The Parker Family Trilogy: Love at the Chocolate Shop


Melissa McClone - 2021
    He has until Thanksgiving to decide if he should be the one to move to Marietta. But could he be happy living in such a small town?The Valentine QuestDustin Decker makes a strategic pact with the prim, bookish Nevada Parker for a multi-day race called The Valentine Quest. But with a kiss, their unlikely alliance turns into something more…and soon racing isn’t the only thing on their minds. As the finish line nears, they must decide if the grand prize is worth more than what they’ve found together…or if one of them will walk away empty handed—and broken hearted.The Chocolate TouchChocolate expert Chantelle Cummings arrives in Marietta, Montana with two goals—sign copies of her new book and research a quaint local chocolate shop. When she meets the gorgeous York Parker passing out chocolate samples, her visit turns sweeter than she ever imagined. But when York learns she’s moving abroad, will the truth harden his heart, or will love pave the way to a sweet future?

Sober Positive: Happily quit drinking and discover the unlimited possibilities waiting for you beyond alcohol


Julia Carson - 2019
    Sober Positive is both the story of her journey over the last two years and a detailed road map for anyone else looking for their own way out of the alcohol maze.You may not believe this now, but it is entirely possible to stop drinking and be completely happy. To achieve true freedom from alcohol. To be sober positive. In this book you will learn how to change your mindset about alcohol, how to assemble your own personal sobriety toolbox and how to cope with sober firsts like social events, holidays and Christmas. You will gain insight into why you might be struggling with alcohol and how you can address other compulsive behaviours which may arise in early sobriety. You will develop detailed strategies for self-care and be guided though the deeper work needed to support your physical and mental wellbeing and truly thrive as a non-drinker. You will be helped to navigate changing relationships with partners, children and friends and learn some surprising truths about our best friend booze.So, if you're drinking too much and it's making you miserable, why not take a chance on being sober and happy?You might just find your best life along the way. Julia did and this book contains everything she has learned in the past two years that helped her get there.

Who Am I This Time? For Romeos and Juliets


Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - 1987
    The story was collected in his anthology Welcome To The Monkey House. The story centers on a character named Harry Nash, who is an extremely shy & characterless small-town man. However, whenever he takes a part in the local, amateur theater production he becomes the character to an overwhelming extent. Soon Helene Shaw, a recent addition to the town, falls in love with Nash--or with his character in the play.

The Mai


Marina Carr - 1995
    Robert, her cellist husband, has always felt stifled by The Mai's ideals of perfection. After seventeen years he leaves her, whereupon she sets about building a dream house in the hope that he will one day return to her. From her fairytale castle, The Mai waits by the window for her dark-haired prince to return. Set in the inspiring surrounds of the West of Ireland, on the banks of the legendary Owl Lake, we enter this world on the day of Robert's return after an absence of four years. In the midst of Mai's and Robert's troubled reunion are the idiosyncratic characters that comprise the family. Irreverent and unapologetic, the opium-smoking one-hundred-year-old matriarch, Grandma Fraochlan, presides over all. The "Spanish Beauty," as she is known, with her "ancient and fantastical memory" and mythical presence, reminds us that the past is looming ever present. Her daughters, Agnes and Julie, meddle in the affairs of their three nieces, with comical tenacity. Deeply theatrical and profoundly intense, THE MAI is an epic tale of love and loss, of elusive dreams shattered by vulgar but inescapable reality.

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman


Harold Bloom - 1949
    This play which won the author a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony award presents the lead character, Willy Loman (played over time by Lee J Cobb, George C Scott, Dustin Hoffman, and Brian Dennehy, among others), who has come to represent the middle-class struggle.

Proof of Love


Chisa Hutchinson - 2019
    As her husband lies unresponsive in a hospital bed, Constance delivers a stirring and often explosive monologue that touches on fundamental issues of race, class, love, and fidelity—exploring how, as Constance puts it, there is, in fact, more than one way to be black. Playwright Chisa Hutchinson is a member of the first class of talent supported by the Audible Playwrights Fund.

Collected Works Of Edna St. Vincent Millay


Edna St. Vincent Millay - 2008
    This collection includes: Aria da Capo, A Few Figs from Thistles, Second April, Renascence and Other Poems

The Man With the Heart in the Highlands and Other Early Stories


William Saroyan - 1968
    Offers a selecttion of the master of human comedy's short stories from the 1930s and 1940s.

A Good Enough Daughter: A memoir


Alix Kates Shulman - 1999
    From her bestselling novel, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, to her brilliant memoir, Drinking the Rain, she has chronicled what it means to defy the expectations of family and society in order to map one's own life. Now, in this unflinching but tender memoir, she explores what it means to do what is expected of a daughter--discovering in the process the unexpected, complicated joys of going home. Told with the grace, clarity, and insight we have come to expect from her, A Good Enough Daughter is the story of Shulman's difficult journey from dependency to alienation to reconciliation, as she returns home to care for her aging parents in the last years of their lives. The intersection of her own memory with family documents discovered in her parents' house provides the structure for this riveting exploration of her life as a daughter.

