The School of Night by Louis Bayard

So what do you know about Sir Walter Raleigh, Thomas Harriot, Christopher Marlowe or William Shakespeare?  Bayard plays fast and loose with the details of their lives to create a mystery of the Dan Brown variety.  In 1603 these men secretly questioned the religious and scientific restrictions of the Elizabethan era in a secret society they called the school of the night.  Four hundred years later a group of literary collectors are prepared to lie, steal and even murder to obtain a letter that one of these creative giants wrote to another - a letter that could change the way any one of them would be remembered in a new and very different history.  There is enough real history to make you to turn to late night research way to many times.  I think I liked Pale Blue Eye better but mostly because he did such a good job writing story about Poe that read so much like it was written by Poe.  On the other hand I learned way more about all of these people trying to tease out the fact from fiction in this book than I ever learned in a history class.