Doctor Who: The Shakespeare Notebooks


Justin Richards - 2014
    Now, BBC Books has rediscovered notebooks, long thought lost, compiled by the Bard in which he divulges the influential role the Doctor played in his creative life. Here are the original notes for Hamlet, including a very different appearance by the ghost; early versions of great lines (“To reverse or not to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow”); the true story of how the faeries of A Midsummer Night’s Dream were first imagined; stage directions for plays adjusted to remove references to a mysterious blue box; and much, much more.

The Great Stone Face


Nathaniel Hawthorne - 1850
    An old prophecy states that "someone will be born hereabouts who will look just like the Great Stone Face, and he will be the noblest person of his time." Like many others, young Ernest watches the faces of returning famous men for signs of the gentle wisdom seen in the face. The rich merchant, however, is grasping, the soldier only stern, and the politician--well, a politician. Ernest, meanwhile, works hard on his farm and is looked up to by his neighbors for the thoughtful counsel he offers. As he grows old, people remark that they fear they will never see the prophecy fulfilled. At length, however, noticing Ernest's face, they discover that it was fulfilled long ago. This thoughtful look at what it means to live a good life is as relevant today as when first written.

The Kitchen; A Play In Two Parts, With An Interlude


Arnold Wesker - 1957
    

Red Leaves


William Faulkner - 1930
    This includes his servant, who makes a desperate bid for his life in this early William Faulkner short story.Although primarily known for his novels, Faulkner wrote in a variety of formats, including plays, poetry, essays, screenplays, and short stories, many of which are highly acclaimed and anthologized. Like his novels, many of Faulkner’s short stories are set in fictional Yoknapatawapha County, a setting inspired by Lafayette County, where Faulkner spent most of his life. His first short story collection, These 13 (1931), includes many of his most frequently anthologized stories, including "A Rose for Emily", "Red Leaves" and "That Evening Sun."HarperCollins brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperCollins short-stories collection to build your digital library.

Knock Knock


Chuck Palahniuk - 2010
    The story “Knock Knock” is about a boy who grows up with his dad always telling these horrible jokes.

Trifles


Susan Glaspell - 1916
    Her short story, "A Jury of Her Peers", was adapted from the play a year after its debut. It was first performed by the Provincetown Players at the Wharf Theatre in Provincetown, Massachusetts on August 8, 1916. In the original play, Glaspell played the role of one of the characters, Mrs. Hale. It is frequently anthologized in American literature textbooks. The play begins as the county attorney, the sherrif, Mr. Hale, Mrs. Peters, and Mrs. Hale enter the Wright's empty farm house. On prompting from the county attorney, Mr. Hale recounts his visit to the house the previous day, when he found Mrs. Wright behaving strangely and found her husband upstairs with a rope around his neck, dead. Mr. Hale notes that, when he questioned her, Mrs. Wright claimed that she was fast asleep when someone strangled her husband.Often hailed as one of the quintessential feminist plays, 'Trifles' earned Glaspell a Pulitzer Prize and renewed literary recognition.

Queers: Eight Monologues


Mark Gatiss - 2017
    Almost one hundred years later, a groom-to-be prepares for his gay wedding.Queers celebrates a century of evolving social attitudes and political milestones in British gay history, as seen through the eyes of eight individuals.Poignant and personal, funny, tragic and riotous, these eight monologues for male and female performers cover major events - such as the Wolfenden Report of 1957, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the debate over the age of consent - through deeply affecting and personal rites-of-passage stories.Curated by Mark Gatiss, the monologues were commissioned to mark the anniversary of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, which decriminalised homosexual acts in private between two men over the age of twenty-one. They were broadcast on BBC Four in 2017, directed and produced by Gatiss, and starring Alan Cumming, Rebecca Front, Ian Gelder, Kadiff Kirwan, Russell Tovey, Gemma Whelan, Ben Whishaw and Fionn Whitehead. They were staged at The Old Vic in London.This volume includes:The Man on the Platform by Mark GatissThe Perfect Gentleman by Jackie CluneSafest Spot in Town by Keith JarrettMissing Alice by Jon BradfieldI Miss the War by Matthew BaldwinMore Anger by Brian FillisA Grand Day Out by Michael DennisSomething Borrowed by Gareth McLean

The Complete Plays


Sophocles - 2001
    This collection includes the revised and updated translations by Paul Roche of the Oedipus cycle, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone, as well as all-new translations of Ajax, The Women of Trachis, Electra, and Philocetes.

The Amen Corner


James Baldwin - 1954
    For to his first work for the theater James Baldwin brought all the fervor and majestic rhetoric of the storefront churches of his childhood along with an unwavering awareness of the price those churches exacted from their worshipers.  For years Sister Margaret Alexander has moved her Harlem congregation with a mixture of personal charisma and ferocious piety.  But when Margaret's estranged husband, a scapegrace jazz musician, comes home to die, she is in danger of losing both her standing in the church and the son she has tried to keep on the godly path. The Amen Corner is a play about faith and family, about the gulf between black men and black women and black fathers and black sons. It is a scalding, uplifting, sorrowful and exultant masterpiece of the modern American theater.

A Telephone Call


Dorothy Parker - 1930
    A Telephone Call is a short story from Complete Stories, a collection of Dorothy Parker's stories published in 1995.You can read the story here:http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/...

The Tragedy of Mister Morn


Vladimir Nabokov - 2012
    Secretly in love with Midia, the wife of a banished revolutionary, Morn finds himself facing renewed bloodshed and disaster when Midia's husband returns, provoking a duel and the return of chaos that Morn has fought so hard to prevent.The first major work and the only play of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita and Pnin, The Tragedy of Mister Morn is translated and published in English here for the first time, and is a moving study of the elusiveness of happiness, the power of imagination and the eternal battle between truth and fantasy.

Of Mice and Men: The Play


John Steinbeck - 1937
    

Gypsy


Arthur Laurents - 1994
    The musical tale of a domineering stage mother's inadvertent creation of a burlesque stripper, now available in paperback for the first time.

Tales of Mystery and Imagination


Edgar Allan Poe - 1842
    From the tortured mind of Edgar Allan Poe, these three tales, "The Black Cat," "The Fall of the House of Usher," and "The Cask of Amontillado," speak to the hidden places inside us all.Capturing the mist and shadows rising from the stories are illustrations by prominent artist Gary Kelley. Angular and dark, his work heightens the Gothic terror that is Poe's trademark and creates windows into Poe's world.

H. P. Lovecraft's Classic Stories


H.P. Lovecraft - 2016
    In addition to The Call of Cthulhu , this collection of stories also includes others that made either direct or indirect reference to Cthulhu: Dagon, The Dunwich Horror, The Whisperer in Darkness , and The Haunter of the Dark.