“Until the Flood is an urgent moral inquest.” —Jesse Green, New York TimesIn the gripping and revelatory Until the Flood, Dael Orlandersmith journeys into the heart and soul of modern-day America—confronting the powerful forces of history, race, and politics. Drawn from interviews following the shooting of a black teenager, Michael Brown, by a white police officer, Darren Wilson, Orlandersmith embodies the many faces of a community rallying for justice an...

These two raucously acclaimed new plays by Dael Orlandersmith, whom The New York Times has called "an otherworldly messenger, perhaps the sorcerer's apprentice, or a heaven-sent angel with the devil in her," confirm her reputation as one of the truly unique voices in contemporary American drama.In Yellowman, a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize in Drama, Alma and Eugene have known each other since they were young children. As their friendship blossoms in...

The sheer exuberance of language that pours forth in Dael Orlandersmith's plays has dazzled critics and audiences alike. In these three pieces, the award-winning writer and performer celebrates the power of words to rescue the young black women she portrays from their constricted worlds.In the Obie Award-winning play "Beauty's Daughter," Diane yearns to free herself from her soul-deadening surroundings, where people drown their unfulfilled aspirations in drugs and alcohol. In "Mons...

A Doll's House is an 1879 play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The play was the first of Ibsen's plays to create a sensation and is now perhaps his most famous play, and required reading in many secondary schools and universities. The play was controversial when first published, as it is sharply critical of 19th century marriage norms. It follows the formula of well-made play up until the final act, when it breaks convention by ending with a discussion, not an unravelling. It is ofte...

From Dave the Dude to Al Capone: a defining collection from the world of Damon RunyonDamon Runyon grew up in the West, moved to New York City, and became one of the leading voices of American popular culture. From sports writing to short fiction, this unique collection offers an eclectic sampling of his extraordinary talent. Here are newspaper pieces, stories- including the last one he ever composed-poetry, and, of course, the Broadway tales for which he is chiefly...

Pierre, or the ambiguities is the seventh book by Herman Melville, first published in New York in 1852. The novel, which uses many conventions of Gothic fiction, develops the psychological, sexual, and family tensions between Pierre Glendinning, his widowed mother Glendinning Stanley, his cousin Lucy Tartan, his fiancée and Isabel Banford, who is revealed to be his half-sister. According to scholar Henry A. Murray, in writing Pierre Melville «purposed to write his spiritual autobiography i...

The first-ever collection of 50+ writings from the 20th-century critic who “redefined the possibilities of the literary essay”—including works not seen in print for decades (The New Yorker)Elizabeth Hardwick wrote during the golden age of the American literary essay. For Hardwick, the essay was an imaginative endeavor, a serious form, criticism worthy of the literature in question.In the essays collected here, she covers civil rights demonstrations...

Oscar Wilde's philosophy leads him on a path to destruction. The Judas Kiss describes two pivotal moments: the day Wilde decides to stay in England and face imprisonment, and the night when the lover for whom he risked everything betrays him.With a burning sense of outrage, David Hare presents the consequences of an uncompromisingly moral position in a world defined by fear and conformity.Originally produced in the West End and on Broadway, this new edition coincid...

"Never before, in the entire history of the American theater, has so much of the truth of Black people's lives been seen on the stage," observed James Baldwin shortly before A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway in 1959.This edition presents the fully restored, uncut version of Hansberry's landmark work with an introduction by Robert Nemiroff.Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling, working-class fa...

To celebrate the centennial of his birth, the collected plays of America’s greatest twentieth-century dramatist in a beautiful bespoke hardcover editionIn the history of postwar American art and politics, Arthur Miller casts a long shadow as a playwright of stunning range and power whose works held up a mirror to America and its shifting values. The Penguin Arthur Miller celebrates Miller’s creative and intellectual legacy by bringing together the breadth ...

Jacob Flanders is a young man passing from adolescence to adulthood in a hazy rite of passage. From his boyhood on the windswept shores of Cornwall to his days as a student at Cambridge, his elusive, chameleon-like character is gradually revealed in a stream of loosely related incidents and impressions: whether through his mother’s letters, his friend’s conversations, or the thoughts of the women who adore him. Then we glimpse him as a young man, caught under the glare of a London streetla...

1967. Kenneth and Sandra know the world is changing. And they want some of it.Love, Love, Love takes on the baby boomer generation as it retires, and finds it full of trouble. Smoking, drinking, affectionate and paranoid, one couple journeys forty-years from initial burst to full bloom. The play follows their idealistic teenage years in the 1960s to their stint as a married family unit before finally divorced and, although disintegrated, free from acrimony. Their ...