Book picks similar to
Plaques and Tangles by Nicola Wilson


plays
theatre-acting
365daysofplays
drama

Cowboy Mouth


Sam Shepard - 1971
    One act play, Drama. Two wanna-be rock stars await their takeout delivery--or is it their rock-n-roll messiah? An early work by "True West" playwright and actor Sam Shepard. Librarian's Note: No separate publication found at this time. Generally published in collections of Shepard works.

Raised in Captivity.


Nicky Silver - 1995
    "By a mile, the best new play of the season>"--John Heilpern, New York Observer.

Turned Out by a Savage


Shameka Jones - 2017
     Danger is no stranger to the heartaches of the world. After losing her adoptive mother, she almost crumbles under a domino effect of misfortune. When she meets Sleep, she thinks she’s finally found a captain to save her, but when she learns his main goal is to pimp her out, Danger wastes no time getting from under his thumb. On the run to get as far away from Sleep as possible, she lands in Dallas, where she reunites with her bestie. Free is the true definition of dangerous curves. A BBW with enough personality to steal any show, she’s quick to flash a smile that hides her own set of demons. It’s hard to be comfortable in your skin, especially when family is the main one trying to tear you down, but Free is determined to stunt on everybody that has a problem with her weight— family included. Add the kind of street smarts that make a natural born hustler, and Free is every hitta’s dream come true. Whether they can handle her is the real question. Stranger is a self-made boss in his own right, a dude whose name rings bells in the streets and commands respect even while he’s locked up. Growing up with a schizophrenic for a mother made him unbreakable, but not above the law when he gets caught slipping. Done serving his time, he only has two things on his mind: hitting the streets and getting to the money by any means necessary. After stumbling across a connect and an offer he can’t refuse, Stranger agrees to collect a blood debt in exchange for the keys to the streets. Will his decision cost him more than he’s willing to give up? Where Stranger is a silent killer, Spazz, his younger brother, leaves a path of destruction with anything he touches. Wild, rude, and reckless, he’s ready to get it poppin’ if you even look at him wrong, and there’s only one thing that can tame his temper: his five-year-old daughter. With a mouth to feed and a street legacy to claim, he’s down with no hesitation when Stranger brings him into his plan to re-claim the streets. With his brother by his side, Spazz is ready to put his city on the map. Stranger never let his heart take his focus off the money, until he meets Danger. Mesmerized by her effortless beauty, he just has to have her, but there’s one problem: she’s on the arm of the same guy he’s planning to take down. Is he willing to kill for love? Spazz always gets what he wants, and he knows Free will be his from the minute he meets her. Never being attracted to BBWs in the past, he’s powerless against Free’s hypnotizing thickness, and her confidence and slick mouth are just the type of bonus that makes her worth the chase. Will he convince Free to take a chance on a real one? Ain’t nothin’ like lovin’ a savage, and once you get inside the head of one, your life will never be the same. Take a journey with Danger, Free, Stranger, and Spazz as they try to cheat the past for the future. Nothing goes as planned in love, especially once you’re Turned out by a Savage.

