What do you think?
Rate this book
Mystery Play: A Novel
Not yet published
Expected 13 Oct 26The youngest son in a family of historians who has been hunted by dark forces associated with Dracula finds himself in peril at the hands of a new threat—a thrilling novel from the bestselling author of The Historian.
When his mother passes away suddenly, Jay Turner finds himself at a crossroads. She was always secretive, raising him alone in Boston and staying single until her death. Returning to their brownstone to clear out her possessions, he finds two unusual objects: a partially burned scrap of newspaper bearing the name “Gael Brogan,” and a small antique volume bound in leather.
The sight of the volume is chilling. As a young scholar, his mother had been given the medieval book—one of a set commissioned by Vlad Tepes, otherwise known as Dracula, just before his death in 1477. She'd always warned Jay of how dangerous it was, and had donated it to a museum before she died . . . yet here it sits before him.
Taking leave from his position as a history instructor at a boys’ boarding school, Jay sets out to learn more about Gael Brogan, a prominent nineteenth century actor whose last and most famous role was the Count himself in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. As Jay begins to dig deeper—helped by a mysterious woman named Rhiannon he meets along the way—he uncovers a frightening story of a young actress who fell under Brogan's sway long ago. And before long, Jay and Rhiannon realize that something similarly implacable is also pursuing them.
Hypnotic and atmospheric, Mystery Play is a novel richly steeped in lore, pulsating with tension as it chronicles a dark secret history of rituals, religion, and immortality.
When his mother passes away suddenly, Jay Turner finds himself at a crossroads. She was always secretive, raising him alone in Boston and staying single until her death. Returning to their brownstone to clear out her possessions, he finds two unusual objects: a partially burned scrap of newspaper bearing the name “Gael Brogan,” and a small antique volume bound in leather.
The sight of the volume is chilling. As a young scholar, his mother had been given the medieval book—one of a set commissioned by Vlad Tepes, otherwise known as Dracula, just before his death in 1477. She'd always warned Jay of how dangerous it was, and had donated it to a museum before she died . . . yet here it sits before him.
Taking leave from his position as a history instructor at a boys’ boarding school, Jay sets out to learn more about Gael Brogan, a prominent nineteenth century actor whose last and most famous role was the Count himself in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. As Jay begins to dig deeper—helped by a mysterious woman named Rhiannon he meets along the way—he uncovers a frightening story of a young actress who fell under Brogan's sway long ago. And before long, Jay and Rhiannon realize that something similarly implacable is also pursuing them.
Hypnotic and atmospheric, Mystery Play is a novel richly steeped in lore, pulsating with tension as it chronicles a dark secret history of rituals, religion, and immortality.
592 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication October 13, 2026
About the author
Elizabeth Kostova
17 books5,158 followersElizabeth Kostova was born Elizabeth Z. Johnson in New London, Connecticut and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee where she graduated from the Webb School of Knoxville. She received her undergraduate degree from Yale University and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan, where she won the 2003 Hopwood Award for her Novel-in-Progress. She is married to a Bulgarian scholar and has taken his family name.
Her first novel, The Historian, was published in 2005 and it has become a best-seller.
In May 2007, the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation was created. The Foundation helps support Bulgarian creative writing, the translation of contemporary Bulgarian literature into English, and friendship between Bulgarian authors and American and British authors.
Kostova released her second novel The Swan Thieves on January 12, 2010. Her third novel, The Shadow Land, was released in 2017.
Her first novel, The Historian, was published in 2005 and it has become a best-seller.
In May 2007, the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation was created. The Foundation helps support Bulgarian creative writing, the translation of contemporary Bulgarian literature into English, and friendship between Bulgarian authors and American and British authors.
Kostova released her second novel The Swan Thieves on January 12, 2010. Her third novel, The Shadow Land, was released in 2017.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Remember how you felt about when the first Star Wars prequel came out in 1999? That is to say, fairly certain there was no way it was going to live up to the original trilogy, but excited to try it anyways because... against all odds... it could be good? Then, after spending two odd hours of your life and $9 (or whatever a theater ticket was back then), feeling strangely empty and flat - like, why did this have to exist at all? Why couldn't they have just left that imaginary world where it was?
