Broadway Bookshelf — PAPERBACK

Biographies, show books, musical scores, history, and must-read theatre books.

Browse by Category

Biographies Show Books Autobiography For Actors Musical Scores Reference Books History

Latest Broadway Books

Still, Bill: Gay Adventures From Cowboyland To Broadway

(10/27/2026)

How does an effeminate boy–raised in Cowboyland with cattle and guns, hunting and trucks, sports and church, jocks and jerks, cruelty and small-mindedness–get from the Black Hills of South Dakota to the thrills and heartbreak of the white-hot lights of Broadway and the West End? The answer can be found in this memoir by the author of Side Show, elegies for angels, punks and raging queens, and Pageant, among other musicals. This frequently amusing, sometimes wild, often moving ride proceeds f...

Still, Bill: Gay Adventures From Cowboyland To Broadway

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Musicals: Of Thee I Sing to A Strange Loop

(9/18/2026)

Part of Essential Musicals series. Takes a chronological look at the ten musicals that have won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Deep diving into the development of each show, unpacking the creation, production, and reception of each musical. Each chapter traces a different Prize-winning show from its inception to its opening night. Introduces the reader to each musical's key creators and company members and places them in the larger context of Broadway history. 248 pages.

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Musicals: Of Thee I Sing to A Strange Loop

I Hear Music: The Life of Burton Lane, Composer for Broadway and Hollywood

(9/17/2026)

First full-length book about Burton Lane, covering his early days working on Tin Pan Alley and Broadway while still in his teens, through his compositions of film songs for more than twenty years, working with well-known lyricists including Harold Adamson, Ralph Freed, Frank Loesser, Yip Harburg, Ted Koehler, and Sammy Cahn, and his return to Broadway in 1947 for Finian's Rainbow, with Harburg, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever with Alan Jay Lerner. 120 pages.

I Hear Music: The Life of Burton Lane, Composer for Broadway and Hollywood

Bowl EP

(8/11/2026)

Kelly K. Klarkson and Quentavius da Quitter are in love. Kelly K. Klarkson and Quentavius da Quitter skate and smoke and taste one another’s fingers and snort molly and try to pick a name for their rap group. And then there’s their personal demons: Kelly exorcized hers a long time ago, but Quentavius’s is named Lemon Pepper Wings, and she-he-they is the patron demon of the intimate, and they-he-she created pheromones for their her his graduate thesis, and astrology and all the apps, and t...

Andy Blankenbuehler: A Critical Companion

(8/6/2026)

Unpacks and explores Blankenbuehler's philosophies with regards to storytelling through the body, arguing how his prioritization of the ensemble as crucial to understanding the action within a show consequently positions the ensemble body as an indispensable element through which the audience gains vital (sub)text. 232 pages.

Andy Blankenbuehler: A Critical Companion

The Balusters

(7/17/2026)

The Vernon Point Association could be described as a very outspoken bunch. They’re known for diligently upkeeping their sanctuary—from porch railings to trash cans, no infraction goes undocumented. Still, no one is prepared for the neighbor-versus-neighbor battle royale that ensues when a newcomer makes an inconceivable suggestion: a stop sign, perched on the enclave’s most picturesque block. A raucous play journeying through big feelings, The Balusters is a modern-day satire about wha...

A Very Unusual Way: Maury Yeston and His Singular Path to Broadway and Beyond

(7/1/2026)

A career chronicle combined with close examinations of some of Yeston's most noteworthy compositions, including songs from his famous musicals as well as his lesser-known works. Behind-the-scenes accounts and analysis of Yeston's Broadway shows. From the author's full access to the composer's archive and over a dozen interviews with Yeston. Also highlights the numerous well-known artistic figures and collaborators who have featured prominently in Yeston's life, including Stephen Sondheim, Placi...

