brian beirne

In these wonderful short stories, Washington Irving created two of the earliest, most endearing and enduring characters in all of American literature. Rip Van Winkle and Ichabod Crane (not to mention the Headless Horseman) will keep you smiling as they wrestle with the strange and fantastic forces, characters and events that baffle and terrify.

England, 1914. The world is at war. Captain Hastings, injured and shaken, is invited to Styles Court to recover. It’s a grand old country house - the family home of his old friend - and a perfect haven. Or so it seems. But in the blistering summer heat, trouble is afoot. Simmering tensions are tearing the family apart, and it all comes to a head in the most horrifying way.

James Krasner, an expert in Victorian literature, takes you on a fascinating journey into the enduring power of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. You’ll learn how these three literary masters structured their novels to offer not only scares but also complex insights into cultural debates that still matter to us today.

Rob Schneider’s childhood in the San Francisco Bay area with parents of mixed-race backgrounds shaped his view of the world: that America afforded the greatest opportunity for peoples from all nations and all faiths. Now, Rob keeps finding himself in controversy in Hollywood for expressing a few commonsense opinions about what woke ideology is doing to our great nation. With humor, Schneider takes on the current neoliberal authoritarians in America and argues we are living under a new kind of tyranny.

Since The Karate Kid first crane-kicked its way into the pop culture stratosphere in June 1984, there hasn’t been a week Ralph Macchio hasn’t heard friendly shouts of “Wax on, wax off” or “Sweep the leg!” Now, with Macchio reprising his role as Daniel LaRusso in the number one ranked Netflix show Cobra Kai, he is finally ready to look back at this classic movie and give the fans something they’ve long craved.

Marriage, movies, and miracles. Oh, my! Marriage is a dance (even when you step on each other's toes), and movies are minefields of problems and politics, but miracles are more common than you might believe. Kevin and Sam show that if you keep your feet moving and your hearts focused on God's divine rhythm, you can discover successes you might never imagine. All it takes is a little faith. Throughout True Faith, the Sorbos personify this verse as they embrace the struggles they meet and use their faith to bolster their responses.

Monster stories aren’t just meant to entertain. They’re meant to inform, even educate. Above all, they ask us to question our own humanity. Nowhere is this truer than in stories of serial killers. What are the origins of this monstrous archetype? Why are we so fascinated with such gruesome terror? What do they reveal about our fears and anxieties? Explore these and other questions in Serial Killers: Real and Imagined, where public scholar Emily Zarka looks at the serial-killer trope across history, from murky 17th-century legends to 21st-century true-crime obsessions.

Tiny Tim, Bob Cratchit, and Ebenezer Scrooge come to marvelous life in Patrick Stewart's critically-acclaimed solo interpretation of A Christmas Carol. The star of X-Men and The Royal Shakespeare Company, Stewart has performed his one-man stage production of this holiday classic to sell-out audiences.

On television, as the star of the popular Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Kevin Sorbo portrayed an invincible demi god. He relished living the part—putting in 14-hour days on set, doing his own stunts, and relentlessly working out at the gym. Until one day it all came to an abrupt end. Now, for the first time, Sorbo shares what viewers didn’t know: he suffered three strokes from an aneurysm in his shoulder and was left partially blind and entirely incapacitated at just 38 years old.

It was January 2021, and Rick Deckard had a license to kill. Somewhere among the hordes of humans out there lurked several rogue androids. Deckard's assignment: find them and then..."retire" them. Trouble was, the androids all looked exactly like humans, and they didn't want to be found!