Love on the Frontier: Mail Order Bride 16 Book Box Set


Maddie Walker - 2020
    

The Breckton Trilogy


Mary Wood - 2013
    Bridie O’Hara, a beautiful young girl, is torn away from her native Ireland by her father – a freedom fighter, turned traitor, when he has to flee the wrath of the Fenians. Violated by him she ends up in a correction convent. Her escape, and meeting up with Bruiser Armitage, a pimp, sets her fate. One man tries to save her, Will Hadler, a kind, hard-working miner, whose love for Bridie knows no bounds. His rescue of her brings her happiness, but the demons inside her never give her peace. When Andrew Harvey, master of Hensal Grange, takes a fancy to her it is the beginning of Bridie sinking back into degradation. Her daughter, Bridget pays the price. Unprotected by her drunken mother, Bridget suffers rape and the heartbreak of having to give up her child, Megan.Book Two: AN UNBREAKABLE BOND: It is 1913 and for Megan and her friend, Hattie, the time has come to take up their placements and make their way in the world. Megan’s path leads her to fall into a marriage with a man she does not love and at whose hands she suffers beatings and rape. With Hattie’s help she finally escapes, but her path crosses that of the beautiful, rich and powerful, Laura Harvey. It is Laura’s need to have her wish at any price that triggers an eruption of violence that brings Megan near to death and sends Jack, the man both Megan and Laura love to prison, for a murder he did not commit.Hattie’s path crosses that of paedophile, Lord Marley. She is raped by him and his companion. Her ten pound silence money buys her an abortion but her choices have gone and she is forced into a life of prostitution. It is when she stumbles across an evil, child sex ring and is determined to break it that she once more encounters Lord Marley and though she succeeds in her quest and gets her revenge, she pays a terrible price. Hers and Megan’s enduring friendship bring them through.Book Three: TOMORROW BRINGS SORROWSet in 1939 – 1959, As the world faces many changes brought on by war, Megan has found happiness with Jack, but the threat of Megan’s schizophrenic son Billy, still casts a shadow over them. His release is imminent and for Sarah, Jack’s daughter, this opens up a fate she cannot fight. With her love and respect for Billy eroded over the years as she came to realise he has an evil core, Sarah now lives in fear of him and what he will do if she refuses him. Forsaking her true love, she marries Billy in an attempt to protect those who are very dear to her, but love and hate will out and the consequences are devastatingThose consequences are compounded by the incestuous love between twins Theresa and Terrence Crompton and their taking of all they need from whatever source they please.

Independence


Lee Blessing - 1985
    Her oldest daughter, Kess, is a university professor in Minneapolis, but she has come home at the request of her sister, Jo who is concerned for Evelyn's mental health. Kess, a professed lesbian, wants to cut her family ties once and for all; Jo, an incurable romantic and longtime virgin, has now become pregnant; while Sherry, salty-tongued and amoral, wants only to finish high school so she can leave home for good. In the end, there is no accommodation possible but, instead, only a kind of arbitrary independence for each of the protagonists, as they come to realize that each must find her own heaven or hell in her own way.

The Blue Room


David Hare - 1998
    It was only when Max Ophuls made his famous film in 1950 that the work became better known as La Ronde. Now David Hare has reset these circular scenes of love and betrayal in the present day, with a cast of two actors playing a succession of characters whose sexual lives enmesh like a daisy chain. The Blue Room is a meditation on men and women, sex and social class, actors and the theater. With deft insight about the gap between the sexes, The Blue Room takes the treacherous Freudian subject of projection and desire and reinvents it in a bittersweet landscape that is both eternal and completely up-to-date.

Crumbs from the Table of Joy and Other Plays


Lynn Nottage - 1998
    Her plays have been produced in many theatres across the U.S. including Second Stage (NY), South Coast Rep (Costa Mesa), Yale Repertory Theatre (New Haven), Alliance Theatre (Atlanta) and Steppenwolf (Chicago). She has won the Heideman and the White Bird awards and was a runner-up for the Susan Blackburn award.

Everything in the Garden


Edward Albee - 1968
    Albee there is a theme beneath the surface, in this case the corruption of money and the rottenness of this bigoted exurbia where conformity to its illiberal standards and its hypocritical show of respectability is all that counts. The scene is the suburban home of Jenny and Richard, beautifully played by Barbara Bel Geddes and Barry Nelson. The only thing that seems to stand in the way of their happiness is a lack of money. The action starts in an entertaining comedy of manners style. Then abruptly there enters a Mrs. Toothe in the menacing and fascinating person of Beatrice Straight who offers Jenny the opportunity to make more money than they have ever had, to buy a greenhouse and all the other luxuries that they require for their garden and their lives. Richard's realization that their newfound money is being earned by his wife's whoring comes almost simultaneously with the return of their fourteen-year-old son from school and a champagne cocktail party which they are giving to impress their country club friends. As a result, his horror, disgust and rage has to be kept under wraps in order to keep up essential appearances until tragedy strikes, and Richard realizes that the assembled wives are all involved and their husbands are aware and condoning." More than that, they are prepared not merely to justify but defend the ends through which their means are attained and the devastated Richard, left in agonized despair by the ironic events that charge the final moments of the play, must face the fact of his own share in their communal guilt.

