Notable

By COLETTE BANCROFT
Published March 18, 2007

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Three new novels employ famed authors as fictional characters.

Burning Bright (Dutton, $24.95) is the latest from Tracy Chevalier, who brought the painter Vermeer to life in Girl With a Pearl Earring. In this novel, she spins her plot around the mystical, revolutionary poet William Blake.

The Secret of Lost Things (Doubleday, $23.95) is Sheridan Hay's debut novel, in which a young woman takes a job in a Manhattan bookstore and becomes involved in the search for a lost work by Herman Melville - whose spirit is all too present.

The Grave Tattoo (St. Martin's Minotaur, $24.95) by masterful Scottish mystery writer Val McDermid turns a young scholar into a detective when a tattooed body is unearthed from a British bog, bringing to light a secret involving the poet William Wordsworth and mutineer Fletcher Christian.

Colette Bancroft, Times book editor