Sydney Pollack

"Taking readers step-by-step through the most basic acting exercises to critiques of performances in scenes from contemporary American plays, this volume follows a class of eight at the Neighborhood Playhouse, where Meisner has taught for fifty years." --

Post-WWII, Germany. Michael Berg is a teenager who becomes ill and is helped home by Hanna, a stranger twice his age. Michael recovers from scarlet fever and seeks out Hanna to thank her. The two are quickly drawn into a passionate but secretive affair. Michael discovers that Hanna loves being read to and their physical relationship deepens. Hanna is enthralled as Michael reads to her from different works of literature. Despite their intense bond,...

Michael Clayton is an in-house fixer at one of the largest corporate law firms in New York. A former criminal prosecutor, Clayton takes care of the law firm Kenner, Bach, & Ledeen's dirtiest work at the behest of the firm's co-founder, Marty Bach. Burned out with his job as a fixer, his divorce, a failed business venture, and mounting debt have left Clayton inextricably tied to the firm. At U/North, meanwhile, the career of litigator Karen Crowder...

Joe Turner is a CIA agent with the code name: Condor. When his entire office is massacred, Turner goes on the run from his enemies, not to mention his so-called allies. After reporting the murders to his superiors, the organization wants to bring Condor in, but somebody is trying to take him out. In his frantic hunt for answers, and in a desperate run for his life, Turner abducts photographer Kathy Hale and eventually seduces her into helping him....

Rusty Sabich's been swept up in an obsessive affair with a coworker in the prosecutor's office. When she is murdered, he's asked to lead the investigation. Then, astonishingly, he's accused of the crime. He's the perfect suspect and his fight to clear his name pulls him into a whirpool of lies and secrets.

Comedy in which the daughter of the chauffeur for an immensely wealthy family returns from Paris and dazzles the family's two sons.

Inman, a young Confederate soldier, who is injured during the explosive 1864 battle of Petersburg, Virginia, is struggling to make his way home to Cold Mountain, NC, where his beloved Ada awaits him. In Inman's absence, Ada befriends Ruby, who helps her keep up her late father's farm. Meanwhile, in his travels, Inman encounters a menagerie of interesting and colorful characters.

Will and Sandy are two architects working on a major urban renewal project in the King's Cross section of London. The area is unsafe and not ready for such a project and is best known as a place to pick up prostitutes or buy drugs. Will and Sandy move their offices into a nearby vacant warehouse. Will and his girlfriend Liv have to deal with her behaviorally challenged thirteen year old daughter. At the same time Will has to deal with constant burglaries...

Jamie Conway, an aspiring writer, abandons the wheat fields of Kansas for the skyline of Manhattan, and the city's seductive party subculture. Hitting the clubs night after night, Jamie soon spins out of control, and he risks losing everything and everyone he loves.

"[T]he story of a Manhattan teenager whose life is profoundly altered after witnessing a terrible accident."--Container.