This is not your parents' Macbeth or the one you read in high-school English class. A dark and bloody tale of a Scottish lord and his beloved wife trying to save their eleventh-century kingdom from its corrupt king, Macbeth: A Novel hurtles toward listeners in gripping contemporary prose, thanks to novelists David Hewson and A. J. Hartley. With the verve of today's fast-paced thrillers, Hewson and Hartley create an electrifying tapestry out of Shakespeare's tale, relaunching two of literature's most powerful characters. Macbeth, a loyal servant to the Scottish crown, has shed blood time and again for his homeland. And yet the country is crumbling around him, torn apart by warring clans and foreign marauders and ruled by a corrupt, self-serving king. Desperate to preserve the kingdom, Macbeth and his wife, Skena, craft an ambitious plan to keep Scotland whole, never intending the tragic spiral of murder, treachery, and personal collapse that ensues.