Well, if you're anything like me, that's how you'll feel about Mystery Play if you enjoyed The Historian.
This book is most definitely a sequel, although the description deliberately obscures its relation, partly to avoid narrowing the audience by having potential readers feel they have prereqs and partly to avoid reminding people too much of the plot twists of the original book which this book takes out of the trunk, like old costumes, and puts on attempting for the same scares. It does not succeed. To paraphrase the quote from Jack Kemp, "I've read The Historian and you, sir, are no Historian."
Indeed, to continue the acting metaphor, this book reminded me of Marx's famous quip about 1848 being a literal travesty of 1789 that history plays "the first time as tragedy, the second as farce." While I make no claim that the original was great literature, it was a genuinely absorbing book that did not *feel* (at least for me) like it was 700 pages but at the same time felt like a world I genuinely enjoyed (maybe the wrong word?) living in.
The world of Mystery Play, a comparatively svelte 590 pages, is stilted and contrived and the book feels much longer. I'm surprised I made it through - tbh I found myself skimming a lot, particularly over Quinn's diary entries which were just too precious. However, never fear, I managed to catch lots of changing perspectives and random found diaries and reminisces and people staring at each other meaningfully and gasping and grasping arms and completely predictable relationships forming and driving to archives and books being destroyed and strange seals and whatnot. Also a huge body count that is treated with a remarkable casualness, and a fairy godmother like character who is for some reason named Helsa Grace and in my mind is Mystery's Play equivalent of Jar-Jar Binks.
There were a lot of these kinds of corny horror thriller elements in The Historian as well, but for me they did not take away from the reading experience in the same way perhaps because the central villain - Vlad Teppes - had an innate gravity and the central mythology was compelling and well-developed (in part because it was already existent). I don't know if it was just because I started skimming so much to just be done, but the dualing Eleusian mysteries plot just (introduced at exactly 50% the way through the book - formulaic if ever anything was!) didn't make a lot of sense and Gael Brogan wasn't a very compelling villain.
TL; DR. Don't.
A huge thanks anyways to NetGalley for the ARC.
Well, if you're anything like me, that's how you'll feel about Mystery Play if you enjoyed The Historian.
This book is most definitely a sequel, although the description deliberately obscures its relation, partly to avoid narrowing the audience by having potential readers feel they have prereqs and partly to avoid reminding people too much of the plot twists of the original book which this book takes out of the trunk, like old costumes, and puts on attempting for the same scares. It does not succeed. To paraphrase the quote from Jack Kemp, "I've read The Historian and you, sir, are no Historian."
Indeed, to continue the acting metaphor, this book reminded me of Marx's famous quip about 1848 being a literal travesty of 1789 that history plays "the first time as tragedy, the second as farce." While I make no claim that the original was great literature, it was a genuinely absorbing book that did not *feel* (at least for me) like it was 700 pages but at the same time felt like a world I genuinely enjoyed (maybe the wrong word?) living in.
The world of Mystery Play, a comparatively svelte 590 pages, is stilted and contrived and the book feels much longer. I'm surprised I made it through - tbh I found myself skimming a lot, particularly over Quinn's diary entries which were just too precious. However, never fear, I managed to catch lots of changing perspectives and random found diaries and reminisces and people staring at each other meaningfully and gasping and grasping arms and completely predictable relationships forming and driving to archives and books being destroyed and strange seals and whatnot. Also a huge body count that is treated with a remarkable casualness, and a fairy godmother like character who is for some reason named Helsa Grace and in my mind is Mystery's Play equivalent of Jar-Jar Binks.
There were a lot of these kinds of corny horror thriller elements in The Historian as well, but for me they did not take away from the reading experience in the same way perhaps because the central villain - Vlad Teppes - had an innate gravity and the central mythology was compelling and well-developed (in part because it was already existent). I don't know if it was just because I started skimming so much to just be done, but the dualing Eleusian mysteries plot just (introduced at exactly 50% the way through the book - formulaic if ever anything was!) didn't make a lot of sense and Gael Brogan wasn't a very compelling villain.
TL; DR. Don't.
