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Four early plays from the author of The Weir, with a foreword by the author. The plays in this volume – three monologues and a three-hander – were all written while Conor McPherson was in his twenties. In This Lime Tree Bower (Crypt Arts Centre, Dublin, 1995; Bush Theatre, London, 1996), three young men from a small seaside town near Dublin tell us in overlapping monologues of their inextricably linked lives and the eventful week which was to change things for good. St Nicholas (Bush Theatre, London, 1997) is an eccentric, teasing yarn in which a cynical and jaded drama critic falls for a beautiful young actress. In pursuing her, he meets a group of modern-day vampires who offer him eternal life – his part of the bargain is to feed their bloodlust. Rum and Vodka (University College Dublin, 1992; City Arts Centre, Dublin, 1994) is a short monologue play in which a young Irishman with a drink problem tells of three momentous days in his life when his drab nine-to-five existence is obliterated in an escapist binge which threatens to engulf him. The Good Thief (City Arts Centre, Dublin, 1994) is a monologue play about a petty criminal who is punished by his conscience when he becomes involved in a bungled kidnap.

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The second collection of plays from the multi-award winning author. Included in this volume is Conor McPherson's The Weir, one of the most successful plays of recent years. In a bar in a remote part of Ireland, the local lads are swapping spooky stories to impress a young woman from Dublin newly moved into the area... 'A spellbinder that transfixes you... No praise in fact is too high' Guardian Dublin Carol is set on Christmas Eve, when a Dublin undertaker is visited by his estranged daughter urging him to face up to the past. 'McPherson writes like a dream.... The play works an ingenious spell' Daily Mail Port Authority tells of three interwoven lives: a boy leaves home for the first time; a man starts a job for which he is unqualified; a pensioner is sent a mysterious package... 'Overwhelmingly poignant... desolate, searing eloquence' Evening Standard And in Come on Over, published here for the first time, a Jesuit priest, sent to investigate a 'miracle' in his home town, re-encounters the woman who loved him thirty years before. 'Piercingly evocative, powerfully exploring the tension between human and divine love' Daily Telegraph The volume also contains an Afterword by the author.

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This volume of Conor McPherson's collected plays, covering a decade of writing, celebrates a fascination with the uncanny which has led him to be described as 'quite possibly the finest playwright of his generation' (New York Times). In Shining City, a man seeks help from a counsellor, claiming to have seen the ghost of his dead wife. The play, premiered at the Royal Court, London, is 'up there with The Weir, moving, compassionate, ingenious and absolutely gripping' (Daily Telegraph). The Seafarer, premiered at the National Theatre before going on to become a Tony Award-winning Broadway hit, tells the story of an extended Christmas Eve card game, but one played for the highest stakes possible. 'McPherson proves yet again he is both a born yarn-spinner and an acute analyst of the melancholy Irish manhood' (Guardian) Set in 'the big house' in 1820s rural Ireland, The Veil is McPherson's first period play. Seventeen-year-old Hannah is to be married off in order to settle the debts of the crumbling estate. But when Reverend Berkeley arrives, determined to orchestrate a séance, chaos is unleased. 'A cracking fireside tale of haunting and decay' (The Times) The Birds, hauntingly adapted from the short story by Daphne du Maurier, is 'deliciously chilling, claustrophobic, questioning, frightening; and with a twist' (Irish Independent). It is published here for the first time, as is The Dance of Death, a new version of Strindberg's classic, which premiered at the Trafalgar Studios in London. 'A spectacularly bleak yet curiously bracing drama that often makes you laugh out loud' (Daily Telegraph). Completing the volume is a Foreword by the author.

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In the village of Fairhaven—nestled between Washington state’s Bellingham Bay and the Cascade Mountains, home to writers’ retreat Pines & Quill—friends and family have gathered for the union of Sean McPherson and Emma Benton. Sean has been working with the FBI and local police to help solve crimes, particularly murders bearing the mark of crime boss Georgio “The Bull” Gambino. Emma, who has just learned to walk again, has begun to feel at home and hopes to one day raise a family. But just as the festivities begin and corks fly, an explosion shatters everything, killing one and injuring others. From Bellingham to San Francisco and New Orleans, the chase is on to discover who’s dead set on ensuring the newlyweds don’t live happily ever after.The writers currently in residence at Pines & Quill include a vineyard owner, a Bryn Mawr College professor, a special education teacher accompanied by her seeing-eye dog, and an intuitive who can’t—or won’t—identify the killer. Gambino has a knack for finding people in even the most inaccessible places to do his bidding. Could one of the writers be on his payroll?

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Gary McPherson contracted life-threatening polio during the epidemic of 1955 which left him a quadriplegic. He retains just enough coarse movement in his left hand to click a mouse and enough strength in his left leg to push his wheelchair backwards a few feet. Gary cannot feed himself or comb his hair. Yet his achievements are amazing. He is a husband and father, has coached championship sporting teams, is past-chairman of the Premier's Council for the Status of People with Disabilities, and is currently both a lecturer in the School of Business at the University of Alberta and executive-director of the Canadian Centre for Social Entrepreneurship. Foreword by Dr. Robert D. Steadward and Garry D. Wheeler.

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This volume provides the first comprehensive account of the evangelical tradition in the English-speaking world from the end of the nineteenth to the mid twentieth century. It offers fresh perspective on conversionism, the life of faith, reflection on the Bible and theology, and social engagement. These trajectories, through a period of great turbulence in world history, furnished the setting for the deepening diversification of the movement. This led to the fragmentation of the once broad evangelical spectrum into various (and often competing) strands.

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Herman Beavers offers a richly nuanced study of Ernes J. Gaines, James Alan McPherson, and Ralph Ellison as writers who have found ways to invest circumstances that might otherwise be seen as sites of squalor or despair with a sense of cultural vitality. He examines the Ellisonian themes and motifs the two later writers take up in their fiction, and looks at Ellison's influence on the strategies they enact to construct themselves as American writers. For Beavers, the fictions of Ellison, Gaines, and McPherson are peopled by characters who value acts of storytelling and whose stories frame a fuller, more complex, and more inclusive version of American identity than those the dominant white culture has allowed.

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