To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Reduced Shakespeare Company's classic farce, two of its original writer/performers (Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield) have thoroughly revised the show to bring it up to date for 21st-century audiences, incorporating some of the funniest material from the numerous amateur and professional productions that have been performed around the world. The cultural touchstone that is The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) was born when three inspired, charismatic comics, having honed their pass-the-hat act at Renaissance fairs, premiered their preposterous masterwork at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1987. It quickly became a worldwide phenomenon, earning the title of London's second-longest-running comedy after a decade at the Criterion Theatre. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) is one of the world's most frequently produced plays, and has been translated into several dozen languages. Featured are all 37 of Shakespeare's plays, meant to be performed in 97 minutes, by three actors. Fast paced, witty, and physical, it's full of laughter for Shakespeare lovers and haters alike.

    This edition contains substantial excerpts from the original four-act version which was never produed, as well as the full test of the final three-act version, selections from Wilde's correspondence, and commentary by George Bernard Shaw, Max Beerbohm, St. John Hankin, and James Agate.

    M. Homes has been among the boldest and most original voices of her generation, acclaimed for the psychological accuracy and unnerving emotional intensity of her storytelling. Her keen ability to explore how extraordinary the ordinary can be is at the heart of her touching and funny new novel, her first in six years. Richard Novak is a modern-day Everyman, a middle-aged divorcé trading stocks out of his home. He has done such a good job getting his life under control that he needs no one- except his trainer, nutritionist, and housekeeper. He is functionally dead and doesn't even notice until two incidents-an attack of intense pain that lands him in the emergency room, and the discovery of an expanding sinkhole outside his house-conspire to hurl him back into the world. On his way home from the hospital, Richard forms the first of many new relationships: He meets Anhil, the doughnut shop owner, an immigrant who dreams big. He finds a weeping housewife in the produce section of the supermarket, helps save a horse that has fallen into the sinkhole, daringly rescues a woman from the trunk of her kidnapper's car, and, after the sinkhole claims his house and he has to relocate to a Malibu rental, he befriends a reluctant counterculture icon. In the end, Richard is also brought back in closer touch with his family-his aging parents, his brilliant brother, the beloved ex-wife whom he still desires, and finally, before the story's breathtaking finale, with his estranged son Ben. The promised land of Los Angeles-a surreal city of earthquakes, wildfires, mudslides, and feral Chihuahuas-is also very much a character in This Book Will Save Your Life. A vivid, revealing novel about compassion, transformation, and what can happen if you are willing to lose yourself and open up to the world around you, it should significantly broaden Homes's already substantial audience.

    (Theater Communications Group)"Baker may just have the subtlest way with exposition of anyone writing for the theater today ... There is something distinctly Chekhovian in the way her writing accrues weight and meaning simply through compassionate, truthful observation."            --Charles Isherwood, New York Times"Baker has a soft spot for the abandoned, the discarded, the hard-luck case ... her heartbreaking works of staggering focus have actually rescued realism from the aesthetic scrap heap."            --Helen Shaw, Timeout New York"Baker is a writer whose plays have a quiet, hypnotic charm a grace and humor. She's able to take ordinary, low-key situations--a small-town acting class, guys wasting time in an alley behind a café--and fill them with gentle comedy, generosity of spirit and an eye (and ear) for the foibles that make us all so hopelessly human."            --Village Voice

    The newest screenplay from the Oscar®-nominated writers of Election and About Schmidt, Sideways is the tale of two men's adventure in California wine country.Based on Rex Pickett's acclaimed first novel, Sideways tells the story of Miles (Paul Giamatti), a failed novelist, and his soon-to-be-married friend Jack (Thomas Haden Church), a washed-up actor.To salute the remains of their youth, the two men take one last road trip in the week before Jack's wedding.A serious wine enthusiast, Miles is determined to educate his friend on the region's beloved Pinot Noir wines before the week is out.Jack indulges his best friend's passion for the grape but is mainly interested in living his last week of bachelorhood to the hilt.Trouble ensues with wine and women (Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh), and the duo comes to some profound realizations as they come to terms with maturity.

    Each wears his cynicism like a bulletproof jockstrap–each has his horror story, his bad dream, his night shriek. He is afraid of his friends–he is afraid of himself.

    Pulling into a highway rest stop, they are confronted suddenly by a lunatic nuclear terrorist who kidnaps Anna and leads Adam off in furious pursuit. Along the way he teams up with a dyspeptic ex-mob thug and a Spanish-speaking female clown, creating an oddball rescue squad that is soon busy dodging the police and defeating an army of shadowy opponents. The showdown comes at midnight on Christmas Eve—when Hollywood-style entertainment meets 12 nuclear missiles.