A huge thanks anyways to NetGalley for the ARC.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I enjoyed The Historian (to which, as it turns out, this is a kind of sequel), so I was excited to delve into the ARC of this upcoming release. For the majority of the book, at least, it didn't disappoint.
Like Kostova's earlier work, Mystery Play is pure catnip for academics and historical researchers, deeply intriguing, with a tasteful hint of supernatural horror. The history of American theater in the 1890s was fascinating, as was the background on the ancient origins of theater and the titular mystery plays of the Middle Ages. Kostova spins a compelling yarn around the concept of modern theater as a descendant of these ancient rites, and of the power--real or imagined, cathartic or magical--of ritualistic performance.
Until the last, say, quarter of the novel, this was easily a four- or even five-star read (and I give those out very sparingly). The pacing was excellent, even across multiple POVs, dual timelines and epistolary chapters, which can be difficult to pull off. The horror element was subtle but effective--it genuinely had me jumping at odd noises in the house while reading late at night.
After ninety-plus chapters, however, the story resolved into a rushed climax and a major "reveal" that was predictable and somewhat melodramatic. I can forgive that, perhaps, but not the extraordinary amount of loose ends that followed. I was actually astonished how many questions were simply left unanswered, and not, I think, in an intentional way. So many mysteries dangled in front of the reader turned out to be mere set dressing and hollow stage props, if you will, extraneous and unnecessary to the story. Then, during a brief monologue from the antagonist in the climax, a character's fate seemed to be explained, only to be immediately contradicted one page later. I appreciate not wanting to fall into the trap of info-dumping, but when there is too little explanation and the story is a trip hazard of loose ends, the reader feels cheated.
A few other nitpicks: in the final climactic scene, the forces of evil are too easily dealt with, and mostly by a secondary character. Perhaps the protagonist could have had a more active role. There was also a tendency, throughout the book, to have characters overanalyze in dialogue (maybe he thinks I took the item, maybe he thinks you helped me, maybe he knew I asked you about it, maybe he knows me and maybe he doesn't). Filler lines in between like "There's another possibility" and "What?" just seem to bog down the story. I'm reminded, also, of a great deal of fuss made over the logistical adventures of a button (or two), to no real purpose. The Dracula book, which is central to the previous novel and appears briefly in this one, turns out to be irrelevant and should have been left out.
Make no mistake, the ideas here are fascinating, but so many of them turn down blind alleys and culminate in dead ends, it's as though the book has not been fully edited. Still, 90% of the reading experience was a delight. I hope the publishers consider a bit of revision, at least to tie up some of the loose ends.
Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the ARC!
Like Kostova's earlier work, Mystery Play is pure catnip for academics and historical researchers, deeply intriguing, with a tasteful hint of supernatural horror. The history of American theater in the 1890s was fascinating, as was the background on the ancient origins of theater and the titular mystery plays of the Middle Ages. Kostova spins a compelling yarn around the concept of modern theater as a descendant of these ancient rites, and of the power--real or imagined, cathartic or magical--of ritualistic performance.
Until the last, say, quarter of the novel, this was easily a four- or even five-star read (and I give those out very sparingly). The pacing was excellent, even across multiple POVs, dual timelines and epistolary chapters, which can be difficult to pull off. The horror element was subtle but effective--it genuinely had me jumping at odd noises in the house while reading late at night.
After ninety-plus chapters, however, the story resolved into a rushed climax and a major "reveal" that was predictable and somewhat melodramatic. I can forgive that, perhaps, but not the extraordinary amount of loose ends that followed. I was actually astonished how many questions were simply left unanswered, and not, I think, in an intentional way. So many mysteries dangled in front of the reader turned out to be mere set dressing and hollow stage props, if you will, extraneous and unnecessary to the story. Then, during a brief monologue from the antagonist in the climax, a character's fate seemed to be explained, only to be immediately contradicted one page later. I appreciate not wanting to fall into the trap of info-dumping, but when there is too little explanation and the story is a trip hazard of loose ends, the reader feels cheated.
