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In Absentia
By Morris Panych. 2012
Four seasons after her husband Tom's disappearance, Colette remains emotionally paralyzed, isolated in a country cottage. She waits in anguish,…
not knowing whether he is dead or alive, but clinging to hope. A young stranger in a jean jacket waves to her from the frozen lake - a sign? She emerges to give him her husband's parka - strangely, the boy has a likeness to Tom.What is the stranger's connection to her geologist husband, kidnapped more than a year before by leftist guerrillas in Colombia? How does this slyly seductive young stranger happen to show up at her home in rural Ontario, thousands of miles away? He seems to know more about Colette than he should, and as he slowly insinuates himself into her life, Colette's attentive sister, Evelyn, and her helpful neighbor Bill become increasingly alarmed.Part mystery, part moving story of vanished love, In Absentia explores the notion of disappearance, articulated in very personal terms. Through the tough, time-shifting action of the play, Colette reflects on her marriage and past love, offering rich associative memories while also uncovering the hidden and inaccessible - that which is made to disappear from view.Guilt and grief, infidelity and infertility, loss and longing are the deeper subjects Panych explores here. At the same time, the play examines the desire to make connections in life - thoughts to deeds, intentions to outcomes - in scenes often enlivened by the playwright's trademark humor.Cast of 3 men and 2 women.Fugitive Kind
By Tennessee Williams, Allean Hale. 2001
Social outcasts, misfit survivors, dangerous passions—Tennessee Williams fleshed out the characters and themes that would dominate his later work in…
Fugitive Kind, one of his earliest plays. Fugitive Kind, one of Tennessee Williams's earliest plays, is one of his richest in dramatic material. Written in 1937 when the playwright was still Thomas Lanier Williams, Fugitive Kind introduces the character who will inhabit most of his later plays: the marginal man or woman who, through no personal fault, is a misfit in society but who demonstrates an admirable will to survive. Signature Tennessee Williams' characters, situations, and even the title (which was used as The Fugitive Kind for the 1960 film based on Orpheus Descending) have their genesis here. At age twenty-six, Williams was still learning his craft and this, his second full-length play, shows his debt to sources as diverse as thirties gangster films (The Petrified Forest, Winterset) and Romeo and Juliet. Fugitive Kind, with its star-crossed lovers and big city slum setting, takes place in a flophouse on the St. Louis waterfront in the shadow of Eads Bridge, where Williams spent Saturdays away from his shoe factory job and met his characters: jobless wayfarers on the dole, young writers and artists of the WPA, even gangsters and G-men. Fugitive Kind was also Williams's second play to be produced by The Mummers, a St. Louis theatre group devoted to drama of social protest. Called "vital and absorbing" by a contemporary review in The St. Louis Star-Times, this play reveals the young playwright's own struggle between his radical-socialist sympathies and his poetic inclinations, and signals his future reputation as our most compassionate lyric dramatist.Spring Storm
By Tennessee Williams, Dan Isaac. 1999
"A crucible of so many elements that would later shape and characterize Williams's work."--World Literature Today When Tennessee Williams read…
Spring Storm aloud to his playwriting class at the University of Iowa in 1938, he was met with silence and embarrassment. His professor, the renowned E. C. Mabie, remarked as he got up and dismissed the seminar, "Well, we all have to paint our nudes!" Tom's earlier comment in his journal that the play "is well-constructed, no social propaganda, and is suitable for the commercial stage" seems accurate enough in 1999, but woefully naive deep in the Depression when the play's sexual explicitness--particularly its matter-of-fact acceptance of a woman's right to her own sexuality--would have been seen as not only shocking but also politically radical. Spring Storm would later be disavowed by the author as "simply a study of Sex--a blind animal urge or force (like the regenerative force of April) gripping four lives and leading them into a tangle of cruel and ugly relations." But the solid and deft characterizations of the four young people whose lives intertwine--the sexually alive Heavenly Critchfield, her earthy lover Dick Miles, Heavenly's wealthy but tongue-tied admirer Arthur Shannon, and the repressed librarian Hertha Nielson who loves Arthur--are archetypes of characters we will meet again and again in the Williams canon. Epic in scope, a bit melodramatic in execution, tragic in outcome, Spring Storm created a wave of excitement among theatre insiders when it was given a staged reading at The Ensemble Studio Theatre's Octoberfest '96. This edition has been prepared, with an illuminating introduction, by Dan Isaac, who initiated the Octoberfest production.Clothes for a Summer Hotel: Play
