It's 1983, the evening before Dr. Sally Ride's historic space flight. Hundreds of miles from the launch, a group of women with passionate opinions and no opportunities sit on a sweltering St. Louis rooftop watching life pass them by. Their uncharted desires bump up against American norms of sex and power in this intimate snapshot of queer anti-heroines.
“The closest thing that the American theater currently has to a David Foster Wallace, Rapp can give you the head rush of sophisticated literary allusion and unreliable narrative trickery à la Dostoevsky, and yet talk of Plano, Illinois, and let you know that he knows exactly how it feels…A gripping stunner of a play.” —Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune When Bella Baird, an isolated creative writing professor at Yale, begins to mentor a brilliant but enigmatic student, Christopher, the two form an unexpectedly intense bond. As their lives and the stories they tell about themselves become intertwined in unpredictable ways, Bella makes a surprising request of Christopher. Brimming with suspense, Rapp’s riveting play explores the limits of what one person can ask of another.
The Negro Motorist Green Book was a groundbreaking guide that provided African American travelers with crucial information on safe places to stay, eat, and visit during the era of segregation in the United States. This essential resource, originally published from 1936 to 1966, offered a lifeline to black motorists navigating a deeply divided nation, helping them avoid the dangers and indignities of racism on the road. More than just a travel guide, The Negro Motorist Green Book stands as a powerful symbol of resilience and resistance in the face of oppression, offering a poignant glimpse into the challenges and triumphs of the African American experience in the 20th century.
Winner of the 2005 New Jersey Author Award for Scholarly Non-Fiction from the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance Long before Bruce Springsteen picked up a guitar; before Danny DeVito drove a taxi; before Jack Nicholson flew over the cuckoo's nest, Asbury Park was a seashore Shangri-La filled with shimmering odes to civic greatness, world-renowned baby parades, temples of retail, and atmospheric movie palaces. It was a magnet for tourists, a summer vacation mecca-to some degree New Jersey's own Coney Island. In Asbury Park's Glory Days, award-winning author Helen-Chantal Pike chronicles the city's heyday-the ninety-year period between 1890 and 1980. Pike illuminates the historical conditions contributing to the town's cycle of booms and recessions. She investigates the factors that influenced these peaks, such as location, lodging, dining, nightlife, merchandising, and immigration, and how and why millions of people spent their leisure time within this one-square-mile boundary on the northern coast of the state. Pike also includes an epilogue describing recent attempts to resurrect this once-vibrant city.
Drama Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, from Bram Stoker's novel Characters: 6 male, 2 female 3 Interior Scenes An enormously successful revival of this classic opened on Broadway in 1977 fifty years after the original production. This is one of the great mystery thrillers and is generally considered among the best of its kind. Lucy Seward, whose father is the doctor in charge of an English sanitorium, has been attacked by some mysterious illness. Dr. Van Helsing,
Davey has seen something he can't forget. Anita has been forced to flee her home. These two have never met. Tonight their paths cross with devastating consequences. Thrilling, heartbreaking and darkly humorous by turns, Vincent River explores the classic Ridley themes of loss, sexual identity, the family as a destructive force, East London and the redemptive power of storytelling. Vincent River premiered at Hampstead Theatre on 6 September 2000. It received its West End premiere at the Trafalgar Studios on 30 October 2007.
Officer Marcus Moscowicz is a small town policeman with dreams of making it to detective. One fateful night, shots ring out at the surprise birthday party of Great American Novelist Arthur Whitney and the writer is killed…fatally. With the nearest detective an hour away, Marcus jumps at the chance to prove his sleuthing skills—with the help of his silent partner, Lou. But whodunit? Did Dahlia Whitney, Arthur's scene-stealing wife, give him a big finish? Is Barrette Lewis, the prima ballerina, the prime suspect? Did Dr. Griff, the overly-friendly psychiatrist, make a frenemy? Marcus has only a short amount of time to find the killer and make his name before the real detective arrives… and the ice cream melts!
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The triumphant true story of a woman who rode her horse across America in the 1950s, fulfilling her dying wish to see the Pacific Ocean, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Horse and The Eighty-Dollar Champion “The gift Elizabeth Letts has is that she makes you feel you are the one taking this trip. This is a book we can enjoy always but especially need now.”—Elizabeth Berg, author of The Story of Arthur Truluv In 1954, sixty-three-year-old Maine farmer Annie Wilkins embarked on an impossible journey. She had no money and no family, she had just lost her farm, and her doctor had given her only two years to live. But Annie wanted to see the Pacific Ocean before she died. She ignored her doctor’s advice to move into the county charity home. Instead, she bought a cast-off brown gelding named Tarzan, donned men’s dungarees, and headed south in mid-November, hoping to beat the snow. Annie had little idea what to expect beyond her rural crossroads; she didn’t even have a map. But she did have her ex-racehorse, her faithful mutt, and her own unfailing belief that Americans would treat a stranger with kindness. Annie, Tarzan, and her dog, Depeche Toi, rode straight into a world transformed by the rapid construction of modern highways. Between 1954 and 1956, the three travelers pushed through blizzards, forded rivers, climbed mountains, and clung to the narrow shoulder as cars whipped by them at terrifying speeds. Annie rode more than four thousand miles, through America’s big cities and small towns. Along the way, she met ordinary people and celebrities—from Andrew Wyeth (who sketched Tarzan) to Art Linkletter and Groucho Marx. She received many offers—a permanent home at a riding stable in New Jersey, a job at a gas station in rural Kentucky, even a marriage proposal from a Wyoming rancher. In a decade when car ownership nearly tripled, when television’s influence was expanding fast, when homeowners began locking their doors, Annie and her four-footed companions inspired an outpouring of neighborliness in a rapidly changing world.