    In the earlier play Ostrovsky had adopted a satiric tone that proved him a worthy disciple of Gogol, the great founder of Russian realism. Not one lovable character appears in that gloomy picture of merchant life in Moscow; even the old mother repels us by her stupidity more than she attracts us by her kindliness. No ray of light penetrates the "realm of darkness" -- to borrow a famous phrase from a Russian critic -- conjured up before us by the young dramatist. In Poverty Is No Crime we see the other side of the medal. Ostrovsky had now been affected by the Slavophile school of writers and thinkers, who found in the traditions of Russian society treasures of kindliness and love that they contrasted with the superficial glitter of Western civilization. Life in Russia is varied as elsewhere, and Ostrovsky could change his tone without doing violence to realistic truth. The tradesmen had not wholly lost the patriarchal charm of their peasant fathers. A poor apprentice is the hero of Poverty Is No Crime, and a wealthy manufacturer the villain of the piece. Good-heartedness is the touchstone by which Ostrovsky tries character, and this may be hidden beneath even a drunken and degraded exterior. The scapegrace, Lyubim Tortsov, has a sound Russian soul, and at the end of the play rouses his hard, grasping brother, who has been infatuated by a passion for aping foreign fashions, to his native Russian worth. Alexander Ostrovsky (1823-1886) was an early Russian Realist whose work led to the founding of the Moscow Arts Theatre and to the career of Stanislavsky. He has been acknowledged to be the greatest of the Russian dramatists.

    Hold tight as the ordinary turns extraordinary in Mark O’Rowe’s exhilarating new play. A blackly comic vision of Dublin infested with demons, from the author of Howie the Rookie.

    There are those who believe in the coach and his innocence and then there are the victims who despise him, his smile and his crime. He has a dark past- a previous life no one knew about until the not guilty verdict. Only one victim, Rose Canter, has the courage to ask for justice. The others quietly watch as her justice slips away with the verdict. He’s getting away with rape. He goes back to his life wearing his signature smile and Rose is left picking up the pieces of hers. She doesn't know she is not the only victim who has lost the fight to the coach. Coach Jackson's signature smile is an integral accessory of his wardrobe. In fact, he doesn't leave home without it. He has one son-Jonas, a dead wife, and a young, blonde bombshell by his side. He has money and status which he earned on the football field. Now he's giving back to the community by helping high school students afford a college education. One thing he does not have is the contentment of his victims. They want revenge and the setup for his demise begins. A trial takes place at midnight with a jury made up of six victims and one empty chair. The defendant is Coach Terrence Jackson. There’s more than one way to catch a criminal.

    Those who are familiar with Parra's work will find the humor more sharply honed and darker, the anger closer to the surface and sometimes breaking through, the language tighter, the compassion deeper and the statements more political--or anyway more social.

    There is no mention of my time as a lumberjack, and my career as a double-agent remains a closed book. Anyway, this is the much more exciting story of how I, Ronald Balfour Corbett, the son of a baker in Edinburgh, became convinced that I had to become an actor. It is the story of how I pursued that goal and eventually achieved it, along the way finding fame as one of the Two Ronnies, and encountering an extraordinary cast of characters." - Ronnie Corbett

    This hilarious and informative book is designed for anyone who is sci-curious and wants to know more about the world around them, especially the elements of everyday science that other books ignore.

    He's longed for adventure, so when the opportunity arises, he escapes from his bowl, clears the balcony railing and finds himself airborne. Plummeting toward the street below, Ian witnesses the lives of the Seville on Roxy residents.There's the handsome grad student, his girlfriend, and the other woman; the construction worker who feels trapped by a secret; the building's super who feels invisible and alone; the pregnant woman on bed rest who craves a forbidden ice cream sandwich; the shut-in for whom dirty talk, and quiche, are a way of life; and home-schooled Herman, a boy who thinks he can travel through time. Though they share time and space, they have something even more important in common: each faces a decision that will affect the course of their lives. Within the walls of the Seville are stories of love, new life, and death, of facing the ugly truth of who one has been and the beautiful truth of who one can become.Sometimes taking a risk is the only way to move forward with our lives. As Ian the goldfish knows, "An entire life devoted to a fishbowl will make one die an old fish with not one adventure had."

    Now, Anna has caught the eye of a powerful Alpha wolf, who recognizes her true value as a member of the pack. What will happen when Alpha and Omega come together? Cry Wolf is the latest series of supernatural adventure by New York Times best selling fantasy author Patricia Briggs. Set in the same world as her popular Mercy Thompson novels, it's sure to be a hit with fans old and new!