A novel mingling mysticism, madness, sadistic cruelty and nascent sexuality, it gives a scathing insight into the effects of forced vocations and the unnatural life of the convent. A succès de scandale at the end of the eighteenth century, it has attracted and unsettled readers ever since. For Diderot's novel is not simply a story of a young girl with a bad habit; it is also a powerfully emblematic fable about oppression and intolerance.This new translation includes Diderot's all-important prefatory material, which he placed, disconcertingly, at the end of the novel, and which turns what otherwise seems like an exercise in realism into what is now regarded as a masterpiece of proto-modernist fiction.

    A masterful poet of the downtrodden, his plays portray life on New York's hardscrabble streets in a manner both tender and unflinching, while continually exploring the often startling gulf between who we are and how we perceive ourselves. Gathered in this volume is his current off-Broadway hit, Our Lady of 121st Street, a comic portrait of the graduates of a Harlem Catholic school reunited at the funeral of a beloved teacher, along with his two previous plays: the philosophical jailhouse drama Jesus Hopped the A Train and In Arabia, We'd All Be Kings, an Iceman Cometh for the Giuliani era that looks at the effect of Times Square's gentrification on its less desirable inhabitants.

    

    Sweet recollections of driving with her beloved uncle intermingle with lessons about the darker sides of life. Balmy evenings are fraught with danger; seductions happen anywhere. Li'l Bit navigates a narrow path between the demands of family and her own sense of right and wrong.

    In a sixteenth-century Spanish monastery, the fate of millions of American natives from an ocean away hangs precariously in the balance. THE CONTROVERSY OF VALLADOLID, an exciting new masterwork by French playwright and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carri

    Dover examines the two versions of the play, recounts the history of the text, and analyzes a number of problems surrounding the play's overall interpretation, including the Greek notion of right and wrong, the purpose of the chorus, and Aristophanes' sexual jokes.

    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

    This backstage farce by the author of Lend Me a Tenor brought Carol Burnett back to Broadway co-starring with Philip Bosco as her megalomanic, drunken husband and leading man. Fate has given these thespians one more shot at starring roles in The Scarlet Pimpernel epic and director Frank Capra himself is en route to Buffalo to catch their matinee performance. Will Charlotte appear or run off with their agent? Will George be sober enough to emote? Will Capra see Cyrano, Private Lives or a disturbing mixture of the two? Hilarious misunderstandings pile on madcap misadventures, in this valentine to Theatre Hams everywhere.

    With this act of violence--which is loosely based on the notorious 1955 killing of Emmett Till--James Baldwin launches an unsparing and at times agonizing probe of the wounds of race. For where once a white storekeeper could have shot a boy like Richard Henry with impunity, times have changed. And centuries of brutality and fear, patronage and contempt, are about to erupt in a moment of truth as devastating as a shotgun blast.In his award-winning play, Baldwin turns a murder and its aftermath into an inquest in which even the most well-intentioned whites are implicated--and in which even a killer receives his share of compassion.

    Dunstan's Church, just a few blocks away from the Royal Courts of Justice. On this site, they say, he robbed and murdered more than 150 customers. To dispose of their remains, he carried them through underground tunnels to the bakery of one Mrs. Lovett a few blocks away, where they supplied the stuffing for her meat pies, the favorite mid-day repast of the lawyers who worked nearby and got their shaves from Sweeney Todd. The man you lunched with yesterday could be your lunch today!The story first appeared in 1846 as a best-selling "penny dreadful", a sensational thriller published in installments. Before the final chapters even had a chance to hit the stands, the first stage version was packing them in at the Royal Britannia Saloon. Since then, there have been numerous stage and literary versions of the story.This script has been specially commissioned by Blackstone Audio, Inc., based on the original sources of the tale.

    Credited with influencing the likes of Chekhov, Maugham, Babel, and O. Henry, Maupassant had, at the time of his death at the age of forty-two, written six novels and some three hundred short stories. Yet in English, Maupassant has, curiously, remained unappreciated by modern readers due to outdated translations that render his prose in an archaic, literal style.In this bold new translation, Sandra Smith—the celebrated translator of Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise—brings us twenty-eight of Maupassant's essential stories and two novellas in lyrical yet accessible language that brings Maupassant into vibrant English. In addition to her sparkling translation, Smith also imposes a structure that captures the full range of Maupassant's work. Dividing the collection into three sections that reflect his predominant themes—nineteenth-century French society, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, and the supernatural—Smith creates "an arrangement suggesting a culture of relation, of structure, of completion" (Richard Howard).In "Tales of French Life," we see Maupassant explore the broad swath of French society, not just examining the lives of the affluent as was customary for writers in his day. In the title story of the collection, "The Necklace," Maupassant crafts a devastating portrait of misplaced ambition and ruin in the emerging middle class.The stories in "Tales of War" emerge from Maupassant’s own experiences in the devastating Franco-Prussian War and create a portrait of that disastrous conflict that few modern readers have ever encountered. This section features Maupassant's most famous novella, "Boule de Suif."The last section, "Tales of the Supernatural," delves into the occult and the bizarre. While certain critics may attribute some of these stories and morbid fascination as the product of the author's fevered mind and possible hallucinations induced by late-stage syphilis, they echo the gothic horror of Poe as well as anticipate the eerie fiction of H. P. Lovecraft.The result takes readers from marriage, family, and the quotidian details of life to the disasters of war and nationalism, then to the gothic and beyond, allowing us to appreciate Maupassant in an idiom that matches our own times. The Necklace and Other Stories enables us to appreciate Maupassant as the progenitor of the modern short story and as a writer vastly ahead of his time.

    Mama, a sweet and capable manager, sees her children through childhood, manages to educate them and to see one of her daughters begin her career as a writer. Mama's sisters and uncle furnish a rich background for a great deal of comedy and a little incidental tragedy, while the doings of the children manage to keep everyone in pleasant turmoil. No description can do justice to the rich characterizations that fill the author's canvas. A High School version (ISBN 0-8222-0550-5) is also available at the same price. Groups interested should specify which version."

    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

    When it is announced that the Inspector General is coming to visit incognito, Anton, the chief of police, hastens to clean up the town before his arrival. Local officials scurry to hide evidence of bribe-taking and other misdeeds, setting the stage for the arrival from St. Petersburg of Ivan, a penurious gambler and rake who is promptly taken by the townspeople to be the dreaded Inspector General. Ivan, and his servant, Osip, soon take advantage of the situation with hilarious results. First performed in 1836, the play transcends regional and national boundaries to offer a biting, highly entertaining glimpse of universal human foibles and failings.

    A white teen who has grown up in the affectionate company of the two black waiters who work in his mother's tea room in Port Elizabeth learns that his viciously racist alcoholic father is on his way home from the hospital. An ensuing rage unwittingly triggers his inevitable passage into the culture of hatred fostered by apartheid."One of those depth charge plays [that] has lasting relevance [and] can triumphantly survive any test of time...The story is simple, but the resonance that Fugard brings to it lets it reach beyond the narrative, to touch so many nerves connected to betrayal and guilt. An exhilarating play...It is a triumph of playmaking, and unforgettable."-New York Post"Fugard creates a blistering fusion of the personal and the political."-The New York Times"This revival brings out [the play's] considerable strengths."-New York Daily News