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.

Sartor Resartus


Thomas Carlyle - 1834
    This is the first edition to present the novel as it originally appeared, with indications of the changes Carlyle made to later editions.

100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write: On Umbrellas and Sword Fights, Parades and Dogs, Fire Alarms, Children, and Theater


Sarah Ruhl - 2012
    She has written a stunningly original book of essays whose concerns range from the most minimal and personal subjects to the most encompassing matters of art and culture. The titles themselves speak to the volume's uniqueness: "On lice," "On sleeping in the theater," "On motherhood and stools (the furniture kind)," "Greek masks and Bell's palsy."100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write is a book in which chimpanzees, Chekhov, and child care are equally at home. A vibrant, provocative examination of the possibilities of the theater, it is also a map to a very particular artistic sensibility, and an unexpected guide for anyone who has chosen an artist's life.

Lear


Edward Bond - 1972
    it is even more topical now and will become more so as man's inhumanity gains subtle sophistication."—The TimesEdward Bond's version of Lear's story embraces myth and reality, war and politics, to reveal the violence endemic in all unjust societies. He exposes corrupted innocence as the core of social morality, and this false morality as a source of the aggressive tension which must ultimately destroy that society. In a play in which blindness becomes a dramatic metaphor for insight, Bond warns that "it is so easy to subordinate justice to power, but when this happens, power takes on the dynamics and dialectics of aggression, and then nothing is really changed."

Everyman and Medieval Miracle Plays (Everyman's Library)


Anonymous - 1956
    Everyman discovers what you can't take with you when you go. He beseeches in turn friends, family (one pleads 'cramp in my toe'), possessions ('I follow no man in such voyages'), and finally falls back on moral and religious values.

George Orwell's 1984: A Play


Robert Owens - 1963
    George Orwell's prophetic, nightmarish vision of "Negative Utopia" is timelier than ever-and its warnings more powerful in this three-act adaptation.

Les Blancs: The Collected Last Plays: The Drinking Gourd/What Use Are Flowers?


Lorraine Hansberry - 1972
    Includes a new preface by Jewell Gresham Nemiroff and a revised introduction by Margaret B. Wilkerson.

The Pitchfork Disney


Philip Ridley - 1991
    Manifesting Ridley's vivid and visionary imagination and the dark beauty of his outlook, the play resonates with his trademark themes: East London, storytelling, moments of shocking violence, memories of the past, fantastical monologues, and that strange mix of the barbaric and the beautiful he has made all his own.The Pitchfork Disney was Ridley's first play and is now seen as launching a new generation of playwrights who were unafraid to shock and court controversy. This unsettling, dreamlike piece has surreal undertones and thematically explores fear, dreams and story-telling. First produced in 1991, it has gone on to be recognised as the annunciation of Ridley's dark and seductive world.

The Second Mrs Tanqueray


Arthur Wing Pinero - 1893
    Controversial but successful on the London stage, this play reveals the fate of a "notorious woman" in Victorian England.

Sean of the South: Whistling Dixie


Sean Dietrich - 2016
    His humor and short fiction appear in various publications throughout the Southeast.

The Elizabethan World Picture


E.M.W. Tillyard - 1942
    The basic medieval idea of an ordered Chain of Being is studied by Prof. Tillyard in the process of its various transformations by the dynamic spirit of the Renaissance. Among his topics are: Angels; the Stars & Fortunes; the Analogy between Macrocosm & Microcosm; the Four Elements; the Four Humours; Sympathies; Correspondences; & the Cosmic Dance--ideas & symbols which inspirited the minds & imaginations not only of the Elizabethans but of all of the Renaissance.PrefaceIntroductoryOrderSinThe Chain of BeingThe Links in the ChainThe Corresponding PlanesThe CorrespondencesThe Cosmic DanceEpilogueNotesIndex

Under Milk Wood


Dylan Thomas - 1954
    A moving and hilarious account of a spring day in a small Welsh coastal town, Under Milk Wood is "lyrical, impassioned and funny, an Our Town given universality" (The New Statesman and Nation).

The Norman Maclean Reader


Norman Maclean - 2008
    But it was a role he took up late in life, that of writer, that won him enduring fame and critical acclaim—as well as the devotion of readers worldwide. Though the 1976 collection A River Runs Through It and Other Stories was the only book Maclean published in his lifetime, it was an unexpected success, and the moving family tragedy of the title novella—based largely on Maclean’s memories of his childhood home in Montana—has proved to be one of the most enduring American stories ever written.The Norman Maclean Reader is a wonderful addition to Maclean’s celebrated oeuvre. Bringing together previously unpublished materials with incidental writings and selections from his more famous works, the Reader will serve as the perfect introduction for readers new to Maclean, while offering longtime fans new insight into his life and career. In this evocative collection, Maclean as both a writer and a man becomes evident. Perceptive, intimate essays deal with his career as a teacher and a literary scholar, as well as the wealth of family stories for which Maclean is famous. Complete with a generous selection of letters, as well as excerpts from a 1986 interview, The Norman Maclean Reader provides a fully fleshed-out portrait of this much admired author, showing us a writer fully aware of the nuances of his craft, and a man as at home in the academic environment of the University of Chicago as in the quiet mountains of his beloved Montana.Multifarious and moving, the works collected in The Norman Maclean Reader serve as both a summation and a celebration, giving readers a chance once again to hear one of American literature’s most distinctive voices.

Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens


G.K. Chesterton - 1911
    

The Essays


Francis Bacon
    A scholar, wit, lawyer and statesman, he wrote widely on politics, philosophy and science - declaring early in his career that 'I have taken all knowledge as my province'. In this, his most famous work, he considers a diverse range of subjects, such as death and marriage, ambition and atheism, in prose that is vibrant and rich in Renaissance learning. Bacon believed that rhetoric - the force of eloquence and persuasion - could lead the mind to the pure light of reason, and his own rhetorical genius is nowhere better expressed than in these vivid essays.