English Theater

Before he was producing the musical hits of our generation, Jeffrey was just a kid coming to terms with his adoption, trying to understand his sexuality, and determined to escape his dysfunctional household in a poor neighborhood just outside Detroit. We see him find his voice through musical theater and move to New York, where he is determined to shed his past and make a name for himself on Broadway. But moving to the big city is never easy—especially not at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis—and Jeffrey learns to survive and thrive in the colorful and cutthroat world of commercial theatre.

After matching online, two strangers—played by Heléne Yorke (The Other Two) and Michael Zegen (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel)—meet in real life. The vibe is off, and the conversation is a mess. Yet something is keeping them in their seats. What begins as a typical date off the apps spirals into something unexpected.

From syndicated humor columnist Marc Acito comes a wildly inventive and hysterically funny novel that is equal parts Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Fame, Risky Business, Dead Poets Society, and The Catcher in the Rye.

John Ratey, best-selling author and clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, lucidly explains the human brain's workings, and paves the way for a better understanding of how the brain affects who we are. Ratey provides insight into the basic structure and chemistry of the brain, and demonstrates how its systems shape our perceptions, emotions, and behavior. By giving us a greater understanding of how the brain responds to the guidance of its user, he provides us with knowledge that can enable us to improve our lives.

Every self-respecting lich has a few hundred phylacteries at a minimum, and Harold wants to check in on a few thousand of his. Rumors reach him that the vicious Mantis Queen has one of them. Naturally, she's at the other end of the region. It's just a casual stroll across the deserted and inhospitable Flaming Steppes. Inhospitable for the living, that is!

No one comes out of a movie talking about structure. What audiences love and remember about a movie are great scenes. Marlon Brando in the back seat in On the Waterfront giving his "I could'a been a contender" speech. Meg Ryan's fake orgasm in Katz's Deli in When Harry Met Sally with the climactic punch line: "I'll have what she's having." In Superbad, Jonah Hill professing "I love you" to his friend Michael Cera by touching his nose with a "boop".

Putting It Together chronicles the two-year odyssey of creating the iconic Broadway musical Sunday in the Park with George. Through conversations between Lapine and Sondheim, as well as most of the production team, and with a treasure trove of personal photographs, sketches, script notes, and sheet music, the two Broadway icons lift the curtain on their beloved musical. Putting It Together is a deeply personal remembrance of their collaboration and friendship and the highs and lows of that journey, one that resulted in the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning classic.

Chester, as it turns out, is actually a monster god. Unfortunately, we don’t have any time to throw festivals in his honor—the whole world has gone mad and is overflowing with corrupted monsters. His fellow Calamities, enraged that he’d forgotten them, have fused their worlds together in a fit of petty rage. Now, everyone's stuck in a bizarre and dangerous hellscape with corruption overflowing from every dungeon. The strength I’ve gathered isn’t enough.

Elise was always made fun of for her big ears and buck teeth. She tried her best to overcome the mockery, only to work herself to death and wake up as... a big-eared, buck-toothed rabbit. Now, with nothing but an almost worthless System Assistant to help her, she needs to survive in a world full of magic and monsters. On top of all that, for some reason she's been given the ominous [Mark of Fate] skill. She has no idea what it does, but things keep happening to her, most of them unpleasant.

Before being conscripted to fight in the Total War, Private Hector Park had a shattered family, a collection of old video games, and a promising career as a motorcycle stuntman. Now, he is dying from a virus threatening humankind with extinction. He has three days to live. When Hector’s brother contacts him after years of hostile silence, Hector goes to try and make peace. But his brother offers him something even better: the chance to cheat death by joining him in Archemi, a full-immersion fantasy VR-RPG video game.

After crossing a magically radioactive desert and fending off a necromancer, Viv can aspire to some respite from all the horrors and foul-smelling undead. The border city of Kazar promises to be a haven where she can rest, learn how to use her new powers, and understand why she ended up in the fantastic world of Nyil. Arthur the pocket dragon and the genocidal golem Solfis are nice and all but she yearns for some human contact and look, there are plenty of humans around. With their own agenda.

Award-winning author Stephen Greenblatt is one of the most influential literary thinkers in the world. An acclaimed interpreter of Shakespeare's works, his ideas have changed the way countless people approach the classics. Now Greenblatt's uniquely brilliant voice delivers a magnificent biography of the Bard himself.

When we think of '70s cinema, we think of classics like The Godfather and Taxi Driver...but the riches found in the overlooked B-movies of the time, rolled out wherever they might find an audience, unexpectedly tell an eye-opening story about post-Watergate, post-Vietnam America. Revisiting the films that don't make the Academy Award montages, Charles Taylor finds a treasury many of us have forgotten, movies that in fact "unlock the secrets of the times".

The Baron Sherazad sent me as far away from Eslant as possible. Now, I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere, in a nest full of enemies, with only a demented mimic and a renegade elf to watch my back.

How do master storytellers compel us? There have been many attempts to understand what makes a good story, but few have used a scientific approach. In The Science of Storytelling, Will Storr applies dazzling psychological research and cutting-edge neuroscience to our myths and archetypes to show how we can tell better stories, revealing, among other things, how storytellers - and also our brains - create worlds by being attuned to moments of unexpected change.

When Mexican-born novelist Lucia lands her first TV writing job, she immediately feels out of place in the White, male-dominated writers' room. Before long, she’s drawn to the only other Latino around, a janitor named Abel, and the two begin an unlikely friendship—one that’s tested when Abel’s confidences start showing up in Lucia’s scripts.

Listen as stage and screen performer Jason Gotay (Gossip Girl, Evita) brings his breathtaking vocals and gift of storytelling to a musical narrative about his journey to self-acceptance. With soulful interpretations of musical theater selections and pop favorites, the Bring It On: The Musical actor walks us through transformational moments of his past while paying homage to the fierce women who have inspired him.

If you read a standard history of magic, you learn that it begins in ancient Egypt with the resurrection of a goose in front of the Pharaoh. You discover how magicians were tortured and killed during the age of witchcraft. You are told how conjuring tricks were used to quell rebellious colonial natives. The history of magic is full of such stories, which turn out not to be true. Behind the smoke and mirrors, however, lies the real story of magic.

Eccentric heiress Maida Westabrook treasures her peaceful, "ordinary" life in California—morning strolls along the beach, warm evenings by the fire, and losing herself in her beloved library of myths and legends. Yet Maida can’t shake the nagging feeling that there’s more to her story than she’s been led to believe. Strange and inexplicable occurrences have always surrounded her, dismissed as nothing more than her overactive imagination.

Once an inventive puppeteer, Sabbath at sixty-four is still defiantly antagonistic and exceedingly libidinous. But after the death of his longtime mistress—an erotic free spirit whose adulterous daring surpassed even his own—Sabbath, bereft and grieving and besieged by the ghosts of those who loved and hated him most, contrives a succession of farcical disasters that take him to the brink of madness and extinction.