National Network for Equitable Library Service

Set in Brooklyn, this gripping mystery begins when attractive, level-headed Sylvia Gellburg suddenly loses her ability to walk. The only clue to her mysterious ailment lies in her obsession with news accounts from Germany.

As You Like It is truly one of Shakespeare's greatest romantic comedies. The heroine, Rosalind, has grown up in the court of her usurping uncle Duke Frederick – her father, the rightful duke, having been exiled by his younger brother. Rosalind falls in love with Orlando, but Orlando is forced to flee when he is persecuted by his older brother Oliver. Soon Rosalind is also banished from the court by her uncle. Switching genders, she assumes the identity of Ganymede and, with her cousin Celia in tow, goes in search of her father.

Arms and the Man was George Bernard Shaw's first commercially successful play. It is a comedy about idealized love versus true love. A young Serbian woman idealizes her war-hero fiancé and thinks the Swiss soldier who begs her to hide him a terrible coward. After the war she reverses her opinions – though the tangle of relationships must be resolved before her ex-soldier can conclude the last of everyone's problems with Swiss exactitude. The play premiered to an enthusiastic reception.

Antony and Cleopatra is a tragic play by Shakespeare – which tells the ill-fated love story between Antony and Cleopatra and the antagonistic role played by Julius Caesar, future emperor of Rome. "I will tell you. The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne, Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver, Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made The water which they beat to follow faster, As amorous of their strokes."

Anna Christie is a play in four acts – which won O'Neill the 1922 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Anna makes contact with the father she has not seen since her infancy, and he takes her on board his coal barge. There she falls in love with a man they rescue from a shipwreck – but trouble arises when she tells them she has been working as a prostitute.

'We don't live alone ... We are responsible for each other' A policeman interrupts a rich family's dinner to question them about the suicide of a young working-class girl. As their guilty secrets are gradually revealed over the course of the evening, 'An Inspector Calls', J. B. Priestley's most famous play, shows us the terrible consequences of poverty and inequality.

Environmentalist, activist, and attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. contributes a foreword to this Skyhorse edition of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen's renowned 1882 play. Regarded as one of the foremost playwrights of the nineteenth century, Henrik Ibsen tells the story of the idealist Doctor Thomas Stockmann, the medical officer of a recently opened spa in a small town in southern Norway, who finds that the water is seriously contaminated. He notifies members of the community and initially receives support and thanks for the discovery.

Although originally classified as one of Shakespeare's comedies, All's Well That Ends Well is now more commonly classified as one of his ambiguous problem plays – so called because they defy neat classification as either comedy or tragedy. Helena, a servant, harbors a secret love for Bertram, her mistress's son. When the king becomes ill, Helena promises to heal him if she is allowed to marry any man of her choosing. Helena's father is a renowned physician, and the young girl, having inherited his knowledge, saves the king and Bertram is chosen as her husband.

A Penguin Classic. Joe Keller and Steve Deever, partners in a machine shop during World War II, turned out defective airplane parts, causing the deaths of many men. Deever was sent to prison while Keller escaped punishment and went back to business, making himself very wealthy in the ensuing years.

The world according to David Ives is a very odd place, and his plays constitute a virtual stress test of the English language — and of the audience's capacity for disorientation and delight. Ives's characters plunge into black holes called "Philadelphias," where the simplest desires are hilariously thwarted. Chimps named Milton, Swift, and Kafka are locked in a room and made to re-create Hamlet.