By Tennessee Williams. 1983
This late play by Tennessee Williams explores the troubled relationship between F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. The late Tennessee Williams's…
Clothes for a Summer Hotelmade its New York debut in 1980. Here Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, often seen as symbols of the doomed youth of the jazz age, become two halves of a single creative psyche, each part alternately feeding and then devouring the other. Set in Highland Hospital near Asheville, North Carolina, where Zelda spent her last confinement, this "ghost play" begins several years after Scott's death of a heart attack in California. But the past is "still always present" in Zelda, and Williams's constant shifting of chronology and mixing of remembrance with ghostly re-enactment suggest that our real intimacy is with the shadow characters of our own minds. As Williams said in the Author's Note to the Broadway production: "Our reason for taking extraordinary license with time and place is that in an asylum and on its grounds liberties of this kind are quite prevalent: and also these liberties allow us to explore in more depth what we believe is truth of character." Williams poses the inevitable, unanswerable questions: Did Scott prevent Zelda from achieving an independent creativity? Did Zelda's demands force Scott to squander his talents and turn to alcohol? Whose betrayal--emotional, creative, sexual--destroyed the other? But he poses these questions in a new way: in the act of creation, Zelda and Scott are now aware of their eventual destruction, and the creative fire that consumed two artists combines symbolically with the fire that ended Zelda's life.Now the Cats With Jeweled Claws & Other One-Act Plays
By Tennessee Williams, Thomas Keith. 1982
"The peak of my virtuosity was in the one-act plays--like firecrackers in a rope." --Tennessee Williams This new collection of…
fantastic, lesser-known one-acts contains some of Williams's most potent, comical and disturbing short plays?Upper East Side ladies dine out during the apocalypse in Now the Cats With Jeweled Claws, while the poet Hart Crane is confronted by his mother at the bottom of the ocean in Steps Must Be Gentle. Five previously unpublished plays include A Recluse and His Guest, and The Strange Play, in which we witness a woman's entire life lived within a twenty-four-hour span. This volume is edited, with an introduction and notes, by the editor, acting teacher, and theater scholar Thomas Keith.Belleville
By Amy Herzog. 2014
"A quietly devastating play... Both a perceptive drama depicting the sudden fraying of a young marriage and a nail-biting psychological…
thriller... Belleville is among the most suspenseful plays I've seen in years." - Charles Isherwood, New York Times"Masterly... Among the new crop of young American playwrights, Herzog is in a class by herself." - Richard Zoglin, TimeAbby and Zack, young American newlyweds, have abandoned a comfortable postgraduate life in the states for Belleville, a bustling, bohemian, multicultural Parisian neighborhood. But as secrets both minor and monumental are revealed, their fraught relationship begins to unravel. Belleville examines the limits of trust and dependency in a world where love can turn pathological and our most intimate relationships may not be what they seem.AMY HERZOG's plays include 4,000 Miles (Pulitzer Prize finalist), After the Revolution and The Great God Pan. Ms. Herzog is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Whiting Writers' Award, an Obie Award and the Helen Merrill Award for Aspiring Playwrights.The Stranger: Now a major Netflix show (Myron Bolitar Ser. #11)
By Harlan Coben. 2015
'The modern master of the hook and twist' DAN BROWN Adam Price has a lot to lose: a beautiful family,…
a big house, a good job - a perfect life.But then he meets a stranger in a bar and learns a devastating secret about his wife.With the mirage of perfection shattered, Adam finds himself caught up in something far darker than his wife's deception.And if he doesn't make the right moves, the conspiracy he's stumbled into will not only ruin lives - it will end them.Praise for Harlan Coben:'One of the all-time greats - pick up any one of his thrillers and you'll find a riveting, surprising story with a big, beating heart' GILLIAN FLYNN'With convincing characters and a strong emotional heart, you're effortlessly swept along to a tense and dramatic conclusion' SUNDAY MIRRORRope
By Patrick Hamilton. 1929
The brilliantly tense play that became Hitchcock's masterpiece, starring James Stewart.Believing themselves to be intellectually superior to their contemporaries, flatmates…
