: More about The Gentleman Poet at Powell's Books or Readers looking for a light, often humorous romp featuring an irresistible heroine will probably find The Gentleman Poet a delight. Readers looking for a realistic story and historical authenticity will likely be disappointed. It's more scintillating than the second half, dominated by what seems a stock romance plot featuring predictable but exaggerated crises until a very un-stock twist near the end.

The first half of the story centers on Elizabeth's adventures as she explores the island for foodstuffs and discovers her creative potential as a cook. Recipes are included, though in a charmingly antique style impracticable for modern kitchens. Unlike The Tempest, The Gentleman Poet includes no supernatural events, but it verges on fantasy as the determined and resourceful maidservant manages to keep her carping mistress in washed, sun-bleached, starched and pleated ruffs while gradually taking over cooking duties for half the stranded group and extending their menu to include such delicacies as spiced seabird breast wrapped in an improvised puff pastry of wild grain and goat butter, fried in sea-turtle oil.

The novel, inspired by Strachey's mention of a 'cook named Thomas Powell, who married a maidservant of one Mistress Horton, whose name was Elizabeth Persons,' imagines what might have happened if Shakespeare himself, in the guise of Strachey, had been aboard the Sea Venture and begun writing The Tempest while stranded on Bermuda. The Sea Venture was bringing settlers to the New World colony of Jamestown when a fearsome hurricane struck, after which the battered ship ran aground off Bermuda, the feared 'Devil's Islands.' Strachey and the other emigrants were stranded until they could build two smaller ships from the wreckage and sail on to Jamestown a year later. One of Shakespeare's late plays, probably written in 1610-11, The Tempest appeared shortly after William Strachey's account of a 1609 shipwreck. The Gentleman Poet is subtitled 'A Novel of Love, Danger, and Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Sea Venture by Kieran Doherty