Robert Lopez

Completing his celebrated novels-in-stories triptych, begun with Good People and A Better Class of People, Robert Lopez delivers the third installment, The Best People, which follows a man who made the mistake of being born and is trying to make the best of that mistakeIn an uncanny world where linear time is nonexistent and everyone he meets is either Esperanza, Sofia, or Manny, the unnamed narrator wrestles with his past lives, his abusive upbringing, his sexual proclivities, his obsession with cleanliness, and how to stop the world from breaking in. With his signature unconventional storytelling and beguiling prose, Robert Lopez delivers a no-holds-barred, whiplash-fast polyphonic novel for the ages.

A brilliant novel-in-stories from award-winning author Robert Lopez In an uncanny, distorted version of New York City, a man rides the subway through the chaos of an ordinary commute. He may have a gun in his pocket. He may be looking for someone—a woman named Esperanza. Between stops, we shuttle back and forth through time and see a man who stands in traffic, the same man seizing and shuddering on a sidewalk, an institution where the man is housed with other undesirables (or troublemakers?), a neighborhood where all the residents have forgotten their names. Over everything looms the specter of a nameless menace, a pervasive sense that something—more than just a ride—is coming to an end. With Robert Lopez’s signature innovation, A Better Class of People delivers a network of stories interconnected and careening like subway tunnels through the realities of modern America: immigration, gun violence, police brutality, sexual harassment, climate change, and the point of fracture at which we find ourselves, where reality and perception are indistinguishable.

"Lopez has the ability to give the reader whiplash with his unconventional and bewitching stories." --Los Angeles Times "Robert Lopez is the master of deadpan dread, of the elliptical koan, of the sudden turn of language that reveals life to be so wonderfully absurd. Always with Lopez, the voice is all his--enchanting, surprising, at times devastating." --JESS WALTER, author of Beautiful Ruins "Robert Lopez's strange, incantatory, visionary stories reveal the mysteries behind the ordinary world. You lift your head from this book and it's as if a third eye has been opened." --DAN CHAON, author of Await Your Reply and Stay Awake "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness," claims Samuel Beckett. To this, we add: nothing is funnier than unhappiness with a heavy dose of amorality, as we learn from Robert Lopez's unforgettable Good People. In these twenty stories, a motley cast of obsessive, self-deluded outsiders narrate their darker moments, which include kidnapping, voyeurism, and psychic masochism. As their struggles give way to the black humor of life's unreason, the bleak merges with the oddly poetic, in a style as lean and resolute as Carver or Hemingway. Treading the fine line between confession and self-justification, the absurd violence of threatened masculinity, and the perverse joy of neurosis, Lopez's stories reveal the compulsive suffering at the precarious core of our universal humanity. Robert Lopez is the author of two novels, Part of the World and Kamby Bolongo Mean River, and the story collection Asunder. He lives in Brooklyn.

The only official companion book to the Tony Award winner for Best Musical from the creators of "South Park" and the co-creator of "Avenue Q". It features the complete script and song lyrics, with 4-color spot illustrations throughout, an original introduction by the creators, and a foreword by Mark Harris. "The Book of Mormon", which follows a pair of mismatched Mormon boys sent on a mission to a place that's about as far from Salt Lake City as you can get, features book, music, and lyrics by Trey Parker, Robert Lopez and Matt Stone. Parker and Stone are the four-time Emmy Award-winning creators of Comedy Central's landmark animated series South Park. Tony Award-winner Lopez is co-creator of the long-running hit musical comedy Avenue Q. "The Book of Mormon" is choreographed by three-time Tony Award-nominee Casey Nicholaw ("Monty Python's Spamalot", "The Drowsy Chaperone") and is directed by Nicholaw and Parker. The book includes: an original foreword by journalist Mark Harris (author of "Pictures at a Revolution"); an original introduction by the authors on the genesis of the show; a production history; and the complete book and lyrics, with four-color spot illustrations throughout.

Award-winning musical dramatist and teacher David Spencer provides a guide-to-the-game that helps you negotiate aspects of the musical theatre business and more.