Laura Shaine Cunningham

Country Western star Carolee is careening toward a climactic meeting with her old lover and singing partner. All the action takes place in her bedroom--in the rump of her customized million-dollar tour bus. Authentic country music background (the playwright traveled with Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, Kris Kristofferson, Tammy Wynette, and George Jones). Lends itself to cabaret performance format, but can also be performed as a "straight" play. "The play is set on the bus of a country music star, Carolee Crockett, a heartbroken, pill-popping crooner. Her bus is parked in the lot of a Grand Ole Opry kind of place, where she is about to be honored, in concert, along with...the singer and love of her life, who some months earlier had left her without a word in a motel in Albuquerque. If the plot has the feel of a country song-- 'You're no better than you ought to be, but you're good enough for me, ' to quote a song from the script--well, that's on purpose. It was gleefully played by a gleefully miscast ensemble, which included Sigourney Weaver, as the whiny, weak Carolee; Kevin Kline as...the pot-smoking, libidinous and self-justifying Lothario, and the lithe, soft-spoken Phoebe Cates as Carolee's bawdy, bosomy confidante." Bruce Weber, The New York Times

This is the magical memoir of Lily Shaine, an orphan brought up by her two eccentric bachelor uncles in New York in the 1950s. Uncle Len is a six-foot-six-inch private investigator, a trench-coated cross between Abraham Lincoln and Sam Spade. Uncle Gabe, a librarian, is a confirmed dreamer who writes gospel songs in his spare time. With these two men as mentors, the human jungle of the Bronx as her playground, the schoolroom as her torture chamber and very knowing little girls as her playmates, Lily learns the secrets of life, sex, death and, above all, family love. A wry, funny and deeply affectionate portrait of the most unlikely of happy families, "Sleeping Arrangements" is a modern classic.

It's Manhattan, on the coldest night of the year and six best friends are rushing to celebrate a festive evening...Jessie, the hostess, is late for her own party. Sue Carol, a professional 'wacktress' (waitress/actress) has left her unfaithful husband. Lisbeth, an ex-Vogue model, is battling her landlord. Nina, the spa owner is fleeing a vegetarian with 'a weird sexual organ'. They are all eager to see the guest of honour, Claire, who vanished after becoming pregnant by a glorious one night stand. Is she misguided or inspired? The debate rages. How can modern working women triumph in such trying times? While the mobile phones chime and the biological clocks tick ever onwards, the friends enact a timeless ceremony. Witty, perceptive and thoroughly entertaining "Beautiful Bodies" is a dazzling comedy of manners.

"I have spent the winter at my summer place," begins the narrator of this startlingly original literary chiller. Juliana Durrell Smythe, known for her "female in jeopardy" performances on film, fears her roles are proving prophetic. As an actress, she is accustomed to rescue. In movies, "Having known the comfort of muscled arms, I still expect, without reason, to be carried to safety and, ultimately, to be loved." But confined to her Victorian lake house, Juliana discovers the discrepancies between film and actual jeopardy. "The police have not turned out to be kindly, potential lovers...." She must walk the fault line of fiction and confront the mysterious and violent end of her marriage. An atmosphere of danger descends with the snow. The men who enter Juliana's life seem suspect; her predicament shadowed by the distress of her housecleaner. How much did she see? How much does she know? Haunted by her past roles and the history of her romantic home, built for a wedding in 1899, Juliana's marital mystery becomes entwined with that of the original Victorian bride's. To survive, she is compelled to connect a nineteenth-century disappearance to the contemporary despair of the lakeside resort. In a snowscape of dazzling beauty, Juliana must enact the role that will save or cost her own life. Plumbing the secrets of two centuries, Cunningham has written a hypnotic novel that will transport the reader into a brilliantly evoked world. With its hard-chiseled realities and incandescent images, "Dreams of Rescue" is a new take on a classic form, that shatters convention and will entrance readers long after its stunning finale.

"While nearly every Jewish female reader will find herself reflected here, the poignancy of these stories will be felt by readers of all ethnicities."--Library Journal Chicken soup and Barbra Streisand, lost fathers and first dates, Hebrew school and Queen Esther, seders and seductions. In this insightful, original anthology, forty-five American Jewish writers explore the richness of their shared heritage, from the tragic to the trivial. In memoirs, fiction, and poetry new and favorite writers like Grace Paley, Amy Bloom, Vivian Gornick, and Laura Cunningham brilliantly reveal the challenges of coming of age as a Jewish woman in America today. What have we lost that our mothers and grandmothers had? Do we still feel close ties to family and community? Can we make a decent pot roast? This spirited collection is full of humor and wisdom, memory and affection--and there isn't a Jewish girl (nice or otherwise) who won't find herself reflected in these vibrant pages.