Poetry, Plays & Essays

Books of Poetry, Plays & Essays

50 Relatives Worse Than Yours by Justin Racz
They’re kooky, they’re crazy—50 Relatives Worse Than Yours is a nightmarish family reunion that will have you appreciating your own weird clan. There’s the Family Newsletter Publisher who keeps you updated on how Uncle Carl’s hip is doing; there’s Holistic New Age Aunt, who knows Madonna from Kabbalah class but refuses to introduce you because that would be bad karma; and there’s Child Who Was in a National TV Commercial, who has more money than you do. And then there’s Uncle Speedo, the Monopoly Bank Thief, and Your Son, the Tenant. Filled with hilarious photographs and bullet points listing all their horrible characteristics, 50 Relatives Worse Than Yours is the perfect gift for anyone who’s embarrassed by some members of their family, which let’s just admit it is about everyone. And who knows, you might even recognize a relative or two…

Format - Hardcover
Cover Price $14.95
Condition: Good
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A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
When it was first produced in 1959, A Raisin in the Sun was awarded the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for that season and hailed as a watershed in American drama. A pioneering work by an African-American playwright, the play was a radically new representation of black life.

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Condition: Good
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Dave Barry Does Japan
Not since George Bush's memorable dinner with the Japanese prime minister has the Land of the Rising Sun seen the likes of a goodwill ambassador like Dave Barry. Join him as he belts out oldies in a karaoke bar, marries a geriatric geisha girl, takes his first bath in public, bows to just about everyone, and explores culture shock in all its numerous humorous forms, including: Failing to Learn Japanese in Only Five Minutes (Or: "Very Much Good Morning, Sir!") ; Humor in Japan (Take My Tofu, Please!); Sports in Japan ("Yo, Batter! Loudly Make it Fly!"), and more.

Format - Hardcover
Cover Price $18.00
Condition: Good
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Et Tu, Babe by Mark Leyner
In this fiendishly original new novel, Mark Leyner is a leather-blazer-wearing, Piranha 793-driving, narcotic-guzzling monster who has potential rivals eliminated by his bionically enhanced bodyguards, has his internal organs tattooed, and eavesdrops on the erotic fantasies of Victoria's Secret models -- which naturally revolve around him.
Leyner's jet-propelled roller derby through the cultures of celebrity, cyberpunk, and rabid egotism is exhilaratingly bizarre, exhaustingly funny -- and you'd better hope it's just fiction.

Cover Price $10.00
Condition: Good
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Four Contemporary America Plays
Contains The Tenth Man by Paddy Chayefsky, A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, Toys in the Attic by Lillian Hellman and The Andersonville Trial by Saul Levitt.

Cover Price $9.00
Condition Good
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How Do I Love Thee?: An Anthology of Passion and Romance by Carol Kelly-Gangi
Romantic love surely accounts for some of life's greatest memories. How Do I Love Thee? celebrates romantic love and all of the passion, longing, heartache, and happiness that it excites. It includes more than fifty excerpts, stories, poems, letters, and recipes for and about lovers. Excerpts from classic love stories such as Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, join those from such contemporary works as Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate, and Robert James Waller's The Bridges of Madison County. Classic verse by poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lord Byron, Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, William Shakespeare, William Butler Yeats, and others sheds light on the timeless themes of love. Enhancing the collection is a sampling of enticing recipes and sensuous aromatherapy for you and your lover to share, as well as Lovers' Notebook pages where you can inscribe some of our own musings on the subject of love. Whether you're in love for the first time, happily married for many years, or simply in love with love, How Do I Love Thee? is an evocative collection that illuminates the rich and elusive emotion of love.

Format - Hardcover
Cover Price $9.95
Condition: Good
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I Smell Esther Williams by Mark Leyner
A community theater's production of Special Yearnings triggers a string of underground nuclear explosions from St. Louis to Worcester, Massachusetts. A man frantically swats at the blaze that his girlfriend has ignited in his trousers, while her family tries to figure out whether his agonized sign language means "Under the Volcano" or "No Time for Sergeants." Charo, Marianne Faithfull, and Napoleon's sister swap glittering witticisms and pornographic come-ons with languid aesthetes and unhinged suburbanites.

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I'm Nobody! Who Are You? by Emily Dickinson
I'M NOBODY, WHO ARE YOU? is a collection of Emily Dickinson's greatest poetry, from the wistful to the unsettling, the wonders of nature to the foibles of human nature.

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Condition Very Good
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Jumpers by Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppers's play Jumpers is both a high-spirited comedy and a serious attempt to debate the existence of a moral absolute, of metaphysical reality, of God. Michael Billington in The Guardian described the play succinctly: "The new Radical Liberal Party has made the ex-Minister of Agriculture Archbishop of Cantebury, British astronauts are scrapping with each other on the moon, and spritely academics steal about London by night indulging in murderous gymnastics: this is the kind of manic, futuristic, topsy-turvy world in which Stoppard's dazzling new play is set. And if I add that the influences apparently include Wittgenstein, Magritte, the Goons, Robert Dhery, Joe Orton, and The Avengers, you will have some idea of the heady brew Stoppard has here concocted." The protagonist incude an aging Professor Of Moral Philosophy -- trying to compose a lecture on "Man -- Good, Bad or Indifferent" -- while ignoring a corpse in the next room; his beautiful young wife, an ex-musical comedy Queen, lasciviously entertaining his university boss down the hall; her husband's specially trained hare, Thumpers; and a chorus of gymnasts, Jumpers.