A Very Unusual Way: Maury Yeston and His Singular Path to Broadway and Beyond

Setting the Stage (Cast vs. Crew)

(6/2/2026)

Eighth grader Ella Amani has been waiting her whole life to be the stage manager of the middle school musical, and this is her year! Somehow she'll have to find jobs for Willow, who's doing stage crew instead of detention, and Sebastian, a shy sixth grader whose sister is the star of the show. She'll have to wrangle Kevin, the clumsy new kid who was homeschooled on a boat, and Levi, her best friend, who used to tell her everything. Still, Ella's pretty sure she can handle the crew. The cast? Th...

David Auburn Collected Plays

(5/14/2026)

Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning author David Auburn is an American dramatist who never fails to write astute and compelling dramas that grapple with large questions. In this collection of his work spanning 23 years his celebrated plays are anthologised together for the first time, showing him to be one of the most important contemporary dramatists of his generation. From the Pulitzer Prize-winning Proof (2000) to his latest Broadway smash-hit Summer 1976, published for the first time, ...

Arthur Miller's New York: Visions of the City

(5/14/2026)

A panoramic study of NYC across all of Miller's oeuvre, exploring how Miller transformed the defining experiences of his youth and early adulthood - formed on the streets and in the neighborhoods of the New York boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens - into art. 238 pages.

Arthur Miller's New York: Visions of the City

Liberation

(5/8/2026)

It's 1970. Somewhere in Ohio, six women meet on a basement basketball court to form a consciousness-raising group, determined to shake up their lives and change the world. Fifty years later, one of their daughters tries to understand where things fell apart.

Hirschfeld's Icons: A Poster Book

(4/28/2026)

Collection of 25 removable, ready-to-frame prints by Al Hirschfeld featuring some of the most recognizable icons of the 20th century. Accompanied by commentary and biographies by David Leopold, Creative Director of the Al Hirschfeld Foundation. Introduction by Dick Cavett. 58 pages.

Stage Page: Memories of (mostly) Marvelous St. Louis Theater

(4/21/2026)

Seventy-seven theater reviews, written by Dennis Brown between 2001 and 2013 for the St. Louis weekly, The Riverfront Times, once again see the light of day with the publication of "Stage Page: Memories of (mostly) Marvelous St. Louis Theater." The anthology is enlivened with 47 all-new illustrations by gifted artist Marjorie Williamson. The 77 reviews (mostly) celebrate productions from 30 different producing venues. Some of these venues (The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, the Muny) continue ...

Stage Page: Memories of (mostly) Marvelous St. Louis Theater

Adaptation in Musical Theatre

(3/19/2026)

Adaptation in Musical Theatre positions musical theatre as part of a broader cultural trend of recycling, referencing, remixing and alluding to existing creative works and texts. Despite critics often dismissing stage adaptations as lazy and safe bet options for producers, this book argues that crafting an adaptation enables creative teams to take fresh and imaginative approaches to a source text, given the multitude of ways in which the structures and styles of two (or more) different media ca...

Theater Acting: Mastering the Art of Live Performance on the Modern Stage

(3/18/2026)

Inside, you'll discover how to project your voice to the back row without sounding like you're shouting, and how to build physical presence that commands the entire space. You'll learn the art of sustaining a fully lived-in character night after night across a long run, and how to stay emotionally fresh even when you're on your twentieth performance. The book walks you through the rehearsal process from first read-through to closing night, and gives you practical strategies for working with dir...

Theater Acting: Mastering the Art of Live Performance on the Modern Stage

Drama Scripts for Kids: 35 Original Acting Scripts for Kids Ages 10-14

(3/2/2026)

Drama Scripts for Kids is a fun, classroom-ready collection of acting scripts for kids ages 10-14. Written by a drama teacher with over 25 years of experience in mainstream schools, this book is created for real mixed-ability classrooms. Inside you’ll find: 15 engaging plays, 20 performance-ready monologues, Scripts perfect for drama lessons, workshops, auditions, clubs, and school performances, and more.

