King Henry IV, Part 1 is a remarkable play that delves into the complexities of history and fiction. While it is conventionally regarded as a history play, much of it is a conspicuously invented fiction. This duality raises questions about the very nature of history and how it is represented.

The play's language is rich with an economic vocabulary that provides a texture reflecting the social concerns of the time. The central relationship between value and political authority is a key focus, along with the recurring theme of honor and the role of women in the narrative.

The Arden Shakespeare edition offers an exceptional scholarly experience, with comprehensive introductions that contextualize the play within the historical and cultural backdrop of Shakespeare's era. It includes detailed appendices that address challenges such as dating, casting, and analyzing the differing Quarto and Folio sources.

This edition provides a full commentary by leading contemporary scholars, illuminating the text by glossing unfamiliar terms and explaining allusions and significant background information. It is highly informative, making it the fullest experience of Shakespeare available to readers.

Man in the Dark is Paul Auster’s brilliant, devastating novel about the many realities we inhabit as wars flame all around us.

Seventy-two-year-old August Brill is recovering from a car accident in his daughter’s house in Vermont. When sleep refuses to come, he lies in bed and tells himself stories, struggling to push back thoughts about things he would prefer to forget—his wife’s recent death and the horrific murder of his granddaughter’s boyfriend, Titus.

The retired book critic imagines a parallel world in which America is not at war with Iraq but with itself. In this other America, the twin towers did not fall and the 2000 election results led to secession, as state after state pulled away from the union and a bloody civil war ensued.

As the night progresses, Brill’s story grows increasingly intense, and what he is so desperately trying to avoid insists on being told. Joined in the early hours by his granddaughter, he gradually opens up to her and recounts the story of his marriage. After she falls asleep, he at last finds the courage to revisit the trauma of Titus’s death.

Passionate and shocking, Man in the Dark is a novel of our moment, a book that forces us to confront the blackness of night even as it celebrates the existence of ordinary joys in a world capable of the most grotesque violence.

In the year 1754, the stillness of Charlestown, New Hampshire, is shattered by the terrifying cries of an Indian raid. Young Miriam Willard, on a day that had promised new happiness, finds herself instead a captive on a forest trail, caught up in the ebb and flow of the French and Indian War.

It is a harrowing march north. Miriam can only force herself to the next stopping place, the next small portion of food, the next icy stream to be crossed. At the end of the trail waits a life of hard work and, perhaps, even a life of slavery. Mingled with her thoughts of Phineas Whitney, her sweetheart on his way to Harvard, is the crying of her sister’s baby, Captive, born on the trail.

Miriam and her companions finally reach Montreal, a city of shifting loyalties filled with the intrigue of war, and here, by a sudden twist of fortune, Miriam meets the prominent Du Quesne family, who introduce her to a life she has never imagined.

Based on an actual narrative diary published in 1807, Calico Captive skillfully reenacts an absorbing facet of history.