Book picks similar to
Woman in the Window by Alma De Groen
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Man of La Mancha
Dale Wasserman - 1966
That current is best identified by its catch-labels--Theater of the Absurd, Black Comedy, the Theater of Cruelty--which is to say the theater of alienation, of moral anarchy and despair. To the practitioners of those philosophies Man of La Mancha must seem hopelessly naive in its espousal of illusion as man's strongest spiritual need, the most meaningful function of his imagination. But I've no unhappiness about that. "Facts are the enemy of truth," says Cervantes-Don Quixote. And that is precisely what I felt and meant."--Dale Wasserman, from the Preface.
Wolf Hall & Bring Up the Bodies
Mike Poulton - 2014
Son of a blacksmith, political genius, briber, charmer, bully. A man with a deadly expertise in manipulating people and events. Mike Poulton's two-part adaptation of Hilary Mantel's acclaimed novels 'Wolf Hall' and 'Bring Up the Bodies' is a thrilling and utterly convincing portrait of a brilliant man embroiled in the lethal, high-stakes politics of the court of Henry VIII. 'Wolf Hall' begins in England in 1527. Henry has been King for almost twenty years and is desperate for a male heir, but Cardinal Wolsey is unable to deliver the divorce he craves. Into this volatile court enters the commoner Thomas Cromwell, who sets out to achieve the King's desire, whilst methodically and ruthlessly pursuing his own reforming agenda. In 'Bring Up the Bodies', Anne Boleyn is now Queen, her path to Henry's side cleared by Cromwell. When the King begins to fall in love with Jane Seymour, Cromwell must negotiate within an increasingly perilous court to satisfy Henry, keep the nation safe, and advance his own ambitions. Hilary Mantel's novels are the most formidable literary achievements of recent times. She is the first writer to win the Man Booker Prize with consecutive novels.Adapted by Mike Poulton, the plays were premiered by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, in December 2013, directed by Jeremy Herrin. This edition contains a substantial set of notes by Hilary Mantel on each of the principal characters, offering a unique insight into the world of the plays and an invaluable resource to any theatre companies wishing to stage them.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Stephen Sondheim - 1974
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.
The Criss Cross
Crystal Lacey Winslow - 2004
She's independent, street-smart and the daughter of a prostitute. Living in the mean streets of East New York and Bedford Stuyvesant Brooklyn shes forced to make a living the only what she knows how. When a wealthy, South African diplomat asks for her hand in marriage things seem to get brighter. Until she realizes that the soft-spoken, reserved, gentleman is pathological, kinky, and sadistic. One day she meets a mysterious stranger who approaches her with The Criss Cross. Is The Criss Cross her ticket to a better life? Or will The Criss Cross ultimately become the double cross? Wait! The Criss Cross isn't done yet! The old gang from Life, Love & Loneliness have some unfinished business to resolve. In this page-turning novel see how the drama unfolds for Lyric, Lacey, Madison, Joshua, and Estelle.
Self-helpLESS: A Cynic's Search for Sanity
Rebecca Davis - 2018
And because she’d quit drinking, she no longer had the comfort blanket of alcohol to tamp down her anxiety. How did sober people stay sane? In recent times, the self-help industry has exploded into a multi-billion dollar global industry – and along with it has come every imaginable type of therapy, healing or general woo-woo. In the past, Rebecca scoffed at this industry, mocking its reliance on half-baked science and the way it appears to prey on the mentally fragile.But as she searched for a meaning of life that did not involve booze, she found it increasingly hard to rationalize her default scepticism. This shit really seems to work for some people, she reasoned. And it’s not like I have any particularly solid alternatives.Rebecca lives in Cape Town, the undisputed epicentre of ‘alternative’ paths to peace and enlightenment in South Africa. She decided that over the course of a year, she would embark on a quest for personal wellness, spiritual enlightenment and good old-fashioned happiness. She was willing, within reason, to try anything. She would open herself to even the most outlandish contemporary fads in self-improvement.What followed was a twelve-month immersion in the world of auras, chakras, hallucinogenic drugs, sweat lodges, sangomas, past lives and more.And by the end of it? Maybe she would find some new ways of thinking and living. Or maybe she would emerge with her prejudices untouched.Either way, it would be a good story.
The Last Days of Judas Iscariot
Stephen Adly Guirgis - 2005
This latest work from the author of Our Lady of 121st Street "shares many of the traits that have made Mr. Guirgis a playwright to reckon with in recent years: a fierce and questing mind that refuses to settle for glib answers, a gift for identifying with life's losers and an unforced eloquence that finds the poetry in lowdown street talk. [Guirgis brings to the play] a stirring sense of Christian existential pain, which wonders at the paradoxes of faith" (Ben Brantley, The New York Times).
The Miss Firecracker Contest
Beth Henley - 1995
Carnelle enlists half-blind seamstress Popeye to help her efforts. Meanwhile, Carnelle’s cousins, Elain and Delmont, are forced to come to terms with their late mother’s legacy, against their own desires. Beth Henley’s signature messy characters fit imperfectly into tragi-comic portraits of the American South.
Freshwater: A Comedy
Virginia Woolf - 1935
It was first performed at Vanessa Bell's London studio in 1935 as one of Bloomsbury's theatrical evenings and later, in New York, in a star-studded French production. Edited and with a Preface by Lucio P. Ruotolo; drawings by Edward Gorey.