Dramatists Play Service is proud to present six new short plays by John Patrick Shanley: In FRENCH WAITRESS, Ricky and his girlfriend Pamela sit down to an unsettling meal, served to them by a beautiful but unnerving French waitress. AN OLD STORY is a tale of the subtle distinctions between pain and pleasure, fear and exhilaration, necessity and desire. JEALOUS pits one couple’s love against otherworldy forces. In POLAND, a beautiful woman and a rich man are each looking for something or someone to rescue them from their lives. Can they find a safer ground together? LAST NIGHT IN THE GARDEN I SAW YOU follows one man’s journey over the fence into the house of a woman he abandoned. Now that he’s returned, will she leave the life she’s built since his absence? And if she won’t, will he truly let her live her life without him in peace? In Mt. Juliet, TENNESSEE, a lonely woman with the power of foresight is approached by a young man wanting to know his future. Knowing one’s future, however, comes with the responsibility of accepting it or changing it.

THE STORIES: NAOMI IN THE LIVING ROOM. Naomi, when visited by John and Johnna, her son and daughter-in-law, is alternately friendly and insulting. Johnna copes her best, but when John changes his clothes to look like Johnna, things start to unravel

Culled from nearly twenty years of the playwright’s career, a showcase for Tom Stoppard’s dazzling range and virtuosic talent, The Real Inspector Hound and Other Plays is essential reading for fans of modern drama. The plays in this collection reveal Stoppard’s sense of fun, his sense of theater, his sense of the absurd, and his gifts for parody and satire. Includes: “The Real Inspector Hound” “After Margritte” “Dirty Linen” “New-Found-Land” “Dogg’s Hamlet” “Cahoot’s Macbeth”

An evocative, gorgeous four-season look at cooking in Maine, with 100 recipes No one can bring small-town America to life better than a native. Erin French grew up in Freedom, Maine (population 719), helping her father at the griddle in his diner. An entirely self-taught cook who used cookbooks to form her culinary education, she now helms her restaurant, The Lost Kitchen, in a historic mill in the same town, creating meals that draw locals and visitors from around the world to a dining room that feels like an extension of her home kitchen. The food has been called “brilliant in its simplicity and honesty” by Food & Wine, and it is exactly this pure approach that makes Erin’s cooking so appealing—and so easy to embrace at home. This stunning giftable package features a vellum jacket over a printed cover.

A dazzlingly diverse anthology of thirty-five short plays spanning the theatrical spectrum. A ten-minute play is a blaze of theatrical energy. In this follow-up to their groundbreaking collection Take Ten, editors Eric Lane and Nina Shengold have put together a veritable bonfire of talent. Take Ten II: More 10-Minute Plays provides a fast-track tour of the current theatrical landscape, from the slapstick ingenuity of David Ives’ Arabian Nights to the searing tension of Diana Son’s 9/11 drama The Moon, Please, to Susan Miller’s luminous fable The Grand Design. This remarkably diverse anthology includes thirty-five short plays by such major American playwrights as Christopher Durang, Warren Leight, Romulus Linney and Donald Margulies, alongside a host of exciting new voices. Actors, directors, producers and teachers will find Take Ten II an invaluable source of meaty roles for people of every age, ethnicity and gender; lovers of theatre will find it a richly satisfying read. These deceptively short plays throb with life in all its variety: harrowing, hilarious, and breathtakingly vital. Playwrights included: Taylor Mac Bowyer Laura Shaine Cunningham Anthony David Steven Dietz Christopher Durang Linda Eisenstein Simon Fill Craig Fols Sigrid Heath David Ives Caleen Sinnette Jennings Honour Kane Eric Lane Edward Bok Lee Warren Leight Romulus Linney Donald Margulies Susan Miller Chiori Miyagawa Itamar Moses Sean O'Connor Mark O'Donnell Dael Orlandersmith Rich Orloff Joe Pintauro Craig Pospisil Toni Press-Coffman Claire Reeve Elaine Romero Susan Sandler Nina Shengold Diana Son Alison Weiss Mary Louise Wilson Garth Wingfield Alexander Woo From the Trade Paperback edition.

A tale of romance and deception. A young English petty thief, Archie, cons a French belle, Candice, and her well off uncle. The proceeds of his crime include an expensive Faberge ring, auctioned in Geneva, with no provenance. He leaves a trail of lies and deception. Archie ducks and dives in Paris and Turkey, before being trapped and brought to justice. But, he has guilt and remorse. Candice thinks she may love him. Archie is a torn soul who grapples with philosophical pain and anguish. Can he come to terms with his distorted view of life and twisted values?