Planning a school or amateur Shakespeare production? The best way to experience the plays is to perform them, but getting started can be a challenge: The complete plays are too long and complex, while scene selections or simplified language are too limited. "The 30-Minute Shakespeare" is a new series of abridgements that tell the "story" of each play from start to finish while keeping the beauty of Shakespeare's language intact. Specific stage directions...

Presents the original text of Shakespeare's play side by side with a modern version, discusses the author and the theater of his time, and provides quizzes and other study activities.

Retells in prose the 36 comedies, tragedies, and histories appearing in Shakespeare's First Folio.

"Two very different sisters find themselves thrown into an unkind world when their father dies. Marianne, wild and impulsive, falls dangerously in love, while Elinor suffers her own private heartbreak but conceals her true feelings, even from those closest to her. Jane Austen's subtle and witty novel of secrets and suppression, lies and seduction, brilliantly portrays a world were rigid social convention clashes with the impulses of the heart. This...

Nobody does Florida weirdness quite like this author. This novel is about thrill killer and Sunshine State historian Serge A. Storms, the most endearing psychopath since Dexter Morgan. The author offers this zany blockbuster extravaganza in which his wonderfully deranged serial killer Floridaphile delivers his special brand of Christmas cheer. More outrageous than Santa Claus in a Speedo, this book serves up a Yuletide feast of "pure gonzo humor"....

Arriving at her new college, Beca finds herself not right for any clique but somehow is muscled into one that she never would have picked on her own: alongside mean girls, sweet girls and weird girls whose only thing in common is how good they sound when they sing together. When Beca leads this a cappella singing group out of their traditional arrangements and perfect harmonies into all-new mash-ups, they fight to climb their way to the top of college...

"In a delightful new romantic comedy from Elinor Lipman, one woman's trash becomes another woman's treasure, with deliriously entertaining results. Daphne Maritch doesn't quite know what to make of the heavily annotated high school yearbook she inherits from her mother, who held this relic dear. Too dear. The late June Winter Maritch was the teacher to whom the class of '69 had dedicated its yearbook, and in turn she went on to attend every reunion,...

Grumpy old men: neighborhood curmudgeons' long-running feud becomes an all-out rivalry when an attractive widow moves into the house across the street. Grumpier old men: grumpy old men become grumpier in this sequel as a newcomer (Sophia Loren) plans to change the town's bait shop into a ristorante.

"From the award-winning author of It Sounded Better in My Head comes a deliciously entertaining enemies-to-lovers romantic comedy about two high school nemeses who end up sharing a house together their first year of college Eighteen-year-old Brooke is the kind of friend who not only remembers everyone's birthdays, but also organizes the group present, pays for it, and politely chases others for their share. She's the helper, the doer, the maker-of...

Joe Gardner is a middle-school band teacher who gets the chance of a lifetime to play at the best jazz club in town. A misstep takes him from New York City to The Great Before, a fantastical place where new souls get their personalities before going to Earth. Determined to return to his life, Joe teams up with a precocious soul, 22, who has never understood the appeal of the human life. As Joe tries to show 22 what's great about life, he may discover...