This brilliant collection of Horovitz's newest one-act plays can be mixed and matched to form several "theme" evenings

THE STORY: Zuckerman, a college student, has ran over and killed a young man riding a skate board. As the play opens he is in his room pasting newspaper clippings into a scrapbook, humming contentedly, as he listens to a report of the accident on the radio. There is a knock at the door. Joanna, the fiancee of the dead man, enters in tears of accusation. After her initial tirade it's not long before they end up in each other's arms and in bed, quarreling over the amount of space devoted to each of them in the newspaper's report of the accident. Zuckerman's outrage during the quarrel is the only emotion he feels, whereas shedding tears is no problem for Joanna. But what amuses and disturbs them most is the chilling speed with which their instinctive self-concern overcomes the grief of the one and the guilt of the other. What develops is an intense new liaison between the two of them which quickly erases all memories of the departed.

The playwrights profiled in this volume range from those active at the very beginning of the century to some just emerging by the new millennium. This collection of biographies represents the diversity of both form and content in the twentieth-century American theatre.

THE STORY: Talented and precocious, Irving Yanover, at the tender age of 10, is both a piano prodigy and, at times, a thorn in the side of his orthodox parents, who lament his unaccountable predilection for bacon. But knowing that his mother and father indulge a similar passion (while dining out at a Chinese restaurant), Irving can only question their double standard. But even more upsetting is the unhappy fate of Annie, the Yanovers' young Ukrainian housekeeper, whose romance with a young Italian immigrant is bitterly opposed by her staunchly old-world parents—even though everyone knows that Annie's father is an enthusiastic devotee of Italian opera. Happily, however, these and other problems are delightfully resolved, with wit, gentle humor and a warm sense of humanity which will endear the play to audiences of all faiths and backgrounds.

New York magazine was born in 1968 after a run as an insert of the New York Herald Tribune and quickly made a place for itself as the trusted resource for readers across the country. With award-winning writing and photography covering everything from politics and food to theater and fashion, the magazine's consistent mission has been to reflect back to its audience the energy and excitement of the city itself, while celebrating New York as both a place and an idea.