A few other nitpicks: in the final climactic scene, the forces of evil are too easily dealt with, and mostly by a secondary character. Perhaps the protagonist could have had a more active role. There was also a tendency, throughout the book, to have characters overanalyze in dialogue (maybe he thinks I took the item, maybe he thinks you helped me, maybe he knew I asked you about it, maybe he knows me and maybe he doesn't). Filler lines in between like "There's another possibility" and "What?" just seem to bog down the story. I'm reminded, also, of a great deal of fuss made over the logistical adventures of a button (or two), to no real purpose. The Dracula book, which is central to the previous novel and appears briefly in this one, turns out to be irrelevant and should have been left out.
Make no mistake, the ideas here are fascinating, but so many of them turn down blind alleys and culminate in dead ends, it's as though the book has not been fully edited. Still, 90% of the reading experience was a delight. I hope the publishers consider a bit of revision, at least to tie up some of the loose ends.
Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the ARC!
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I was ecstatic when I saw that Elizabeth Kostova had written another thriller like The Historian. It was a little bit unclear if Mystery Play was a sequel to The Historian. It's not front and center in the book's marketing, which I think can be explained by the two novels being published by different publishers. But it IS a sequel. The main character, Jay Turner, is the son of one of the main characters of The Historian, who, in that book, is a teenager living in Amsterdam who discovers dangerous secrets that tie her family to Dracula, a deadly presence who is the historical Vlad Tepes (the Impaler). Let's get this out of the way: Dracula as an antagonist is a hard act to follow, but I think Kostova has successfully created one in "Gael Brogan," and the theater's ancient roots in myth and sacrifice are very interesting and fresher to me than the vampire lore we are all familiar with by this point. What I was most looking forward to in another Kostova novel was immersion in evocative atmosphere, experiencing the sense of the uncanny, and most of all, the intellectual puzzle of solving a mystery that depends on libraries, museums, and archives. I hit those three sweet spots once again, and I particularly liked the atmosphere of a Maine collection of cottages; a Connecticut restored 19th-century theater/mansion; Charleston, SC; and, most of all, an unnerving passage from the Hebrides in the 1930s. I read that Hebrides passage twice, my pulses racing with excitement, appreciating every creepy detail.
I have to say that the three main characters of The Historian--the teenage daughter, and, in an earlier timeline, her graduate student father, Paul, and Helen Rossi, a fearless academic educated in Hungary--pulled me in more than the two main characters of Mystery Play: teacher Jay Turner and grad student Rhiannon. I also found I connected more strongly to a character in a 19th century timeline, a young actress named Quinn, and to a secondary modern-day character: a Charleston archivist who is an older single Southern woman with an acerbic wit. I wish she had appeared in Mystery Play earlier! I didn't care for an Italian flashback sequence that I can't properly critique without spoiling the plot--I will just say I wasn't persuaded by a crucial decision made by a key character about the aftermath of a love affair. I was also confused by a twist that came after the main thriller climax. But with an ambitious book like this, I am not going to fall in love with every single character and plot twist. I have to say I really enjoyed Mystery Play and I hope Elizabeth Kostova gives us more historical thrillers like Mystery Play and The Historian. I recommend this novel! It's such a delight to get this level of atmosphere, lore, and suspense.
I have to say that the three main characters of The Historian--the teenage daughter, and, in an earlier timeline, her graduate student father, Paul, and Helen Rossi, a fearless academic educated in Hungary--pulled me in more than the two main characters of Mystery Play: teacher Jay Turner and grad student Rhiannon. I also found I connected more strongly to a character in a 19th century timeline, a young actress named Quinn, and to a secondary modern-day character: a Charleston archivist who is an older single Southern woman with an acerbic wit. I wish she had appeared in Mystery Play earlier! I didn't care for an Italian flashback sequence that I can't properly critique without spoiling the plot--I will just say I wasn't persuaded by a crucial decision made by a key character about the aftermath of a love affair. I was also confused by a twist that came after the main thriller climax. But with an ambitious book like this, I am not going to fall in love with every single character and plot twist. I have to say I really enjoyed Mystery Play and I hope Elizabeth Kostova gives us more historical thrillers like Mystery Play and The Historian. I recommend this novel! It's such a delight to get this level of atmosphere, lore, and suspense.
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
It was good. Wild ride and easy to follow. Good characters and action and locations.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews