Fame is fleeting but infamy will haunt you. A voice from the past breaks into P.I. Mac Moynahan’s pre-dawn workout and drags him back to a world of mortal sin and sacred ritual. A vintage playbill pinned to the door of a famous church, a bloody corpse staged in a copycat chapel, a priest bound by the seal of the confessional, some slick hacking by his method-acting office manager, and a few yellowed photographs send Mac in search of answers long-buried among the dead. Broadway legend Leo Albion outlived his fame — but not the one person who hated him enough to track him down and kill him. And as Mac closes in on a motive, if not a suspect, someone is tracking him. A macabre murder, an elusive killer, a missing motive and a twisted tale of wealth and perversion rival the darkest tragedies of Shakespeare.
P.I. Mac Moynahan gets an early morning call from a priest at St. Malachy's church, leading to a puzzling murder in a copycat chapel and the unraveling of a sordid tale of depravity and cover-up.
T. S. Eliot's most famous drama, a retelling of the murder of the archbishop of Canterbury Murder in the Cathedral, written for the Canterbury Festival in 1935, was one of T. S. Eliot’s first dramatic achievements, and it remains one of the great plays of the century. It takes as its subject matter the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, depicting the events that led to his assassination, in his own cathedral church, by the knights of Henry II in 1170. Like Greek drama, the play’s theme and form are rooted in religion, ritual purgation and renewal, and it was this return to the earliest sources of drama that brought poetry triumphantly back to the English stage at the time. "The theatre is enriched by this poetic play of grave beauty and momentous decision." —The New York Times
From USA Today bestselling author Leslie Langtry comes the next wacky, wild, wonderful Merry Wrath mystery... Whether they like it or not, culture is coming to Who’s There, Iowa in the form of community theater! Merry Wrath, former CIA operative turned suburban Girl Scout Troop leader has high hopes when Ye Olde Opera House is renovated, and newcomers Ophelia and her husband Dante arrive from off-off-off Broadway (…Street in Peoria) with their stage pig, Iago, to put on a production of Derek the Sparkly Unicorn Ninja, which was written by the mysterious SeBasquetian deCatalonia Braveheart. But chaos is the name of the game when half the town and their hamsters show up for auditions, Merry has been volunteered as Stage Manager, and her precocious troop are planning death-defying stunts and dangerous special effects. It certainly doesn’t help that Ophelia emotes like a deranged drama queen and Dante seems to think there’s a Tony Award for seducing women. When one of the thespians takes Method Acting a bit too far and ends up an actual corpse on stage, Merry has to work fast to find a killer before the curtain falls on another victim! What critics are saying about Leslie Langtry's books: "I laughed so hard I cried on multiple occasions! Girl Scouts, the CIA, and the Yakuza... what could possibly go wrong?" ~ Fresh Fiction "Darkly funny and wildly over the top, this mystery answers the burning question, 'Do assassin skills and Girl Scout merit badges mix…?'" ~ RT BOOKreviews "Mixing a deadly sense of humor and plenty of sexy sizzle, Leslie Langtry creates a brilliantly original, laughter-rich mix of contemporary romance and suspense." ~ Chicago Tribune "Langtry gets the fun started from page one." ~ Publisher's Weekly
December, 1940. Christmas is coming, but the season of goodwill is overshadowed by the death and destruction of the Blitz. In London's Covent Garden, where the glamour of theatreland rubs shoulders with the bustle of the capital's biggest fruit and vegetable market, the war has closed the theatres and ruined the market trade. When a daylight air raid hits the Prince Albert Theatre in Drury Lane, rescuers find a man dying in the wreckage. But it wasn't the bomb that's ending his life - he's been stabbed, and with his dying breath he whispers what sounds like a fragmented confession. As Detective Inspector John Jago begins to investigate, there's an underlying question he must grapple with: was the murdered man himself a killer?
Performances of "Murder in the Cathedral", written by T.S. Eliot, performed by the Epiphany Actors along with the Epiphany Choir from the church, part of the 1994 Adelaide Fringe Festival, directed by Graham Duckett, cast: Noel Wilson, Jim Giles, John Graham, Jeremy Wells, Matthew Randell, Chris Leech, Ben Abbott, Joe Thorp, Keith Brent, Chris Strain, Gordon Holroyd, Paul Coulson and Peter Rodgers.
On September 23, 1969, five years after the first made-for-television movie premiered, the ABC network broadcast Seven in Darkness. This was the first television film for an anthology show called the Tuesday Night Movie of the Week. Dedicating ninety minutes of weekly airtime to a still-emerging genre was a financial risk for the third-place network—a risk that paid off. The films were so successful that in 1972 the network debuted The Wednesday Movie of the Week. Although most of the movies are no longer remembered, a handful are still fondly recalled by viewers today, including Duel, Brian’s Song, and The Night Stalker. The series also showcased pilot films for many eventual series, such as Alias Smith and Jones, The Six Million Dollar Man, and Starsky and Hutch. By the end of both shows’ regular runs in the spring of 1975, the network had broadcast more than 200 made-for-television films. In The ABC Movie of the Week: Big Movies for the Small Screen, Michael McKenna examines this programming experiment that transformed the television landscape and became a staple of broadcast programming for several years. The author looks at how the revolving films showcased the right mixture of romantic comedy, action, horror, and social relevance to keep viewers interested week after week. McKenna also chronicles how the ratings success led to imitations from the other networks, resulting in a saturation of television movies. As a cultural touchstone for millions who experienced the first run and syndicated versions of these films, The ABC Movie of the Week is a worthy subject ofstudy. Featuring a complete filmography of all 240 movies with credit information and plot summaries, a chronology, and a list of pilots—both failed and successful—this volume will be valuable to television historians and scholars, as well as to anyone interested in one of the great triumphs of network programming.
An Edgar Award finalist for Best Fact Crime, this “impressive…open-eyed investigative inquiry wrapped within a cultural history of rural America” (The Wall Street Journal) shows legendary statistician and baseball writer Bill James applying his analytical acumen to crack an unsolved century-old mystery surrounding one of the deadliest serial killers in American history. Between 1898 and 1912, families across the country were bludgeoned in their sleep with the blunt side of an axe. Some of these cases—like the infamous Villisca, Iowa, murders—received national attention. But most incidents went almost unnoticed outside the communities in which they occurred. Few people believed the crimes were related. And fewer still would realize that all of these families lived within walking distance to a train station. When celebrated true crime expert Bill James first learned about these horrors, he began to investigate others that might fit the same pattern. Applying the same know-how he brings to his legendary baseball analysis, he empirically determined which crimes were committed by the same person. Then after sifting through thousands of local newspapers, court transcripts, and public records, he and his daughter Rachel made an astonishing discovery: they learned the true identity of this monstrous criminal and uncovered one of the deadliest serial killers in America. “A suspenseful historical account” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), The Man from the Train paints a vivid, psychologically perceptive portrait of America at the dawn of the twentieth century, when crime was regarded as a local problem, and opportunistic private detectives exploited a dysfunctional judicial system. James shows how these cultural factors enabled such an unspeakable series of crimes to occur, and his groundbreaking approach to true crime will convince skeptics, amaze aficionados, and change the way we view criminal history. “A beautifully written and extraordinarily researched narrative…This is no pure whodunit, but rather a how-many-did-he-do” (Buffalo News).
