William Shakespeare

The complete, uncut text of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, annotated by someone who has questions. Ellis Keen's commentary doesn't wait in the margins. It runs straight through the play, scene by scene, like a smart friend beside you who has read this too many times to stay quiet. A three-day situationship. Six bodies. Zero functioning adults. We hand this to teenagers as the greatest love story ever written.
It is a better story than that, and a worse one. This edition contains: - A full accounting of every adult who had a chance to prevent this and didn't - The case that Friar Lawrence committed at least three crimes and fled the scene of a fourth - Romeo, pining over another girl the night he met Juliet, which somehow never comes up - Juliet at thirteen. Shakespeare says so twice; every film quietly forgets it - A timeline that fits the whole tragedy inside one long weekend The love story.
The horror story. The masterpiece. It is all three at once, and pretending otherwise is how we got here. Questionable Classics. The books you were assigned. The commentary you deserved. Next up: The Scarlet Letter* and Frankenstein*.