Drama Scripts for Kids: 35 Original Acting Scripts for Kids Ages 10-14

Giant

(2/17/2026)

A world-famous children's author under threat. A battle of wills in the wake of scandal. And a chance to make amends… It's the summer of 1983, The Witches is about to hit the shelves and Roald Dahl is making last-minute edits. But the outcry at his recent, explicitly antisemitic article won't die down. Across a single afternoon at his family home, and rocked by an unexpectedly explosive confrontation, Dahl is forced to choose: make a public apology or risk his name and reputation. Inspi...

The Great Gatsby Songbook

(2/6/2026)

Vocal selections from Broadway musical score by Jason Howland (music) and Nathan Tysen (lyrics). "Better Hold Tight," "Beautiful Little Fool," "For Better Or Worse," "For Her," "My Green Light," "New Money," "One Way Road," "Past Is Catching Up To Me," "Roaring On," "Second Hand Suit," "Shady." 112 pages.

The Reason to Sing: A Guide to Acting While Singing 2nd Edition

(12/18/2025)

Composer-lyricist and teacher Craig Carnelia provides musical actors with a step-by-step guide to making their sung performances more truthful, vivid, and full of life. Using a technique developed over decades of teaching the professional community of Broadway actors and students alike, The Reason to Sing lays out a new and proven approach,to help you build your skills, your confidence, and your career. This second edition includes two new chapters: "Writers," in which Stephen Sondheim, Jason R...

The Reason to Sing: A Guide to Acting While Singing 2nd Edition

What We Did Before Our Moth Days

(12/16/2025)

And so yes, well, I’d simply dropped that whole idea of being a good person, I’d dropped it right down into some hole in the street, and down it had gone into the city’s sewers, and no one ever saw it again. And that was sad, if you thought it was sad, or I suppose it was sad, or some people probably would say it was sad. A dark moral fable, telling of an acclaimed writer’s hedonistic lifestyle and its effects on his wife, son and mistress. Wallace Shawn's first new play in ten year...

The Reason to Sing: A Guide to Acting While Singing 2nd Edition

(12/16/2025)

Eggs I Have Laid

(12/15/2025)

Back in print; first published in 1955. By Meredith Willson. Foreword by Mark Cabaniss. Willson chronicles the failures that he faced as he made his place in show business during the pivotal early 1950s, when radio was being overtaken by television, bringing to life his encounters with zeitgeist stars, from collaborators Tallulah Bankhead and Fred Allen to Orson Welles and Carmen Miranda. Includes such curiosities as an eight-page "platonic dialogue" about quitting smoking and the lyrics to a l...

The Other Side of Broadway

(12/10/2025)

Told through the stories of 1970s and ‘80s producer and Broadway theatre executive, Stephen Wells, The Other Side of Broadway vividly and engagingly brings to life the world of the New York theatre at the tail end of its golden era. Ever wonder what Howard Ashman did before he became famous for “Little Shop of Horrors” and the now-classic Disney animated films of the late 20th century? Wells produced two of his early shows and together, against all odds while in their mid-twenties, they ...

Teeth: A Coming-of-Rage Musical Comedy

(12/9/2025)

Dawn O’Keefe is an Evangelical teen with a bizarre secret: two rows of gleaming white teeth perfectly placed to preserve her chastity. When the supposedly upright Christian men around her prove more interested in taking advantage of her body than in protecting it, they quickly learn to keep their hands (and other appendages) to themselves. From Pulitzer Prize and Tony-winner Michael R. Jackson (A Strange Loop) and Anna K. Jacobs (POP!), and based on the controversial cult classic film of the ...

Happy Hour Blues: Lyrics, Notes and Reflections

(12/6/2025)

Written companion to TJ Armand’s three-volume recording project, conceived in New York City during the isolation and cultural turbulence of the pandemic. More than fifty lyrics, notes, and reflections. . Core themes include: queer life and nightlife culture, immigration and self-reinvention, exile and the search for home, chosen family, New York City as both refuge and pressure cooker. With street photography from Astoria and Manhattan. 82 pages.

