Charlotte Cushman, one of the great actors of 19th century American theatre, was a lesbian who kept her identity hidden by focusing her career on male characters (Romeo, Claude Melnotte, Wolsey), and also on strong and passionate women (Lady Macbeth, Bianca in Fazio, and Queen Katherine in Henry VIII). This biography is an authoritative record of Cushman's life and performances, showing how her complex gender identity illuminates and is illuminated by 19th century theatre...

The great nineteenth-century stage actor Edwin Booth began his long career in 1849 as a young teenager, following in his father's footsteps. This biography traces his life and career as a tragic actor, including his childhood; his early acting tours of California, Australia and Hawaii; his rise to fame as a touring star; his two marriages; his relationship with his brother John Wilkes Booth; his disastrous management of Booth's Theatre in New York City; and his death in 1891. The book incl...

Edwin Forrest was the foremost American actor of the nineteenth century. His advocacy of American, and specifically Jacksonian, themes made him popular in New York's Bowery Theatre. His rivalry with the English tragedian William Charles Macready led to the Astor Place Riot, and his divorce from Catharine Sinclair Forrest was one of the greatest social scandals of the period. This full-length biography examines Forrest's personal life while acknowledging the impossibility of separating it f...

The compiled articles in Where Orioles Nest and Crocuses Bloom track almost 125 years of life in Western Canada, reaching way back to the early 1900s and travelling forward to present-day. The book is divided into four sections: Our Family, Our Area, Our History, and Our Traditions. Eachis populated with short articles and (in some cases) photographs, whose preoccupations range from a renowned paleontologist named Barnum Brown to the pleasures of making Izzy dolls destined for needy...

A chilling reenactment of the federal government’s anti-Communist investigationsThe testimony that Eric Bentley has gleaned for this book from the thirty-year record of the House Un-American Activities Committee focuses on HUAC’s treatment of artists, intellectuals, and performers. This highly dramatic and compelling collection of significant excerpts from the hearings shows with painful clarity how HUAC grew from a panel that investigated possible subversive activities in a “digni...

Famine, Death, War, and Pestilence—the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the harbingers of Armageddon—these are our guides through the Wastelands.From the Book of Revelation to The Road Warrior, from A Canticle for Leibowitz to The Road, storytellers have long imagined the end of the world, weaving eschatological tales of catastrophe, chaos, and calamity. In doing so, these visionary authors have addressed one of the most challenging and enduring themes of...

Having the Time of My Life is a rich account of Peter Chapel's life, depicting the people, places, and events that he wishes to remember and acknowledge. This memoir shows how everything and everyone around him genuinely enriched his life and brings back poignantly remembered fragments of his history.Chapel comes from a big family—thirteen children, only eleven of whom grew to adulthood. Here he shares the quality of the family bonding he and his siblings experienced growi...

In this original pairing from Blackstone Publishing and Skyboat Media, two of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s lesser-known works, Maracot Deep and The Coming of the Fairies, are brought together for the first time. Doyle’s forays into science fiction and spiritualism prove just as engaging and imaginative as the mysteries for which he is best known.Originally serialized in the Saturday Evening Post in 1927, Maracot Deep is a tale of dis...

Too long to be a short story, too short to be a novel—welcome to the surprisingly potent world of the novelette. The award-winning magazine Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show has been an online haven for this powerful form of storytelling since 2005. Now its editors have selected their all-time favorite science fiction novelettes from the magazine's eight-year history and reprinted them together in one big book of reading pleasure. Anything that is remotely possible—fu...

Tales of King Arthur and His Knightsby Jacob Bloom Learn the origins of King Arthur and his knights, Gawain and Lancelot, as they learn to do the right thing—no matter the odds.  Featuring three short stories in one, Tales of King Arthur and His Knights tells the legends of King Arthur as he takes charge over the knights and lords of Camelot; Gawain as he faces his own father and persuades him not to start a war; and Lancelot as he overcomes his fear of battle....

The world’s most famous sleuth returns in “The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” —a radio show which aired in the USA from 1939-1950, most famously starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. In later seasons, Holmes was played by Tom Conway and John Stanley, and Watson was played by Alfred Shirley. Episodes from 1939 through 1943 were written or adapted by Edith Meiser from the books of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. From 1943 onward, most shows were written or adapted by...