Jane Carr

"From one of Britain's most accomplished, acclaimed, and garlanded writers, Hilary Mantel delivers a brilliant collection of contemporary short stories that demonstrate what modern England has becomeIn The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, Hilary Mantel's trademark gifts of penetrating characterization, unsparing eye, and rascally intelligence are once again fully on display.Her classic wicked humor in each story--which range from a ghost story...

"From the two-time Man Booker award-winning author, comes a collection of short stories. Ranging from a ghost story to a vampire story to a near-memoir to mini-sagas of family and social fracture. Each story brilliantly unsettles the reader with Mantel's classic wicked humour and unsparing eye, in an unmistakably Mantel way"--

First staged in 1906, "The Doctor's Dilemma" is a play that revolves around a community of doctors, most specializing, unbeknownst to them, in different types of expensive, fraudulent treatments. Dr. Ridgeon, who has actually discovered a vaccine for tuberculosis, is conflicted about administering his limited remedy, for the husband of a woman he is in love with can pay, but his kind yet poverty-stricken colleague Dr. Blenkinsop cannot. Shaw's drama...

China, 1957. Chairman Mao declared "Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend," to encourage a new openness in society. However, for many outspoken intellectuals, this turned out to be a trap. Kai Ying's husband, Sheng, was one of them. A year later, Sheng remains imprisoned in a labor camp, while Kai Ying and her family struggle to find a sliver of peace and hope in a world full of guilt and secrets.

The intrigues of such aptly named characters as Lady Sneerwell, Sir Joseph Surface, Lady Candour, and Sir Benjamin Backbite have amused theater audiences for more than two centuries. They are the invention of the Irish-born playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and they unfold, collide, and backfire hilariously in his masterpiece, The School for Scandal, a play still considered by many the best comedy of manners in English. It is a comedy with two...

In a Soho restaurant, diners find their evening disturbed by the extraordinary Lady Pitts. She talks aloud and sings even louder. All this while knocking back double brandies and handing out invitations to tea at the home of her husband, Sir Joseph. Her appearcance that evening has an impact, especially on Ernest, an impressionable young Polish émigré.

Four classic comedies from one of the wittiest playwrights in Western literature.

Lady Windermere's Fan: The irreverent satire that launched Wilde's succession of classical comedies. A Lord, his wife, her admirer and an infamous blackmailer converge in this delicious comic feast of scandal. A divinely funny comedy of good girls, bad husbands and the moral hypocrisy of British high society in the late nineteenth century. An L.A. Theatre

...