This new edition of four works show how Agatha Christie's plays are as compulsive as her novels, their colourful characters and ingenious plots providing yet more evidence of her mastery of the detective thriller. The Mousetrap A homicidal maniac terrorizes a group of snowbound guests to the refrain of 'Three Blind Mice'! And Then There Were None Ten guilty people, brought together on an island in mysterious circumstances, await their sentence! Appointment With Death The suffocating heat of an exotic Middle-Eastern setting provides a backdrop for murder! The Hollow A set of friends convene at a country home where their convoluted relationships mean that any one of them could be a murderer!

    After writing historical plays and imaginative epic dramas in verse, such as Peer Gynt, Ibsen turned away from history and romanticism to focus instead on the problems of the individual and modern society. The plays of his middle period—A Doll’s House, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, and his most popular play, Hedda Gabler—are masterpieces of stark psychological realism. In his final plays, including The Master Builder, Ibsen mixed realism and symbolism to enrich his examination of our subconscious drives and urges. Ibsen was criticized and denounced during his lifetime for expanding the boundaries of what is acceptable fare for the stage. Audiences were shocked when he wrote of feminist yearnings, venereal disease, and the deep emotions that underlie the sadness involved in being human. James Joyce put the criticism in perspective: “Henrik Ibsen is one of the world’s great men before whom criticism can make but feeble show. . . . When the art of a dramatist is perfect the critic is superfluous.” Ibsen has since come to be considered one of our greatest playwrights. Six Plays by Henrik Ibsen is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: •New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars •Biographies of the authors •Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events •Footnotes and endnotes •Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work •Comments by other famous authors •Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations •Bibliographies for further reading •Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

    With their latest work, O Brother, Where Art Though?, The Oscar-winning team returns to the period-piece films of their earlier career (Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy) and showcase once-again their pitch-perfect ear for hilarious and outrageous dialogue, as well as their penchant for the fantastic. Based on Homer's Odyssey, the movie stars George Clooney as Ulysses Everett McGill, along with Coen-mainstay John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson as fugitives from a chain gang who embark on a mystical and musical journey through 1930s Mississippi. History and allegory are expertly entwined as, along the way, the three escapees encounter a blind prophet, are tempted by sirens, do battle with a Cyclops (in the form of a one-eyed Klansman), fall in with George "Baby Face" Nelson on a bank heist, and cut a blues record with a young guitar prodigy who bears a striking resemblance to the real-life Robert Johnson.

    From the very first page of the prologue, Beeding makes the very air the characters live and breathe in seem to crackle with an ominous electricity. It is surely what appealed to Alfred Hitchcock when he found in Beeding's work the inspiration for his classic, unforgettable film, 'Spellbound'.Fans of Hitchcock will want to take special notice of 'The House of Dr. Edwardes', for, unlike other adaptations, 'Spellbound' strays rather dramatically from its source material. Not only do the differences offer fascinating peeks into the great director's creative vision, they also ensure that even Hitchcock fans familiar with 'Spellbound' will find much in Beeding?s novel that will surprise and delight. The "house" of the title is in fact a lunatic asylum in France, and Dr. Edwardes is the head psychiatrist and presiding genius there. And although he is a highly esteemed, almost iconic figure in psychiatric circles, there is something clearly amiss. The novel opens with a puzzling, ominous episode in which a patient being transported to the asylum grows agitated as the car bringing him there approaches its destination. He suddenly screams "the gorge of the devil" and attacks and kills one of his supervisors. On the heels of this terrible and inauspicious arrival is another newcomer to the asylum, Dr. Constance Sedgwick. A promising but inexperienced psychiatrist, Dr. Sedgwick accepts a position on Dr. Edwardes' staff to learn at the feet of the great man. But she arrives to discover that Dr. Edwardes has taken a leave of absence to calm his nerves, and it does not take her long to discover that the house is hardly in order. It is probably evident from just that short description that this work has much to say about madness, power and terror. What is interesting is the two very different paths taken by two very different artists-Beeding and Hitchcock-to best give life to these ideas. Hitchcock, as any fan of Spellbound knows, borrowed heavily from Freudian psychoanalysis and its emphasis on dreams, repression and desire. Salvador Dali's surrealistic interpolations serve as vivid illustrations of the irrational throughout the movie. Beeding, however, owes less to Freud, displaying much closer affinities with the brooding, psychological landscapes of the Gothic novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, especially Emily Bronte's masterpiece 'Wuthering Heights'. The result is a compelling work-part mystery, part modern gothic. 'The House of Dr. Edwardes' is a gripping novel that continues to provoke and inspire readers and artists alike

    He visits an old flame, buys a gun and goes on a blistering road trip through the new home front.'I don't blame the war. The war was alright. I miss it. It's just you come back to this.'Written during the London bombings of 2005, Motortown is a fierce, violent and controversial response to the anti-war movement - and to the war itself. Chaotic and complex, powerful and provocative, Simon Stephen's new play portrays a volatile and morally insecure world.Motortown premieres at the Royal Court Theatre on 21 April 2006. It follows the critically acclaimed On the Shore of the Wide World (Manchester Royal Exchange/National Theatre), winner of the Olivier Award for Best New Play (2005).