A Thousand Clowns


Herb Gardner - 1962
    Tired of writing cheap comedy gags for "Chipper the Chipmunk," a children's television star, Murray finds himself unemployed with plenty of free time with which to pursue his...pursuits. Lectured by his conventional brother Arnold and hounded by "the system," Murray is paid a visit by bickering, uptight social workers, Sandra and Albert, and finds himself solving their problems as well as most of his own."Would be a standout comedy in any season. Filled with laughter and warmth and sweetness and inspired daffiness. One of the quintessential New York comedies."-New York Daily News "An extraordinarily funny play with some brilliantly offbeat lines."-The New York Post

Ourselves Alone - Acting Edition


Anne Devlin - 1986
    Book annotation not available for this title.

A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur


Tennessee Williams - 1979
    Louis in the mid-thirties––a lovely Sunday for a picnic at Creve Coeur Lake. But Dorothea, one of Tennessee Williams’s most engaging "marginally youthful," forever hopeful Southern belles, is home waiting for a phone call from the principal of the high school where she teaches civics––the man she expects to fulfill her deferred dreams of romance and matrimony. Williams’s unerring dialogue reveals each of the four characters of A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur with precision and clarity: Dorothea, who does even her "setting-up exercises" with poignant flutters; Bodey, her German roommate, who wants to pair Dotty with her beer-drinking twin, Buddy, thereby assuring nieces, nephews, and a family for both herself and Dotty; Helena, a fellow teacher, with the "eyes of a predatory bird," who would like to "rescue" Dotty from her vulgar, common surroundings and substitute an elegant but sterile spinster life; and Miss Gluck, a newly orphaned and distraught neighbor, whom Bodey comforts with coffee and crullers while Helena mocks them both. Focusing on one morning and one encounter of four women, Williams once again skillfully explores, with comic irony and great tenderness, the meaning of loneliness, the need for human connection, as well as the inevitable compromises one must make to get through "the long run of life."

The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Other Stories


Jack London - 1994
    In his Introduction, James Dickey probes London’s strong personal and literary identification with the wolf-dog as symbol and totem. Andrew Sinclair, London’s official biographer and the volume’s editor, provides a brief account of London’s life a sailor, desperado, socialist, adventurer, and acclaimed author.

The Dog Nobody Loved


Jon Katz - 2013
    They change you, and you almost never see it coming." When writer Jon Katz met Maria Wulf, a quiet, sensitive artist he felt a connection with her immediately, but a formidable obstacle stood in the way: Maria's dog, Frieda. A rottweiler-shepherd mix who had been abandoned and living in the wild for several years, Frieda was ferociously protective. She roared and charged at almost anyone who came near. But to Maria, she was her sweet, loyal and devoted friend. Jon quickly realised that to win over Maria, he'd have to make friends with Frieda too. The Dog Nobody Loved is the heart-warming story of how one man and a dog discovered it's never too late to find love. Please note, The Dog Nobody Loved is the UK title for the book published in the US as The Second-Chance Dog.

The Crucible: Text and Criticism


Arthur MillerAldous Huxley - 1971
    Based on historical people and real events, Miller's drama is a searing portrait of a community engulfed by hysteria. In the rigid theocracy of Salem, rumors that women are practicing witchcraft galvanize the town's most basic fears and suspicions; and when a young girl accuses Elizabeth Proctor of being a witch, self-righteous church leaders and townspeople insist that Elizabeth be brought to trial. The ruthlessness of the prosecutors and the eagerness of neighbor to testify against neighbor brilliantly illuminate the destructive power of socially sanctioned violence. Written in 1953, The Crucible is a mirror Miller uses to reflect the anti-communist hysteria inspired by Senator Joseph McCarthy's "witch-hunts" in the United States. Within the text itself, Miller contemplates the parallels, writing "Political opposition...is given an inhumane overlay, which then justifies the abrogation of all normally applied customs of civilized behavior. A political policy is equated with moral right, and opposition to it with diabolical malevolence." The Viking Critical Library edition of Arthur Miller's dramatic recreation of the Salem witch trials contains the complete text of The Crucible as well as extensive critical and contextual material about the play and the playwright, including:Selections from Miller's writings on his most frequently performed playEssays on the historical background of The Crucible, including personal narratives by participants in the trials and records of witchcraft in Salem from the original documentsReviews of The Crucible, in production by Brooks Atkinson, Walter Kerr, Eric Bentley, and othersExcerpts from Jean-Paul Sartre's Les Sorcières de Salem, a "spin-off" of Miller's play, and three analogous works by Twain, Shaw, and Budd SchulbergCritical essays on the play, on Miller, and on the play in the context of Miller's oeuvreAn introduction by the editor, a chronology, a list of topics for discussion and papers prepared by Malcolm Cowley, and a bibliography