Fiction Drama

Lyra Prescott, a Los Angeles film student, is closing in on graduation and facing important decisions about her future. She's already been offered a job at her hometown TV station, an opportunity that could ultimately launch her dream career as a film editor. But heading back home would also mean dealing with her overprotective brothers, social-climbing mother, and eccentric grandmother. Unsure of her future, Lyra dives into work on her final school assignment: A documentary transformed by a twist of fate into a real-life horror film.

The multi-award-winning SmartPass study guide with and without commentary options. Full-cast, unabridged performance with comprehensive commentary and analysis for any student to fully understand and appreciate the play.

"And nothing is, but what is not." Macbeth may be mystified by the Weird Sisters' words but this intense performance with incisive commentary cuts to the heart of Shakespeare's complex psychological tragedy.

Lysistrata is an ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes, which was originally performed in Athens in 411 BC. It is a comic account of a woman's extraordinary quest to terminate the Peloponnesian War between Greek city states, by advocating that the women deny all the men of the land any sex. At a meeting, Lysistrata persuades the women of the warring cities to withhold sexual privileges from their men. She has also persuaded the older women of Athens to seize the Acropolis.

England, 1903. Giles, the new Earl of Stainton, is struggling to bring his family's estate back to order after the death of his father, and he has little time to spare for his young pregnant wife, Kitty. She lives in fear of her mother-in-law, who won't give up the reins of the household. Will she ever truly be mistress of Ashmore Castle? Perhaps if her coming child is a boy, that will change the balance of power...

Twelfth Night, nowadays one of Shakespeare's best-loved and most-admired comedies, was not always so regarded: Samuel Pepys saw the play three times in the 1660s and judged it 'silly'. Modern audiences, critics, and directors seem better attuned to its delicate counter pointing of romance and realism....

This is the story of Bull Meecham, the epitome of the Marine officer. Demanding, authoritarian, as tough a disciplinarian at home as at the base, Bull is a difficult man to please, and even harder to love. This is also the story of Ben Meecham, Bull’s oldest son. A gifted athlete whose best never satisfies his father, Ben must balance his own ambition with his father’s expectations – and decide what course he will chart for himself and what kind of man he will become.

Master storyteller Jim Weiss brings young listeners the glorious richness of two of Shakespeare's best loved plays, on a level children can grasp. Renowned storyteller Jim Weiss brings us the magic and mistaken identities of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the comedy of The Taming of the Shrew.

Naomi, Emma, and Taylor are heading to drama camp, but the drama doesn’t stay at camp. Word is spreading about the snake-saving club, and when a local news crew asks to interview the club, things grow tense. Naomi wants to teach people more about snakes, but she’s not the only one who longs for a moment of fame. During the interview, things go from bad to worse. Can Naomi salvage the interview, her drama camp performance, and the club?

When 14-year-old Brittany disappears one night, her parents are devastated, certain she has been taken. They can't bear to think about who has done this and what might be happening to their precious girl. Even worse, the police seem to see them as suspects, implying that they may have had a part in their own daughter's disappearance. Only their neighbor, Taylor, is a rock. She organizes search parties, feeds the volunteers, works night and day to help them find Brittany.

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Jodi Bishop knows success. She's the breadwinner, a top-notch real estate agent. Her husband, Harrison...not so much. Once, he had big dreams. But now, he's a middling writer who resents his wife's success.

By the time Shakespeare came to write Macbeth - almost certainly in 1605/1606 - he had already completed three of the great tragedies with which modern audiences are so familiar: Hamlet (1601), Othello (1603), and King Lear (1605). Each of those plays gives us an eponymous hero who is in some significant way flawed, but for whom we also inevitably feel deep sympathy, whatever his errors or crimes. But in MacBeth, Shakespeare has chosen for his tragic hero a man guilty of the most terrible crime imaginable to a Jacobean audience, that of regicide - the murder of a king.

Three Junes is a vividly textured symphonic novel set on both sides of the Atlantic during three fateful summers in the lives of a Scottish family. Three Junes "almost threatens to burst with all the life it contains...extraordinary," says Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours.

Needing to escape her abusive marriage, Hadley flees with her two kids, knowing it might be her only chance. A woman who can’t even kill a spider, Hadley soon finds herself pushed to the limits as she fights to protect her family. Grace, new mother of baby Miles, desperately wants to put her rough past behind her for good, but she finds it impossible when her path crosses with Hadley’s, and her quest for a new start quickly spirals out of control and turns into a terrifying flight for survival.

For the last seventeen years, Harry and Zara King’s lives have revolved around their only daughter, Sophie. One day, Sophie leaves the house and doesn’t come home. Six weeks later, the police are no closer to finding her than when they started. Harry and Zara have questioned everyone who has ever had any connection to Sophie, to no avail. Except there’s one house on their block—number 210, across the street—whose occupant refuses to break his silence.

Jeanie’s whole world is turned upside down. Not only has she lost her beloved brother, but with no family left in Washington, she is ripped from everything she knows, including Maddox, the boy she could be learning to love. Twenty years later, Jeanie is in England. She keeps her demons at bay by drinking too much, sleeping with a married man, and speaking to a therapist she doesn’t respect. But her old life catches up to her when Maddox reappears, claiming to have tracked down her dad.

Fifteen years ago, Chelsea was convicted for the murder of her university roommate, Isabella. Now, she’s being released early, and she just has one thing on her mind – clearing her name. Chelsea has always maintained that she was wrongfully accused. Now’s her chance to prove her innocence, once and for all. But as Chelsea starts digging into the past, new details – and suspects – start coming to light. And the closer Chelsea gets to the truth, the more dangerous things become.

London, 1765. Lady Isabella Gerard, a respectable member of Georgian society, orders her maid to take her new golden gown and destroy it, its shimmering beauty tainted by the actions of her brutal husband the night before. Three months later, Lord Gerard stands at the shoreline of the lake, looking down at a woman wearing the golden gown. As the body slowly rolls over to reveal her face, it’s clear this was not his intended victim…

Filmmaker Tessa Shepherd helped free a man she believed was wrongly imprisoned for murder. When he kills again, Tessa’s life is upended. She’s reeling with guilt, her reputation destroyed. Worse, Tessa’s mother has unexpectedly passed away, and her sister, Margot, turns on her after tensions from their past escalate. Hounded by a bullying press, Tessa needs an escape. That’s when she learns of a strange inheritance bequeathed by her mother: a derelict and isolated estate known as Fallbrook. It seems like the perfect refuge.

Ginny Beale is 18, irreverent, funny, and brave, with a brother she adores and a circle of friends for whom she would do anything. Because of one terrible night, she loses them all - and her adventurous spirit - seemingly forever. While the town cheers on the high school football team, someone sets the school’s auditorium ablaze. Ginny's best friend Gray Marsden's father, a firefighter, dies in the blaze.