Brandon and Philip murder their friend David Kentley purely to see if they can get away with it. They then throw a cocktail party, serving food from the top of the trunk where they have hidden David's body. Their guests include both David's father and fiancée, as well as college lecturer Rupert Cadell, who becomes increasingly suspicious as the evening wears on.The Escape Room: 'One of my favourite books of the year' LEE CHILD
By Megan Goldin. 2019
Welcome to the escape room. Your goal is simple. Get out alive.In the lucrative world of Wall Street finance, Vincent,…
Jules, Sylvie and Sam are the ultimate high-flyers. Ruthlessly ambitious, they make billion-dollar deals and live lives of outrageous luxury. Getting rich is all that matters, and they'll do anything to get ahead.When the four of them become trapped in an elevator escape room, things start to go horribly wrong. They have to put aside their fierce office rivalries and work together to solve the clues that will release them. But in the confines of the elevator the dark secrets of their team are laid bare. They are made to answer for profiting from a workplace where deception, intimidation and sexual harassment thrive.Tempers fray and the escape room's clues turn more and more ominous, leaving the four of them dangling on the precipice of disaster. If they want to survive, they'll have to solve one more final puzzle: which one of them is a killer?Praise for The Escape Room:"High wire tension from the first moment to the last. Four ruthless people locked in a deadly game where victory means survival. Gripping and unforgettable!" Harlan Coben"Fantastic. One of my favourite books of the year." Lee Child"Amazing...a thriller set in an elevator [that explores] the vast territory of people's worst natures. A nightmarish look inside ourselves. Simply riveting." Louise Penny"A sharp, slick, utterly engrossing thriller. This knockout debut hooked me from the first page and didn't let go." Cristina Alger, USA Today bestselling author of The Banker's WifeThe Safe Place: The most addictive summer thriller
By Anna Downes. 2020
NO PHONESNO OUTSIDERSNO ESCAPE'An exciting and compelling new voice, Anna Downes' The Safe Place is a very accomplished debut' B.A.…
Paris, Sunday Times bestselling author of The DilemmaRated 4.5 * on NetGalley, this international bestseller is perfect for fans of Liane Moriarty, Lesley Kara and Ruth WareA BEAUTIFUL HOME MIGHT HIDE DANGEROUS SECRETSEmily Proudman has been offered the chance of a lifetime - leave her messy London life, move to a beautiful estate in France and help her boss' wife take care of their daughter, Aurelia. It seems like the perfect opportunity to start again.But once there, Emily soon starts to suspect that her charismatic new employers aren't telling her the whole truth. That there are even dangerous secrets hidden beneath the glamourous facade. Rather than throwing herself headlong into this oasis of wine-soaked days by the pool, Emily can't help but ask questions. Why have the family been moved to this isolated house so far from home? Why does Aurelia refuse to speak or be touched? Why are there whispers in the night? The only problem is, the more Emily knows, the less chance there is she will ever be able to leave . . .PRAISE FOR THE SAFE PLACE'Tense and atmospheric with the seemingly idyllic, yet eerie, setting. A truly gripping read'Karen Hamilton, bestselling author of The Perfect Girlfriend'An outstanding debut. The Safe Place is destined to be a book club favourite'Chris Hammer, award-winning author of Scrublands'It's such a rare thing - a claustrophobic, addictive thriller that lets you actually feel for all of the characters involved'Gytha Lodge, bestselling author of She Lies in Wait'Compellingly disturbing. Anna Downes is a powerful story writer who will lull you into a false sense of security - and then pounce. An author to be watched'Jane Corry, bestselling author of My Husband's Wife 'A brilliantly atmospheric novel that keeps you equally gripped and unsettled from page one. Starkly original and with an alarmingly plausible premise, this is destined to be a bestseller'J.P. Pomare, bestselling author of Call Me Evie'A dark and wonderful debut that lulls you in with beautiful prose and complex, believable characters, then beats you over the head with a killer plot and a thrilling climax. Everyone will be talking about this book!'Christian White, bestselling author of The Nowhere ChildCoronado
By Dennis Lehane. 2006
A small southern town gives birth to a dangerous man with a broken heart and a high-powered rifle... A young…
girl, caught up in an inner-city gang war, crosses the line from victim to avenger... An innocent man is hunted by government agents for an unspecified crime... A boy and a girl fall in love while ransacking a rich man's house during the waning days of the Vietnam War... A compromised psychiatrist confronts the unstable patient he slept with... A father and a son wage a lethal battle of wits over the whereabouts of a stolen diamond and a missing woman.In turn suspenseful, surreal, romantic, and tragically comic, these tales journey headlong into the heart of our myths - about class, gender, freedom, and regeneration through violence - and reveal that the truth waiting for us there is not what we'd expect.Shooting Martha
