Wesley Stace

Before Mark Morris became "the most successful and influential choreographer alive" (The New York Times), he was a six year-old in Seattle cramming his feet into Tupperware glasses so that he could practice walking on pointe. Moving to New York at nineteen, he arrived to one of the great booms of dance in America. . Morris was flat broke but found a group of likeminded artists that danced together, travelled together, slept together. This collective, led by Morriss fiercely original vision, became the famed Mark Morris Dance Group.Suddenly, Morris was making a fast ascent. Celebrated by The New Yorkers critic as one of the great young talents, an androgynous beauty in the vein of Michelangelos David, he and his company had arrived. Collaborations with the likes of Mikhail Baryshnikov, Yo-Yo Ma, Lou Harrison, and Howard Hodgkin followed. And so did controversy: from the circus of his tenure at La Monnaie in Belgium to his work on the biggest flop in Broadway history. But through the Reagan-Bush era, the worst of the AIDS epidemic, through rehearsal squabbles and backstage intrigues, Morris emerged as one of the great visionaries of modern dance, a force of nature with a dedication to beauty and a love of the body, an artist as joyful as he is provocative.Out Loud is the bighearted and outspoken story of a man as formidable on the page as he is on the boards. With unusual candor and disarming wit, Morriss memoir captures the life of a performer who broke the mold, a brilliant misfit who found his home in the collective and liberating world of music and dance.

Wesley StaceWrite a ReviewOne of the most auspicious debuts of recent years, Wesley Stace's Misfortune follows the rise, fall, and triumphant return of Rose Old, a foundling rescued from a London garbage heap in 1820 by the richest man in Britain. Lord Geoffroy Loveall, whose character has been shaped by perpetual mourning for a sister who died in childhood, seizes on the infant as a replacement for his beloved sister. With the help of trusted servants, he arranges for the child to be lovingly brought up at his ancestral mansion, Loveall Hall--to all appearances, his biological daughter and unhoped-for heir. No matter that the baby is not a girl. The story thus far is so engaging, and the details of Rose's childhood so playfully rendered (when she was first brought to Loveall Hall, the staff of 250 included a servant whose sole responsibility was to iron newspapers before their second reading), that it is with reluctance that the reader meets the inevitable rude, scheming relatives whose plotting will lead to the "misfortune" of the title. Luckily, Stace (the given name of the musician John Wesley Harding) takes too much delight in Rose to dump her back on the garbage heap, or at least not for long. The cross-dressing love child of Great Expectations and A. S. Byatt's Possession, Misfortune will find you breathlessly tracking the movements of its principal players, and applauding the most ridiculous twists of fate.

On Christmas Eve, a party of friends descends on a purportedly haunted country retreat, charged with the task of discovering evidence of the supernatural. Sequestered in their rooms for the holiday, the friends reconvene on Twelfth Night at a great feast and share their stories of spectral encounter. Conducted by Charles Dickens and counting Elizabeth Gaskell and Wilkie Collins among its contributors, The Haunted House examines quintessentially Victorian themes-sex and longing, nostalgia and loss-in ways that continue to resonate today. Ingeniously conceived and written, and spiked with flashes of Dickensian humor, this volume is a strange and sheer delight.

Lord Loveall, heretofore heirless lord of the sprawling Love Hall, is the richest man in England. He arrives home one morning with a most unusual package a baby that he presents as the inheritor to the family name and fortune. In honour of his beloved sister, who died young, Loveall names the baby Rose. The household, relieved at the continuation of the Loveall line, ignores the fact that this Rose has a thornthat she is, in fact, a boy. Rose grows up with the two servant children who are her only friends. Rose grows up blissfully unaware of her own gender, casually hitting boundaries at Love Halls yearly cricket game and learning to shave even as she continues to wear more and more elaborate dresses. Until, of course, the fateful day when Roses world comes crashing down around her, and she is banished from Love Hall as an impostor by those who would claim her place as heir.

On Christmas Eve, a party of friends descends on a purportedly haunted country retreat, charged with the task of discovering evidence of the supernatural. Sequestered in their rooms for the holiday, the friends reconvene on Twelfth Night at a great feast and share their stories of spectral encounter. Conducted by Charles Dickens and counting Elizabeth Gaskell and Wilkie Collins among its contributors, The Haunted House examines quintessentially Victorian themessex and longing, nostalgia and lossin ways that continue to resonate today. Ingeniously conceived and written, and spiked with flashes of Dickensian humor, this volume is a strange and sheer delight.

