Lanford Wilson

"The release of Blacklight's double CD, Book of Days, looks like business as usual. The relaxed tour showcases a revolutionary new set design, as well as Bombardiers keyboard ace Tony Mancuso along as a guest. No one can predict what happens next: the CD goes multi-platinum, generating the need for a very different kind of tour. At first, everything seems fine. It takes a while before guitarist JP Kinkaid realises something very dark is going on: a string of deaths, following Blacklight show nights. Things come to a head when a longtime member of Blacklight's extended touring family is killed. At the band's request, Homicide detective Patrick Ormand investigates, but uncovering the reason behind the deaths may be a lot easier than healing the wounds those deaths have caused"--P. of cover.

The scene is the trailer where Ruby, a woman of indeterminate age and compliant disposition, lives amid an overgrown garden of "thymus vulgaris," an herb that smells suspiciously like methold chest rub. She is joined unexpectedly by her daughter, Evelyn, a warmhearted hooker who announces that she is the intended of Solly, the "Grapefruit King," although righ now she is not so sure that she wants to go through with it or, for that matter, that Solly does either. But the lure of all that money, and Solly's promise to give Ruby a home as well, do tug at her. The arrival of a well-built young motorcylce cop (who reminds Ruby of several former loves) decides the matter, however, as he has been sent by Solly to round up mother and daughter and whisk them off to a life of luxury. And why not? There are, as Evelyn says, the users and the used -- and every once in a while the used deserve a break too.

As Martin Gottfried comments, "It is a simple one. A mystery, really. A man has been murdered. The mystery is, who he is, who murdered him and what were the circumstances? And to solve it, Wilson looks at the outsides and insides of his tiny, Middle Western town. He looks at a middle-aging woman who falls in love with the young man who comes to work in her cafe. He looks at a coarse, nasty woman mistreating her senile mother, who is obsessed with visions of Eldritch being evil and headed for blood-spilling. He looks at a tender relationship between a young man and a dreamy, crippled girl. But Wilson sees far more than this. He is grasping the very fabric of Bible Belt America, with its catchword morality ('virgin,' 'God-fearing') and its capability for the vicious. He senses the rhythm of its life and the cruelty it can impose. He understands the speech patterns of its loveless gossips, its sex-hungry boys, its compassionless preachers, its car-conscious blondes." In the end his portrait of Eldritch is full length, and the truth of its revelations will be pondered long after the stage lights have dimmed and the play has ended.

"The setting is the lobby of a derelict hotel marked for demolition, from whose marquee the "e" has, perhaps sypathetically dropped off. Past people, past time, past places are fondly recalled by the characters, residents about to be evicted not only from their shabby hotel but from a moment in history." -- book jacket.

An adolescent Eurasian girl--the child of a union between an American GI and a Vietnamese woman, adopted by a wealthy California couple and obsessive in her search for her father--is drawn to the redwood forests of northern California, where thousands of Vietnam veterans have taken refuge to escape the harsh realities of life in America. It is a story of obsession and discovery.--From publisher description.

The moonshot tape: Having come home to settle her aging mother into a nursing home, Diane, now a well known short story writer, is being interviewed for her old High School newspaper. As she answers the standard line of questioning she gradually reveals more than either she or her shy High School reporter bargained for{u2013}a harrowing litany of childhood horrors that{u2019}s positively Dickensian. After years of trying to put everything behind her she{u2019}s gone home to finally finish the story. Tie things up once and for all. A poster of the Cosmos: A powerful one person/one act play set in a police station in Manhattan. Addressing a cop "who would be at the other end of the table," Tom, a 36-year-old baker suffering from "survivor guilt," has been accused of killing his lover Johnny who had been dying from AIDS. Throughout the interrogation Tom offers insight into his and Johnny's lives prior to and during their relationship. His story also is permeated with attacks on an uncaring and ignorant society, especially when he mocks the interrogator's derogatory refrain, "You don't look like the kinna guy'd do somethin' like dat."