Happy Hour Blues: Lyrics, Notes and Reflections

Camelton

(12/5/2025)

Twenty years ago, Award-winning musical theatre writer Stephen Cole met his first camel...and he hasn’t been the same since. Stephen tells his hilarious story of writing a musical for the Emir of Qatar. Picture this! Two Brooklyn Jews, some Middle Eastern producers, flying carpets, Croatian acrobats, Russian ballet dancers, an Italian director, the desert, camels (a lot of camels!) and, of course, music. You will laugh and you will cry (from laughing) in this outrageous, once-in-a-lifetime, u...

Jukebox Musicals: Crazy for You to MJ the Musical

(9/18/2025)

Part of Essential Musicals series. A chronological look at the development of long-running hits, like Mamma Mia! and Jersey Boys, tracing the jukebox musical from when it was an exception on Broadway to when it became the rule. Examining the origins and reception for ten of these shows, this volume offers an exploration of one of the most divisive sub-genres of the musical form. 240 pages.

Jukebox Musicals: Crazy for You to MJ the Musical

Hirschfeld's Sondheim: A Poster Book

(9/9/2025)

This first volume in a series of deluxe Hirschfeld poster books contains art drawn from life before the opening night of each of Sondheim’s productions. On the reverse side are rare, ancillary images from the archives, as well as an introduction by Bernadette Peters, an essay by Ben Brantley, and text by David Leopold, Hirschfeld’s archivist and creative director of the Al Hirschfeld Foundation. Hirschfeld’s images capture the essence of the performances even better than the photograph...

Hirschfeld's Sondheim: A Poster Book

(9/9/2025)

Contains art drawn from life before the opening night of each of Sondheim’s productions. On the reverse side are rare, ancillary images from the archives and text by Leopold (archivist and creative director of the Al Hirschfeld Foundation). 25 Al Hirschfeld portraits drawn from Stephen Sondheim’s musicals. These art prints can be easily removed and framed. All images for this book have been scanned from the archives of the Al Hirschfeld Foundation. 58 pages, 11 x 0.65 x 14 inches.

The Theatre of Kander and Ebb

(8/22/2025)

Identifying the theatrical approach that renders their musical dramaturgy unique, this book explores their importance within, and contribution to, musical theatre history. Through their biggest hits, Cabaret (1966) and Chicago (1975), Kander and Ebb have been performed on the stage more times both within and outside of the USA than any other American musical theatre writers. Unlike Sondheim, whose work from 1964 increasingly aspired towards the avant-garde, Kander and Ebb located their projects...

Orchestration in Musical Theatre

(7/25/2025)

An analytic and critical overview of the practice, execution, and effects of orchestration in musical theatre since the time that rock music became significant in the genre. Case studies from shows such as Hair, The Phantom of the Opera, The Lion King, Wicked, and Hamilton. 128 pages.

Michael John LaChiusa: A Critical Companion

(7/25/2025)

Study that incorporates a diverse array of theoretical lenses on the work of John Michael LaChiusa and poses the question of how his varied theatrical techniques anticipated the resurgence in popularity in musical theatre in the past ten years. Focuses on seven of LaChiusa's musicals: Marie Christine, First Lady Suite, First Daughter Suite, Giant, Hello Again, See What I Wanna See, and The Wild Party. 208 pages.

Michael John LaChiusa: A Critical Companion

Broadway Nation: How Immigrant, Jewish, Queer, and Black Artists invented the Broadway Musical

(7/25/2025)

Weaves these diverse threads into a comprehensive narrative, repositioning Black, Queer, and Women artists at the heart of the story, acknowledging their long-standing contributions often overlooked. 456 pages.