By David Thewlis. 2021
'A riotously good novel, witty and earnest, brimming with sharply drawn characters and creeping suspense. David Thewlis is a fabulous…
writer' Anna Bailey, Sunday Times bestselling author of Tall BonesCelebrated director Jack Drake can't get through his latest film (his most personal yet) without his wife Martha's support. The only problem is, she's dead...When Jack sees Betty Dean - actress, mother, trainwreck - playing the part of a crazed nun on stage in an indie production of The Devils, he is struck dumb by her resemblance to Martha. Desperate to find a way to complete his masterpiece, he hires her to go and stay in his house in France and resuscitate Martha in the role of 'loving spouse'.But as Betty spends her days roaming the large, sunlit rooms of Jack's mansion - filled to the brim with odd treasures and the occasional crucifix - and her evenings playing the part of Martha over scripted video calls with Jack, she finds her method acting taking her to increasingly dark places. And as Martha comes back to life, she carries with her the truth about her suicide - and the secret she guarded until the end.A darkly funny novel set between a London film set and a villa in the south of France.A mix of Vertigo and Jonathan Coe, written by a master storyteller.PRAISE FOR DAVID THEWLIS'S FICTION 'David Thewlis has written an extraordinarily good novel, which is not only brilliant in its own right, but stands proudly beside his work as an actor, no mean boast' Billy Connolly'Hilarious and horror-filled' Francesca Segal, Observer'A fine study in character disintegration... Very funny' David Baddiel, The Times'Exquisitely written with a warm heart and a wry wit... Stunning' Elle'Queasily entertaining' Financial Times'A sharp ear for dialogue and a scabrously satiric prose style' Daily Mail'Laugh-out-loud, darkly intelligent' Publishers Weekly'This is far more than an actor's vanity project: Thewlis has talent' KirkusFreight Dogs
By Giles Foden. 2017
1996: in a Ugandan dive bar, the 'freight dogs' gather. An anarchic group of mercenary pilots from Texas, Russia, Kenya…
and Belgium who transport weapons between warring African nations, without allegiance. And tonight they have a new recruit - Manu, a 19-year-old cowherd fleeing Congo's bloody war.Taken in by this band of unlikely brothers, he's soon seeing his vast country from above and falling in love with flying. But no matter how fast he flies, trouble follows closely behind. And when the past erupts back into this new life, Manu is forced to leave behind African skies for the chilly embrace of northern Europe. Will Manu be able to reinvent himself yet again? And is Belgian volcanologist Anke Desseaux the answer to his problems - or simply another one of them?From the writer of The Last King of Scotland comes an unforgettable story of survival - about how to live and love after trauma, set against a backdrop of world-shaking conflict.Rebus: Strip Jack, The Black Book and Mortal Causes
By Ian Rankin. 1992
'Britain's best crime novelist' Daily ExpressSTRIP JACKTo the outside world, MP Gregor Jack is well-liked and successful. But his carefully…
nurtured career takes a tumble after a 'mistake' during a police raid on a notorious Edinburgh brothel. Then his wife disappears and a couple of bodies float into view where they shouldn't... Rebus soon realises that not only is the MP's image tarnishing fast - but someone wants to strip Jack naked - and Rebus wants to know why.THE BLACK BOOKWhen a close colleague is brutally attacked, Inspector John Rebus is drawn into a case involving a hotel fire, an unidentified body, and a long forgotten night of terror and murder. Pursued by dangerous ghosts and tormented by the coded secrets of his colleague's notebook, Rebus must piece together the most complex and confusing of jigsaws. But not everyone wants the puzzle solved - perhaps not even Rebus himself...MORTAL CAUSESIt is August in Edinburgh and the Festival is in full swing... A brutally tortured body is discovered in one of the city's ancient subterranean streets and marks on the corpse cause Rebus to suspect the involvement of sectarian activists. The prospect of a terrorist atrocity in a city heaving with tourists is almost unthinkable. When the victim turns out to be the son of a notorious gangster, Rebus realises he is sitting atop a volcano of mayhem - and it's just about to erupt.'Rankin's ability to create a credible character, delivering convincing dialogue to complement sinister and hard-hitting plots against vividly detailed atmosphere, is simply awesome' Time OutRebus: Strip Jack, The Black Book and Mortal Causes
By Ian Rankin. 1992