    This engaging and beautiful book includes the complete Academy Award-winning script and Thompson's own diaries detailing the production of the film, reviewed by Stanley Kauffmann in The New Republic as "vivid, funny, and gamy"

    They found the first body in 1982, in the woods near Rostov-on-Don: a young girl, lying faceup with her skeletal hands raised near her head as if trying to fend someone off. Over the next eight years, fifty-two more bodies were found in and around Rostov, a river city 600 miles south of Moscow. The victims had been savagely slashed with a knife, with their eyes gouged out, their sexual organs excised, their bodies spattered with the killer's semen. As the body count mounted, a remarkable Rostov detective, Viktor Burakov, became obsessed with hunting down the killer. He faced formidable odds. Archaic attitudes toward sex crimes and the nightmarish maze of the Soviet system produced an extraordinary range of false leads and bizarre theories: a satanic cult had formed, the murders were the work of a gang of mentally retarded boys, the killer must be a doctor, because the sexual organs of the victims had been carved out with surgical precision. The investigations of these hypotheses disrupted the lives of Rostov's citizens - most particularly homosexuals, who came under suspicion when young boys began to number among the slaughtered. Haunted by specters of the brutally murdered victims, Burakov took a startling route for a Soviet detective. He turned secretly to a psychiatrist - an expert on transsexualism - who produced a psychological profile of the killer that proved to be eerily accurate when Andrei Chikatilo - a family man, member of the Communist Party, and former schoolteacher - was finally hunted down and captured.

    It broke all historic records for plays of any kind, with an original London run of 1,466 performances.The play was first performed at the Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds in February 1892.

    In Northern Italy in 1983, seventeen-year-old Elio begins a relationship with visiting Oliver, his father's research assistant, with whom he bonds over his emerging sexuality, their Jewish heritage, and the beguiling Italian landscape.

    Hairspray (978-1-5578-3514-7); Rent (978-1-5578-3737-0); Fiddler on the Roof (978-0-8791-0136-7)

    Some Creasing And Rubbing To Spine, Edges Of Covers A Little Rubbed, Otherwise Good.

    In this edition, the original collection is supplemented with the 20 volume Harvard Shelf of Fiction, a selection of the greatest works of fiction. Content: The Harvard Classics: V. 1: Franklin, Woolman & Penn V. 2: Plato, Epictetus & Marcus Aurelius V. 3: Bacon, Milton, Browne V. 4: John Milton V. 5: R. W. Emerson V. 6: Robert Burns V. 7: St Augustine & Thomas á Kempis V. 8: Nine Greek Dramas V. 9: Cicero and Pliny V. 10: The Wealth of Nations V. 11: The Origin of Species V. 12: Plutarchs V. 13: Æneid V. 14: Don Quixote V. 15: Bunyan & Walton V. 16: 1001 Nights V. 17: Folklore & Fable V. 18: Modern English Drama V. 19: Goethe & Marlowe V. 20: The Divine Comedy V. 21: I Promessi Sposi V. 22: The Odyssey V. 23: Two Years Before the Mast V. 24: Edmund Burke V. 25: J. S. Mill & T. Carlyle V. 26: Continental Drama V. 27 & 28: English & American Essays V. 29: The Voyage of the Beagle V. 30: Scientific Papers V. 31: The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini V. 32: Literary and Philosophical Essays V. 33: Voyages & Travels V. 34: French & English Philosophers V. 35: Chronicle and Romance V. 36: Machiavelli, Roper, More, Luther V. 37: Locke, Berkeley, Hume V. 38: Harvey, Jenner, Lister, Pasteur V. 39: Prologues V. 40–42: English Poetry V. 43: American Historical Documents V. 44 & 45: Sacred Writings V. 46 & 47: Elizabethan Drama V. 48: Blaise Pascal V. 49: Saga V. 50: Reader's Guide V. 51: Lectures The Shelf of Fiction: V. 1 & 2: The History of Tom Jones V. 3: A Sentimental Journey & Pride and Prejudice V. 4: Guy Mannering V. 5 & 6: Vanity Fair V. 7 & 8: David Copperfield V. 9: The Mill on the Floss V. 10: Irving, Poe, Harte, Twain, Hale V.11: The Portrait of a Lady V. 12: Notre Dame de Paris V. 13: Balzac, Sand, de Musset, Daudet, de Maupassant V. 14 & 15: Goethe, Keller, Storm, Fontane V. 16–19: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev V. 20: Valera, Bjørnson, Kielland

    Concerned something has happened to her husband, Jill follows a string of clues to try and find out the secret Charles was keeping from her.

    When the outside world comes calling, intent on manipulation for political and economic reasons, the islanders find their own world blown apart from the inside as well as beyond. Further Than The Furthest Thing is a beautifully drawn story evoking the sadness and beauty of a civilisation in crisis.Further Than The Furthest Thing premiered at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh in August, 2000.

    Adaptation of much-loved thriller about racism by award-winning children's author Malorie Blackman.