"In 1919, the four Turner sisters and their parents are barely scraping along. Their father is a low-paid boot stitcher in Johnson City, NY, and the Turners are always one paycheck away from eviction. When their father's hand is crushed and he's forced to quit, their domineering mother decides that the vaudeville stage is their best--and only--chance for salvation. With everything at stake, the Tumbling Turners take to the road and the four young...

"Leaving was my sister's choice. I would have to make my own. All Harriet Szász has ever known is life onstage with her sister, Josie. As "The Sisters Sweet," they pose as conjoined twins in a vaudeville act conceived of by their ambitious parents, who were once themselves theatrical stars. But after Josie exposes the family's fraud and runs away to Hollywood, Harriet must learn to live out of the spotlight--and her sister's shadow. As Josie's star...

August Beausoleil and his colleague, Charles Pomerantz, have taken the Beausoleil Brothers Follies to the remote mining towns of Montana, far from the powerful impresarios who own the talent and control the theaters on the big vaudeville circuits. Their cast includes a collection of has-beens and second-tier performers: Mary Mabel Markey, once queen of the boards but now a little out of breath; Wayne Windsor, "The Profile," who favors his audiences...

Set in vaudeville in the early twentieth century, Jonah Man is a gripping and ultimately heartbreaking novel that reveals the often tragic lives of performers struggling to make it to the big time. Told from the perspectives of multiple characters, including a one-handed juggler who moonlights as a drug trafficker, a talented young boy who longs to escape the shadow of his abusive father, and a police inspector whose bumbling attempts to solve a murder...

Best-selling author Robert Jackson Bennett has won widespread critical acclaim for his unique brand of darkly inventive fiction. In The Troupe, 16-year-old George Carole joins vaudeville in search of Heironomo Silenus, the man he believes to be his father. But what he discovers casts a dark pall over his world: Silenus' troupe hides a dangerous secret - one that invites death to all in its vicinity.

"Jokes change from generation to generation, but the experience of the stand-up comedian transcends the ages: the striving and struggles, the tragedy and triumph. From the Marx Brothers to Milton Berle, George Carlin to Eddie Murphy, Conan O'Brien to Louis C. K.--comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff presents a century of fascinating rebels, forgotten stars, and characters on the precipice of fame in this essential history of American comedy."--Dust jacket....

Esta es la historia de Walt, el nino al que el Maestro Yehudi enseno a levitar y a volar. La historia de un adolescente que se convierte en adulto y pierde la magia. La historia de un hombre que trata desesperadamente de reencontrar el sentido de su existencia. La historia de un pais, Estados Unidos, desde los "felices anos veinte" hasta la dura posguerra. Una vez mas, Paul Auster, dueno de una prosa admirable y de una poderosa imaginacion, logra...

"From the author of The Miracle & Tragedy of the Dionne Quintuplets and The Borden Murders comes the absorbing and compulsively readable story of Violet and Daisy Hilton, conjoined twins who were the sensation of the US sideshow circuits in the 1920s and 1930s."--

In 1910, just before the earth passes through the tail of Halley's Comet, thirteen-year-old Hope McDaniels, whose father is a magician in a traveling vaudeville show, tries to earn enough money to quit the circuit by selling "anti-comet pills," with the help of fellow-performer Buster Keaton.

1917, Jessie Carr, fourteen years old and sole heiress to her family's vast fortune, disappeared without a trace. Now, years later, her uncle Oliver Beckett thinks he's found her: a young actress in a vaudeville playhouse is a dead ringer for his missing niece. But when Oliver confronts the girl, he learns he's wrong. Orphaned young, Leah's been acting since she was a toddler. Oliver, never one to miss an opportunity, makes a proposition--with his...