Planning a school or amateur Shakespeare production? The best way to experience the plays is to perform them, but getting started can be a challenge: The complete plays are too long and complex, while scene selections or simplified language are too limited. "The 30-Minute Shakespeare" is a new series of abridgements that tell the "story" of each play from start to finish while keeping the beauty of Shakespeare's language intact. Specific stage directions...

Romeo and Juliet are young lovers separated by the ancient and enduring hatred between their families. This text includes an essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare, an introduction to the play, and a note on the text used.

"Travelogue, memoir and outrageous cinematic spectacle converge in this kaleidoscopic valentine to the Eternal City, composed by one of its most iconic inhabitants. Leisurely one moment and breathless the next, this urban fantasia by Federico Fellini interweaves recollections of the director's young adulthood in the era of Mussolini with an impressionistic portrait of contemporary Rome, where he and his film crew are shooting footage of the bustling...

The moody Inspector Montalbano is further beset by the existential questions that have been plaguing him of late. But he doesn't have much time to wax philosophical before the gruesome murder of a man -- shot at point-blank range in the face with his pants down -- commands his attention. Add two evasive, beautiful women as prime suspects, some dirty cocaine, mysterious computer codes, and a series of threatening letters, and things soon get very complicated...

Two brothers, having run away from the aunt who plans to adopt only the younger one, are sought by a detective hired by their aunt, but they find protection from a gang of Venetian street children and their leader, the Thief Lord.

"The minute she sets eyes on it, Molly Pargeter knows that the Tuscan villa she has found to lease is perfect for her family's summer holiday. She is powerfully drawn to its rustic beauty and to the enigma of its absentee landlord. Never mind that her husband and teenaged daughter are vocally unenthusiastic and that her outrageously extroverted father tricks them into taking him along."--Container.

As Naples prepares for its holiday celebrations, behind the facade of order and happiness imposed by the fascist regime lurks terrible poverty and blinding desperation. In a luxurious apartment on the Mergellina Beach the bodies of a fascist militia officer and his wife have been found. The woman has had her throat cut while the man has been stabbed over sixty times. Seemingly, the hands of two separate killers have been at work. A statuette of San...

"Vigàta is bustling as the new filming location for a Swedish television series set in 1950. In the production frenzy, the director asks the locals to track down movies and vintage photos to faithfully recreate the air of Vigata in that time. Engineer Ernesto Sabatello, while rummaging in the attic of his house, finds some films shot by his father from 1958 to 1963, always on the same day, March 27 and always the same shot; the outside wall of a...