From the most brilliant and audacious choreographer of our time, the exuberant tale of a young dancers rise to the pinnacle of the performing arts world, and the triumphs and perils of creating work on his own termsand staying true to himself Before Mark Morris became the most successful and influential choreographer alive (The New York Times), he was a six year-old in Seattle cramming his feet into Tupperware glasses so that he could practice walking on pointe. Often the only boy in the dance studio, he was called a sissy, a term he wore like a badge of honor. He was unlike anyone else, deeply gifted and spirited. Moving to New York at nineteen, he arrived to one of the great booms of dance in America. Audiences in 1976 had the luxury of Merce Cunninghams finest experiments with time and space, of Twyla Tharps virtuosity, and Lucinda Childss genius. Morris was flat broke but found a group of likeminded artists that danced together, travelled together, slept together. No one wanted to break the spell or miss a thing, because if you missed anything, you missed everything. This collective, led by Morriss fiercely original vision, became the famed Mark Morris Dance Group. Suddenly, Morris was making a fast ascent. Celebrated by The New Yorkers critic as one of the great young talents, an androgynous beauty in the vein of Michelangelos David, he and his company had arrived. Collaborations with the likes of Mikhail Baryshnikov, Yo-Yo Ma, Lou Harrison, and Howard Hodgkin followed. And so did controversy: from the circus of his tenure at La Monnaie in Belgium to his work on the biggest flop in Broadway history. But through the Reagan-Bush era, the worst of the AIDS epidemic, through rehearsal squabbles and backstage intrigues, Morris emerged as one of the great visionaries of modern dance, a force of nature with a dedication to beauty and a love of the body, an artist as joyful as he is provocative.Out Loud is the bighearted and outspoken story of a man as formidable on the page as he is on the boards. With unusual candor and disarming wit, Morriss memoir captures the life of a performer who broke the mold, a brilliant maverick who found his home in the collective and liberating world of music and dance.

By George is the utterly original story of a flawed but formidable family - and of two very different boys. One is an eleven-year-old schoolboy, the other a ventriloquists dummy. With no voice of his own but plenty to say, the dummy tells his life story; from his humble beginnings in the 1930s to his rise in fame as forces favourite during the war and the horrible secret hes been made to keep.Years later, his self-possessed but vulnerable namesake finds himself packed off to boarding school, far from his mother Frankie, dynamic actress and Principal Boy; his grandma Queenie, childrens party entertainer extraordinaire; and his bed-ridden but redoubtable great-grandmother. While the dummy lies dusty, silent and forgotten, his young counterpart sets out to learn about his dead grandfathers past as a world-famous ventriloquist, his magical powers and their familys curious history.

Lord Loveall, heretofore heirless lord of the sprawling Love Hall, is the richest man in England. He arrives home one morning with a most unusual package - a baby that he presents as the inheritor to the family name and fortune. In honor of his beloved sister, who died young, Loveall names the baby Rose. The household, relieved at the continuation of the Loveall line, ignores the fact that this Rose has a thorn...that she is, in fact, a boy. Rose grows up with the two servant children who are her only friends, blissfully unaware of her own gender, casually hitting boundaries at Love Halls yearly cricket game and learning to shave even as she continues to wear more and more elaborate dresses. Until, of course, the fateful day when Roses world comes crashing down around her, and she is banished from Love Hall as an impostor by those who would claim her place as heir.

The night before brilliant but erratic composer Charles Jessolds opera - about a betrayed husband who murders his wife and her lover - is due to open, Jessold is found dead, having apparently murdered his wife and her lover. Leslie Shepherd, music critic and Jessolds collaborator on the opera, reflects on the scandalous affair in a dazzling, passionate and witty novel about the dangerous relationship between artist and critic.

En la ilustre historia de la compañía teatral Fisher hay dos Georges. Uno es un peculiar pero encantador muchacho de once años, criado en el sórdido mundo de los internados y los escenarios de los años setenta y que es enviado por primera vez al colegio; el otro, un parlanchin muñeco de ventrilocuo que perteneciera al abuelo del primer George, uno de los numeros itinerantes favoritos entre las tropas britanicas durante la segunda guerra mundial. Los dos Georges no saben nada uno del otro, hasta que los acontecimientos se confabulan para unirlos en una investigacion con vistas a descubrir los mas profundos secretos de la familia. Entrelazando la historia del chico y las "memorias" del muñeco, By George nos desvela la fascinante familia de los Fisher: una familia de hombres debiles, mujeres dominantes y niños contrariados, y con secretos asombrosos y dramaticos. A un tiempo mordazmente divertida y exquisitamente tierna, la novela de Stace constituye el inolvidable viaje de dos muchachos separados por los años pero guiados por los mismos deseos: el de encontrar una voz y el de ser amados.

Una comedia dickensiana suntuosa y extravagante sobre un niño que crece como una niña en el hogar más acaudalado de la Inglaterra decimonónica. Una tarde fatídica, Lord Geoffroy Loveall llega a casa con un paquete bien poco corriente: un bebe abandonado, al que adopta y llama Rose en honor de su hermana fallecida. La mansion de Love Hall es una fuente interminable de privilegios y placeres. Solo hay un problema: lord Geoffroy deseaba una hija, pero ha adoptado un hijo. La adolescencia desvela la verdad sobre lady Rose que debe recorrer medio mundo para encontrar su verdadera identidad y reclamar el lugar que le corresponde.