The Mystery of Irma Vep - A Penny Dreadful


Charles Ludlam - 1987
    A sympathetic werewolf, a vampire and an Egyptian princess brought to life when her tomb is opened make this a comedy that has everything."Far and away the funniest two hours on a New York stage....What more meaningful gift could Ludlam bequeath [audiences

The Inheritance


Matthew López - 2018
    Or for the intimacy and tenderness you feel as you hold the hand of a suffering friend.A generation after the height of the AIDS crisis, what is it like to be a young gay man in New York? How many words are there now for the different kinds of pain, the different kinds of love?Matthew Lopez's The Inheritance premiered in two parts at the Young Vic Theatre, London, in March 2018, and on Broadway, Oct. 2019.

Jane Fairweather: A Madcap Regency Romance (The Fairweather Sisters Book 4)


Anya Wylde - 2021
    

The Chance Reilly Series


Patrick Lindsay - 2019
    In his quest to establish a new life for himself, he will encounter challenges at every turn. Natural disasters, a lost gold shipment, old enemies and outlaws will all stand in his way as he tries to build a future with next-door neighbor Kate. When he's fighting for family and friends, Chance is a force to be reckoned with.

Reckless Hearts: A Story of Slim Hawks and Ernest Hemingway


Melanie Benjamin - 2015
      Spain, 1959. Slim Hawks Hayward likes to think she doesn’t get jealous. But when her dear friend Lauren “Betty” Bacall learns that Papa Hemingway has come to watch the bullfights and insists that Slim make introductions, she can’t help feeling protective. Slim has known Papa for years. He always makes her feel like the most beautiful woman in the room—even when his wife is standing right beside him. Truth be told, Slim could have learned to love him all those years ago, in the streets of Havana or the mountains of the American West. Now, Slim is sure that Papa will fall for Betty. What she doesn’t anticipate is the feeling that Papa himself has changed—and their relationship will never be the same.   Features a captivating preview of Melanie Benjamin’s highly anticipated novel The Swans of Fifth Avenue!   Advance praise for Melanie Benjamin’s The Swans of Fifth Avenue   “The strange and fascinating relationship between Truman Capote and his ‘swans’ is wonderfully reimagined in this engrossing novel. It’s a credit to Benjamin that we end up caring so much for these women of power, grace, and beauty—and for Capote, too.”—Sara Gruen, New York Times bestselling author of Water for Elephants   “A delicious tale . . . Melanie Benjamin has turned Truman Capote’s greatest scandal into your next must-read book-club selection.”—Jamie Ford, New York Times bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet   “Reading The Swans of Fifth Avenue is like being ushered into a party where you’re offered champagne and fed the sumptuous secrets of New York’s elite—without having to pay the price afterward. The swans are outmatched only by the elegance of Melanie Benjamin’s prose—captivatingly earnest and sophisticated.”—Vanessa Diffenbaugh, New York Times bestselling author of The Language of Flowers   “Benjamin convincingly portrays a large cast of colorful historical figures while crafting a compelling, gossipy narrative with rich emotional depth.”—Library Journal

Matadora


Elizabeth Ruth - 2013
    It begins on a bull-breeding ranch in southern Andalucia, Spain, and takes the reader to Mexico and then back to Spain.The story centres on a girl named Luna Caballero Garcia, orphaned young and working as a servant of the famed Garcia family. Luna is determined to become a bullfighter, despite her lowly station in life and the fact that women are prohibited from graduating to the status of matador-do-toros. She burns for the ring, and is willing to bend or break any rule to enter it.Fortunately, Luna finds unlikely patrons in her master’s sons. Manuel, an aspiring poet and socialist, sees in his surrogate sister the genius he wishes he was; Pedro sees a chance to make an astonishing amount of money. The trio decides to travel abroad where Luna will have the opportunity to prove her skill but she knows her true destiny lies in the blood-soaked sands of home.Matadora is a powerful, compelling exploration of love and ambition. The pain that drives all our ambition, the yearning for love it reveals, the lengths we go to win love, and the price we pay along the way. Matadora is about someone like you, trying against all odds, to win love.

The Normal Heart & The Destiny of Me (two plays)


Larry Kramer - 2000
    It has been produced and taught all over the world. Its companion play, The Destiny of Me, is the stirring story of an AIDS activist forced to put his life in the hands of the very doctor he has been denouncing.

