Lord Byron was the greatest writer and most notorious, scandalous lover of his age - an irresistible attraction for a sheltered, bookish, and passionate young woman like Eliza Esmond. Eliza believes she's met Byron on the doorstep of his publisher, and that her dreams have come true when he arranges to meet her in secret. But what if the man she believes to be Byron is someone else - a look-alike named John Polidori, who once toured Europe as Byron's doctor? And if Polidori is the true author of a wildly successful book everyone believes to have been written by Byron, who is the real imposter? Stylish, subtle, and seductive, 'Imposture' is about ambition, fantasy, the power of artistic greatness, and the consequences of celebrity - by a gifted novelist of true talent. Reading group guide available.

A psychological thriller of passionate attachment and emotional cruelty, involving a love triangle between Lord Byron, his half-sister, and his wife. To dissolve a dreadfully mistaken union between two formidable egos: surely it should only take "a quiet adjustment"? Inspired by the actual biography of Lord Byron—the greatest literary figure and most notorious sex symbol of his age—Benjamin Markovits reimagines Byron's marriage to the capable, intellectual, and tormented Annabella and the scandal that broke open their lives and riveted the world around them: Byron's incestuous relationship with his impetuous half-sister, Gus. Their very different understandings of love and obligation lead them all—and the reader—headlong to a devastating conclusion. Acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic for his memorable prose and acute sense of character, Markovits here sets a new standard for the literary historical novel. A Quiet Adjustment is at once immersed in its period, an homage to Byron and his work, and a thoroughly modern fiction in the psychologically incisive vein of Ian McEwan and Colm Tóibín.

When his former colleague Peter Sullivan dies, Ben Markovits inherits unpublished manuscripts about the life of Lord Byron—including the novels Imposture and A Quiet Adjustment. Ben’s own literary career is in the doldrums, and he tries to revive it by publishing and writing about his dead friend, whose reimagining of Byron’s lost memoirs—titled Childish Loves—may provide a key to Sullivan’s own life and tarnished reputation. Acting as a literary sleuth, Ben sorts through boxes of Sullivan’s writing; reads between the lines of his scandalous, Byron- inspired stories; meets with the Society for the Publication of the Dead; and tracks down people from Peter’s past in an effort to untangle rumor from reality. In the process, he crafts a masterful story-within-a-story that turns on uncomfortable questions about childhood and sexual awakening, innocence and attraction, while exploring the lives of three very different writers and their brushes with success and failure in both literature and life.