Condition: Good
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Ladies' Room Reader: The Ultimate Women's Trivia Book by Alicia Alvrez
Fifty-seven percent of women would rather shop than have sex. Jodie Foster was born Ariane Munker, and Lauren Bacall, Betty Joan Perske. Oprah Winfrey and Margaret Avery, both nominated for Best Supporting Actress Oscars for The Color Purple, were the first two African-American women nominated in the same year for the same category. At the height of her popularity, screen star Betty Grable had her legs insured for $25,000 - a modest sum compared to the $650,000 policy Fred Astaire took out on his feet! These nuggets, along with everything else you've ever wanted to know about women, are to be found within this easy-to-browse resource. Here are women's views on shopping, clothing and cosmetics, marriage and children, food, sex, and pets, along with the lowdown on women celebrities and the feats of history's heroines and female adventurers.

Condition: Very Good
Your Price: $3.00

Listening for Cactus by Mary McGinnis
Blind since birth, she has written with power and humor about the disability experience, wild pears, and the dreams she doesn't remember.

Cover Price $14.00
Condition: Good
Your Price: $2.50

Loose Cannons: Devastating Dish from the World's Wildest Women by Autumn Stephens
In her snappy compendium Wild Women, Autumn Stephens showed what a good punchy quote can do to enliven a dull day. Whether you're looking for ammunition to aim between a rival's ears or just fishing for pithy phrases to amuse yourself, her collection Loose Cannons should supply you with several statements you wouldn't mind tattooing on a prominent spot. Questioning whether endless dieting is really the route to self-esteem? "You're not fat, you're in the wrong country," plus-size model Denise Walker says flatly. Looking for the brighter side of a romance gone south? "It's like magic," marvels humorist Merrill Markoe. "When you live by yourself, all your annoying habits are gone." Wondering what happened to your ship? "I rang for ice, but this is ridiculous," a Titanic survivor is reputed to have said in a quote that is surely apocryphal. Annoyingly arch references to the women quoted take away some of the fun, but the book is a hoot overall.

Condition: Very Good
Your Price: $3.00

Men Are from Detroit Women Are from Paris
This hilarious collection of cartoons by women making fun of men pulls no punches and takes no prisoners. From "Garden Variety Guys," "The Male Mind," "Talking to Guys," and "Fantasy Men," among other sections, women cartoonists take off after the elusive male of the species, poking fun at all those qualities women love to hate and can't live without. Love, romance and dating, not to mention sex, are of course hot topics in this collection. Features Nicole Hollander, Roz Chast, Jan Eliot, Lynda Barry, Mary Lawton, Marian Henley, Nina Paley, and many others.

Condition: Very Good
Your Price: $3.00

Old Songs in a New Cafe by Robert James Waller
Nineteen essays, most of which originally appeared in the "Des Moines Register," including Waller's first published piece, "Riding Along in Safety with Kennedy and Keralt."

Format - Hardcover
Condition: Very Good
Your Price: $2.50

Pitching My Tent by Anita Diamant
Before The Red Tent, before Good Harbor, before and during six books on contemporary Jewish life, Anita Diamant was a columnist. Over the course of two decades, she wrote essays about friendship and family, work and religion, ultimately creating something of a public diary reflecting the shape and evolution of her life -- as well as the trends of her generation. Pitching My Tent collects the finest of these essays, all freshly revised, updated, and enriched with new material, forming a cohesive and compelling narrative. Organized into six parts, the shape of the book reflects the general shape of adult life, chronicling its emotional and practical milestones. There are sections on marriage and the nature of family ("Love, Marriage, Baby Carriage"); on the ties that bind mother and child ("My One and Only"); on the demands and rewards of friendship ("The Good Ship"); on the challenges of balancing Jewish and secular calendars ("Time Wise"); on midlife ("In the Middle"); and on what it means to embrace Judaism in today's culture ("Home for the Soul").

Format - Hardcover
Cover Price $24.00
Condition: Good
Your Price: $2.00

Plays, Poems and Prose by John Millington Synge
Mysterious, troublesome and romantic, Synge rose to fame on a flood of lively, outrageous work. On the night of its premier, The Playboy of the Western World started a riot among the audience who denounced Synge as "immoral" and "anti-Irish." Also included in this collection are The Shadow of the Glen, Deirdre of the Sorrows, and The Aran Islands that dance with Synge's fascinating, curiously hybrid language and attention to raw Irish life.

Condition: Good
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Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
When George Bernard Shaw wrote Pygmalion more than a half century ago, no one could have predicted his play would eventually be converted into one of the great musicals of our time -- My Fair Lady -- and an Academy Award³-winning motion picture. Generations of readers and theatergoers have found relevance in Shaw's story of speech therapist Henry Higgins, who successfully transforms Liza Doolittle, a "draggle-tailed guttersnipe," into a darling of high society who momentarily upsets his hard-edged reserve. The extraordinary wit of this master dramatist of the twentieth century cuts away at the artificiality of class distinctions to reveal that human clay can be molded into wondrous shapes.

Cover Price $5.50
Condition New
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Teddy Bear Stories for Grown-Ups by Catherine Taylor
Twenty-three stories ranging from mystery to humor to romance pay tribute to the special relationship that exists between a teddy bear and its owner.

Condition: Good
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Tooth Imprints On A Corn Dog by Mark Leyner
The author of Et Tu, Babe and My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist returns with another celebratory burst from the automatic weapon of his psyche. Mark Leyner brings us along for his dream date with Princess Di; wholeheartedly recommends the wonderfully lifelike, bendable This week with David Brinkley action figures; and speculates on the symbolic meanings of the tattoos sported by U.S. senators.

Format - Hardcover
Cover Price $19.00
Condition: Very Good
Your Price: $2.50

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