The Essential Bogosian: Talk Radio / Drinking in America / Funhouse / Men Inside


Eric Bogosian - 1994
    "What Lenny Bruce was to the 1950s, Bob Dylan to the 1960s, Woody Allen to the 1970s--that's what Eric Bogosian is to this frightening moment of drift in our history."--Frank Rich, The New York Times

The Shape of a Girl / Jewel


Joan Macleod - 2002
    MacLeod’s young protagonist enters all the bright open avenues of peer-group play and the dark blind alleys of individual and collective terror, as she discovers within herself both the capacity for and the conflict between impulses of good and evil. In thinking back on the history of her own tight-knit group of friends, she begins to see how in the excitement of belonging to a ritualized, secret collective, the self is created by the increasing dehumanization of the other—of both the bully and the victim. The Shape of a Girl goes far beyond a simple dramatization of the seemingly inexplicable code of silence and tacit complicity which surrounded the sensationalized Reena Virk murder in 1997 on which the play is based. It speaks eloquently and compassionately to a world increasingly dominated by all forms of collectivised and ritualized tribalist hatred, and offers the embrace of trust as the only way out of this circle of violence.Jewel is also based on a real-life catastrophe—the sinking of the Ocean Ranger, an oil rig off the coast of Newfoundland, on Valentine’s Day, 1982. Three years later, a widow, Marjorie Clifford, at home in her trailer in Fort St. John, British Columbia, begins to take the first step in understanding that the humanity of love, in all of its tentative frailty, uncertainty and promise, can free a life paralyzed and dominated by loss.

The Front Runner


Patricia Nell Warren - 1974
    In 1975, coach Harlan Brown is hiding from his past at an obscure New York college, after he was fired from Penn State University on suspicion of being gay. A tough, lonely ex-Marine of 39, Harlan has never allowed himself to love another man. Then Billy Sive, a brilliant young runner, shows up on his doorstep. He and his two comrades, Vince Matti and Jacques LaFont, were just thrown off a major team for admitting they are gay. Harlan knows that, with proper training, Billy could go to the '76 Olympics in Montreal. He agrees to coach the three boys under strict conditions that thwart Billy's growing attraction for his mature but compelling mentor. The lean, graceful frontrunner with gold-rim glasses sees directly into Harlan's heart. Billy's gentle and open acceptance of his sexuality makes Harlan afraid to confront either the pain of his past, or the challenges which lay in wait if their intimacy is exposed. But when Coach Brown finds himself falling in love with his most gifted athlete, he must combat his true feelings for Billy or risk the outrage of the entire sports world - and their only chance at Olympic gold.

7 Stories


Morris Panych - 1989
    These “seven stories” lead to a charming and surprising ending.Cast of 2 women and 3 men.

Body Awareness


Annie Baker - 2009
    Both his presence in the home and his chosen subject instigate tension from the start. Phyllis is furious at his depictions, but Joyce is actually rather intrigued by the whole thing, even going so far as to contemplate posing for him. As Joyce and Phyllis bicker, Joyce's adult son, who may or may not have Asperger's Syndrome, struggles to express himself physically with heartbreaking results.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: Tennesse Williams (York Notes Advanced)


Steve Roberts - 2007
    One of his best-loved and most famous plays, it exposes the lies plaguing the family of a wealthy Southern planter of humble origins.

Ravished By The Iron Highlander


Maddie MacKenna - 2020
    A situation almost as agonizing as her father’s death.Severely wounded and with war raging around him, Duncan Goreidh, Laird of Brynkirk, has but one choice if he wants to survive: to disguise himself as a British soldier. Rescued at the last minute by an old English lady, his plans to flee home are ruined when he meets her irresistible niece.Their love is forbidden, but their meeting was not a coincidence.With Isabella’s presence turning his own flesh and blood against him, Duncan finds himself short of allies. And ways to protect her. An old vendetta started by his kin returns from the grave to haunt them, and it comes with a price. For whose fault is it, when you invite death into your own house?*Ravished by the Iron Highlander is a steamy Scottish historical romance novel of 80,000 words (around 400 pages). No cheating, no cliffhangers, lots of steam and a happy ending.

A Love Sealed at Sunrise


Carol Colyer - 2020
    Being rather desperate, when her mother comes to her with a mail-order-bride ad and a set of heart-warming letters from the author, she jumps at her only chance and goes west. Upon her arrival, instead of the eloquent and thoughtful man portrayed in the letters, she finds a hard-working rancher and father, rather short on words and emotionally distant. Although shocked at first, Catherine can’t help but feel charmed by his looks and his kind soul. Will she ever have the chance to break through the walls around his heart before it’s too late?Elias is a widower set on trying to create a better life for his children, but running his ranch on the outskirts of town with two kids is far too demanding. Under these complicated circumstances, looking for a mail-order bride to help him shoulder the responsibilities of the ranch and childrearing, seems to be the simplest solution. However, when Catherine arrives looking breathtaking, he realizes that his life will never be the same again. Expressing his emotions has always been quite a challenge for him, but Catherine makes him want to try. How will he finally trust his heart and let go of his trauma in order to fully devote himself to her?Right when the two of them start to feel closer to each other, a shadow from Catherine’s past appears, threatening to destroy everything they hold dear. Will they let the past ruin their newly created dreams, or will the sunlight of their love destroy any darkness heading towards them menacingly?