Looking for a reinterpretation of Lady Macbeth's dramatic life? Here are four new historical novels to tempt you.

It's a trend in historical fiction for authors to dig into the roots of vilified characters and examine whether our long-held preconceptions hold true. Feminist reinterpretations of historical women's lives are likewise popular. These two topics converge in four new and upcoming historical novels about the figure best known to us as Lady Macbeth. It turns out that Shakespeare's depiction of the 11th-century Scottish queen—as a ruthless and manipulative woman driven to madness—and her husband is not exactly historically accurate. Like other writers of historical fiction, he used creative license to tell the story he wanted.

It's rare to see four different novels about the same person (other than maybe the mythological figure Medusa) appearing so close together, an example of great minds (and their editors) thinking alike. Each author has made their choice on the approach to follow: do they begin with Shakespeare's anti-heroine?  Do they go back a thousand years in history and try to find the real Lady Macbeth, a Scottish noblewoman named Gruoch?  Or do they attempt to combine the two?  


Part of Scottish publishing imprint Polygon's Darkland Tales series of "punky, anarchic retellings of landmark moments from our past," well-known crime writer Val McDermid's Queen Macbeth is a short novel that promises to expose the "patriarchal prejudices of history" in a dark, gritty story of a queen (and her three companions - sound familiar?) fleeing a dark fate.  Out in May 2024.

The debut novel by Joel H. Morris, who holds a comparative literature PhD and has extensive familiarity with teaching Shakespeare's play, goes back to the characters' historical origins to examine the circumstances which led a young woman of royal Scottish blood (called "the Lady" here) to marry a powerful, enigmatic man as her second husband, and try to overcome the evil of an old prophecy.  Out from Putnam in March 2024.

Falling into the romantasy genre (historical romantasy, to be specific!), Ava Reid's Lady Macbeth, to be published by the fantasy imprint Del Rey in August 2024, is described as a gothic reimagining of this famous character's life, a novel of dark secrets, prophecies, and occult battles featuring an ambitious female lead.

Gruoch, a young woman of Pictish heritage, comes of age in a violent medieval world and expects to be queen one day, as foretold in a prophecy, and becomes engaged to the royal heir, Duncan, in service of this goal... but life has a way of throwing roadblocks in her path to the throne.  Published last year in the UK by Raven Books (at right) and by Harper Perennial in the US in October 2023 (at left).