Broadway Nation: How Immigrant, Jewish, Queer, and Black Artists invented the Broadwa

Bring the House Down

(7/8/2025)

Alex Lyons always has his mind made up by the time the curtain comes down at a performance—the show either deserves a five-star rave, or a one-star pan. Anything in between is meaningless. On the opening night of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, he doesn’t deliberate over the rating for Hayley Sinclair’s show, nor does he hesitate when the opportunity presents itself to have a one-night stand with the struggling actress. Unaware that she’s gone home with the theater critic who’s just...

Scenery of the Crime

(6/10/2025)

By theatre poster designer Frank "Fraver" Verlizzo. First in his Retro Broadway Mystery Series, in which "theatrical ad execs Vic Senso and Bettie Balboa find themselves navigating the far-from-glamorous world of backstage Broadway when several bizarrely executed murders rock the community. Behind the beautiful scenery lurks a myriad of potentially life-threatening hazards, raising the question: has there ever been a stage-related 'accident' that was actually a cover-up for murder?" 282 pages.

Theater after Film

(5/23/2025)

Argues that after 1945, as cinema became omnipresent in popular culture, theater had to respond to cinema's hegemony. Postwar theatrical experiment, Harries shows, often channeled and represented film's mass cultural force, while knowing that it could never possess that force. Throughout the book, Harries brings critical theory into contact with theories of performance. Although Theater after Film treats the theatrical work of many figures, its central focus falls on Tennessee Williams, Samuel ...

Stereophonic

(5/13/2025)

The place: Sausalito. The time: the mid-1970s. The carpet: brown shag. Stereophonic brings us inside the cloistered world of a recording studio as a rock band on the brink of superstardom attempts to create their sophomore album. The ensuing pressures open up cracks in the band’s once-easy camaraderie, and spats over issues like tempo and song length begin to reveal deeper problems in the band’s foundation. Running on a diet of booze, sleep deprivation, and a giant bag of cocaine, interpers...

The Sound of Murder

(4/3/2025)

October 3, 1959: Rodgers & Hammerstein’s latest musical, “The Sound of Music,” starring Mary Martin, has just had its world premiere in New Haven, the first stop on its road to Broadway. But for one member of the company it will prove to be the final performance. The following morning, the lifeless body of beautiful newcomer Eva Rossi – Mary Martin’s understudy – is discovered in a bizarrely-appointed hotel room, beneath a wall defaced with a bloody inscription: How do you solve a p...

Manhattan Mayhem

(4/2/2025)

MANHATTEN MAYHEM stories capture the mood and heartbeat of the planet's most pulsating plot of land. Rothenberg's checkered life...in theatre, politics and prisons, are reflected in these tales of hope, heartbreak and humor. They are as diverse and unpredictable as Times Square on a Saturday night.

Places, Please, Act One: Poems Around and About Theatre

(3/26/2025)

A collection of Warren Kliewer's poems about acting and the life of theater professionals. From "introduction" by Warren Kliewer: "These poems have been written perhaps in honor of, but more likely in comradeship with, actors, directors, designers, technicians, and yes even producers. The final product of their labors - that which patrons buy tickets to see and critics get free tickets to grumble about - is not my subject. Rather, it's the work itself leading to the results. My subject is the...

Places, Please, Act One: Poems Around and About Theatre

Elphie

(3/25/2025)

The childhood story of Wicked's Elphaba, including her promiscuous mother, her pious father, her saintly sister Nessarose, and her junior felon brother Shell. Deluxe collector’s hardcover features stenciled edges and a color illustrated map of Oz. 288 pages.

Every Day a Little Death: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Stephen Sondheim

(3/22/2025)

Twenty crime stories, one inspired by a song from each of the twenty musicals with scores by Stephen Sondheim (including the made-for-TV Evening Primrose and the final show, Here We Are). Contributing authors include both widely published crime writers and people who are involved in the world of the theatre.

