12ac: A man's man, we hear (and his dog).
I have HE?R - I think HERR (Thomas Mann = German; maybe sounds like "hair", of the dog?) but I'm not at all clear about the parsing, and it's my last clue. Helft mir, bitte!
18A - Benedick (Much ado about nothing)
7D - Sullivan's solitaire - Patience
9A - Foster's wa to reality - escape
3D - Shakespeare's ambitious queen - Margaret (of Anjou)
15A - Stone book - Lust for life (Irving Stone)