A Steady Rain


Keith Huff - 2010
    But when a domestic disturbance call takes a turn for the worse, their friendship is put on the line. The result is a difficult journey into a moral gray area where trust and loyalty struggle for survival against a sobering backdrop of pimps, prostitutes, and criminal lowlifes.A dark duologue filled with sharp storytelling and biting repartee, A Steady Rain explores the complexities of a lifelong bond tainted by domestic affairs, violence, and the rough streets of Chicago.

The Columnist: A Play


David Auburn - 2012
    Joe sits at the nexus of Washington life: beloved, feared, and courted in equal measure by the very people whose careers and futures he determines. But as the sixties dawn and America undergoes dizzying change, the intense political dramas Joe has been throwing his weight around in—supporting the war in Vietnam and Soviet containment, criticizing student activism—come to bear a profound personal cost.Based on the real-life story of Joe Alsop, whose columns at the time of his 1974 retirement were running three times a week in more than three hundred newspapers, David Auburn’s The Columnist is a deft blend of history and storytelling. A hilarious, searing portrait of the glorious rewards and devastating losses that accompany ego, ambition, and the pursuit of power, The Columnist pens a vital letter from a radically changing decade to our own turbulent era.

A Mother for Rosie


Emma Ashwood - 2021
    

Mail Order Brides for A Town Called Hope 2 Book Special Edition: The Scarred and Rejected Bride & The Crippled Bride and the Orphaned Baby


Indiana Wake - 2016
    Hope Springs is filled with rough and ready men. Can a family of damaged women bring true Hope to this desperate town?A carriage accident killed Lily’s parents and left her and her sisters disfigured or disabled. Now they are to be thrown from their home and their hopes of becoming mail order brides were dashed when the men turned them down because of their disabilities.Book 1 – The Scarred and Rejected Bride Lily knows this calls for desperate measures so she writes to one last man and does not mention her scars. Kit McFarlan wants a wife to control his three rowdy children. Lily will do. That is until he sees her scars. The wedding is off, but Lily and her sisters are a feisty bunch and Kit did not bargain for what comes next. Will Lily get her man or will the sisters be left out in the old? Book 2 – The Crippled Bride and the Orphaned Baby Maye was crippled in the carriage accident that killed her parents. How can she ever find love? What man could love a woman who is not even whole?A new man in town is struggling with his brother’s baby. The child’s parents were killed but Craig needs to work if he is to feed baby Constantine. How can he work and look after a baby? A chance meeting tells him he needs a bride and he asks Maye to marry him.“That was the most unromantic proposal ever,” Maye said but still she accepts.As Maye falls for the handsome cowboy she wonders how she can go on. Is this all there is to life?Danger and heartache threaten to tear the couple apart. Can they survive and find love?The books are sweet, clean, historical, western, romances.

After the End


Dennis Kelly - 2005
    Louise wakes up to find herself trapped with Mark, who has saved her life. Mark is always prepared for the worst and has everything he thinks they will need to survive; tinned chilli, Dungeons and Dragons and a knife - now all they need to do is to wait until it's safe to go outside. Can they survive the attack? Can they survive each other?After The End received its world premiere at The Traverse Theatre in August 2005.

The Trillest Love Comes From A Thug 2


Mercedes G. - 2018
    Especially when the two men you love are brothers at heart. Gizelle learns that everything that's done in the dark will eventually come to the light, after she catches the love of her life, Moe cheating with one of her friends from the past. However, she didn't expect the rule to apply to her so soon. As her relationship with Waka intensifies, the one she's attempting to build with her unborn child's father is deteriorating to the point where she's almost ready to throw in the towel. The last thing she expected was to get caught up in this love triangle between two men who have played a major part in her life at some point in time. But now that Waka is home, he's ready to claim what he feels, rightfully belongs to him. Old feelings have started to resurface and their bond is becoming stronger than ever. That is, until a secret is revealed and he doesn't want to deal with her anymore. Gizelle and Moe are still working on their relationship for the sake of their unborn child but Gizelle is unaware that he's battling with his own demons and he's still up to his unfaithful ways.