NCW Libraries

"The first comprehensive look at a bizarre show business phenomenon: the actors, singers, musicians, magicians, comedians, and others who died while performing onstage"--

Evil lives in a traveling carnival roaming the Depression-era South. But the carnival's newest act, a peculiar young woman with latent magical powers, may hold the key to defeating it. Her time has come. Abandoned by her family, alone on the wrong side of the color line with little to call her own, Eliza Meeks is coming to terms with what she does have. It's a gift for communicating with animals. To some, she's a magical tender. To others, a she-devil....

Joshua and Dinah Barkley are a successful (but argumentative) musical-comedy team. But their duo is threatened when a serious playwright envisions Dinah as a great dramatic actress.

Everybody starts somewhere, and once upon a time Luigi Lemoncello was a twelve-year-old boy in a large family who dreamed of being a showman; he gets his first chance working for a famous barker at a summer carnival where a mysterious puzzle leads him and his friends on a treasure hunt.

After escaping from his greedy ex-wife in California, Lake Tahoe hotel/casino manager Steve McClusky has had enough of women. His sabbatical is sabotaged when he is ordered to chaperone the venue's new headliner and inherits a five-year-old abandoned by her debt-ridden father.

The sequel to James Kaplan's bestselling "Frank: The Voice.".. Frank's life post-Oscar was incredibly dense: in between recording albums and singles, he often shot four or five movies a year; did TV show and nightclub appearances; started his own label, Reprise; and juggled his considerable commercial ventures (movie production, the restaurant business, even prizefighter management) alongside his famous and sometimes notorious social activities and...

The film traces the meteoric singing/performing career of Asa Yoelson, a talented cantor's son determined to make it big in the "biz". After changing his name to Al Jolson, he captivated audiences everywhere with his minstrel and jazz performances.

"Jacci Reed loves her life on the Ohio River in 1896 as part of the Kingston showboat family, but shadows of her past and the death of her mother linger in her memory. With the help of the showboat owners' son, can she find answers before those shadows overtake her and threaten her life?"-- In 1881, Jacci Reed is only five years old when a man attempts to kidnap her from the steamboat her mother, Irena, works on. Badly wounded during the confrontation,...

What is life like for a dancer when they can no longer dance? Inspired by Merrill Ashley's departure from the New York City Ballet as an acclaimed principal dancer, this new documentary captures the poignancy of this life turning point. After a struggle to find her next step, today Merrill Ashley travels around the world teaching Balanchine to dance companies which perform his works as once she did. This is the story of any dancer - or, in truth any...

Douglas Fairbanks, the screen's great swashbuckler, charmed millions with his good looks and charisma. Behind all of his achievements on the screen, there was another side to Fairbanks and this unique biography takes a peak at man behind the mask.