Every Day a Little Death: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Stephen Sondheim

King of Broadway

(12/10/2024)

Novel about Horatio King, an eighty-five-year old curmudgeon who happens to be the greatest musical theater composer and lyricist of his generation. Fifteen years before the story begins, his last musical, Black Hawk Down, was a flop. Now King is approached by twenty-five-year old Ben Willis who sends him a copy of his newly published children's novel, "The Worldwide Dessert Contest." Would King like to get back in the game and collaborate with a new-comer on what could be his last Broadway mus...

The Show Goes On: Broadway Hirings, Firings and Replacements

(11/27/2024)

Conducting more than a hundred interviews, Fassler has drawn from a wide range of the New York theatre community gathering dozens of stories that border on the heroic. How is a suitable replacement chosen to take over on Broadway? What goes into an actor making a role their own in the shadow of another's highly lauded performance? What happens when someone hops on the moving train that is a multi-million dollar production and replaces a flailing actor during an out of town tryout? 462 pages.

The Show Goes On: Broadway Hirings, Firings and Replacements

Suffs

(11/26/2024)

Written by one of the most exciting new voices in theater, this epic new musical takes an unflinching look at the unsung trailblazers of the American women’s suffrage movement. In the seven years leading up to the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, an impassioned group of suffragists—“Suffs” as they called themselves—took to the streets, pioneering protest tactics that transformed the country. They risked their lives as they clashed with the president, the public, and each other. ...

Sonny Boy: A Memoir

(10/15/2024)

To the wider world, Al Pacino exploded onto the scene like a supernova. He landed his first leading role, in The Panic in Needle Park, in 1971, and by 1975, he had starred in four movies—The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, Serpico, and Dog Day Afternoon—that were not just successes but landmarks in the history of film. Those performances became legendary and changed his life forever. Not since Marlon Brando and James Dean in the late 1950s had an actor landed in the culture with such f...

A Show Tune for Today: 366 Songs to Brighten Your Year Calendar

(10/15/2024)

Day-to-day calendar (one that can be used again and again, in any year). 366 bite-size entries, with anecdotes, observations, fun facts, and other confections tied to a single song, perfect for starting each day. Tied to a show's opening date, holidays, historic dates, lyrics, or connections more surprising. 400 pages.

A Show Tune for Today: 366 Songs to Brighten Your Year Calendar

The Musical: A Research and Information Guide (Routledge Music Bibliographies) 2nd Edition

(10/14/2024)

2nd edition of 2011 book by William Everett. More than 1,400 annotated entries; includes reference works, monographs, articles, anthologies, and websites related to the musical. Separate sections devoted to sub-genres (such as operetta and megamusical), non-English language musical genres in the U.S., traditions outside the U.S., individual shows, creators, performers, and performance. This second edition reflects the notable increase in musical theater scholarship since 2000. Also includes mul...

The Musical: A Research and Information Guide (Routledge Music Bibliographies) 2nd Ed

The Spamalot Diaries

(10/8/2024)

Eric Idle shares original journal entries and raw email exchanges that reveal the sometimes bumpy, always entertaining path to the musical Spamalot's run. 208 pages.

Running the Room: Conversations with Women Theatre Directors

(9/24/2024)

Explores, through a series of conversations with many of the leading talents working on British stages, what it takes to succeed in the field, and how each director approaches the work in their own way. Contributions from Natalie Abrahami, Annabel Arden, Milli Bhatia, Carrie Cracknell, Tinuke Craig, Marianne Elliott, Nadia Fall, Yaël Farber, Vicky Featherstone, Jamie Fletcher, Sarah Frankcom, Emma Frankland, Rebecca Frecknall, Debbie Hannan, Tamara Harvey, Natalie Ibu, Ola Ince, Lynette Linton...

Running the Room: Conversations with Women Theatre Directors

View all Videos

Tickets From $59

Tickets From $70

Tickets From $106

Tickets From $60