'Britain's best crime novelist'Daily ExpressSTRIP JACKTo the outside world, MP Gregor Jack is well-liked and successful. But his carefully nurtured…
career takes a tumble after a 'mistake' during a police raid on a notorious Edinburgh brothel. Then his wife disappears and a couple of bodies float into view where they shouldn't... Rebus soon realises that not only is the MP's image tarnishing fast - but someone wants to strip Jack naked - and Rebus wants to know why.THE BLACK BOOKWhen a close colleague is brutally attacked, Inspector John Rebus is drawn into a case involving a hotel fire, an unidentified body, and a long forgotten night of terror and murder. Pursued by dangerous ghosts and tormented by the coded secrets of his colleague's notebook, Rebus must piece together the most complex and confusing of jigsaws. But not everyone wants the puzzle solved - perhaps not even Rebus himself...MORTAL CAUSESIt is August in Edinburgh and the Festival is in full swing... A brutally tortured body is discovered in one of the city's ancient subterranean streets and marks on the corpse cause Rebus to suspect the involvement of sectarian activists. The prospect of a terrorist atrocity in a city heaving with tourists is almost unthinkable. When the victim turns out to be the son of a notorious gangster, Rebus realises he is sitting atop a volcano of mayhem - and it's just about to erupt.'Rankin's ability to create a credible character, delivering convincing dialogue to complement sinister and hard-hitting plots against vividly detailed atmosphere, is simply awesome'Time OutEllen
By Leandro Mabillot, Adeline Shade. 2016
Ellen
By Adeline Shade, Blanca Palomero Munuera. 2017
Ellen fue escrito en tan solo una noche. Hacía mucho soñé con la escena clímax del cuento; un músico completamente…
obsesionado por una de sus alumnas. No quise extender nada, solo di vida al deseo que su mente perturbada ansiaba, no creé un mundo alrededor del profesor. Este es el cuento más corto que escribí pero, como en la mayoría de mis historias, tiene un final pesado e inesperado. Y como nada que empieza de manera enfermiza acaba bien -esta historia no sería diferente, sin embargo, esta tiene una adenda: una bella banda sonora. Creé y escribí al son de las mismas composiciones que cito en el cuento, fue perturbador y melancólico al mismo tiempo. Si es posible, intenten escuchar las músicas, no se arrepentirán, creo yo. Y espero que los lectores puedan sentir lo mismo que yo sentí.Orpheus Descending and Suddenly Last Summer
By Martin Sherman, Tennessee Williams. 1958
Two of Tennessee Williams's most revered dramas in a single paperback edition for the first time. Orpheus Descending is a…
love story, a plea for spiritual and artistic freedom, as well as a portrait of racism and intolerance. When charismatic drifter Valentine Xavier arrives in a Mississippi Delta town with his guitar and snakeskin jacket, he becomes a trigger for hatred and a magnet for three outcast souls: storekeeper Lady Torrance, "lewd vagrant" Carol Cutrere, and religious visionary Vee Talbot. Suddenly Last Summer, described by its author as a "short morality play," has become one of his most notorious works due in no small part to the film version starring Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, and Montgomery Clift that shocked audiences in 1959. A menacing tale of madness, jealousy, and denial,the horrors in Suddenly Last Summer build to a heart-stopping conclusion. With perceptive new introductions by playwright Martin Sherman -- he reframes Orpheus Descending in a political context and explores the psychology and sensationalism surrounding Suddenly Last Summer -- this volume also offers Williams's related essay, "The Past, the Present, and the Perhaps," and a chronology of the playwright's life and works.Ideal
By Ayn Rand. 2015
Ideal is the story of beautiful but tormented actress Kay Gonda. Accused of murder, she is on the run and…
turns for help to six fans who have written letters to her, each telling her that she represents their ideal--a respectable family man, a far-left activist, a cynical artist, an evangelist, a playboy, and a lost soul. Each reacts to her plight in his own way, their reactions a glimpse into their secret selves and their true values. In the end their responses to her pleas give Kay the answers she has been seeking.Ideal was written in 1934 as a novel, but Ayn Rand thought the theme of the piece would be better realized as a play and put the novel aside.Faust: A Tragedy, Parts One And Two, Fully Revised (Dover Thrift Editions)
By Johann Goethe. 2014
Hailed as Germany s greatest contribution to world literature Goethe s Faust drew upon a folktale and Marlowe s…
Dr Faustus for inspiration But in this epic version Faust sells his soul not for magic powers but for a heightened sense of existence Part One covers his pact with Mephistopheles and seduction of an innocent girl Part Two relates his courtship of Helen of Troy and his salvation Acclaimed translation by Bayard Taylor