Winner: Barry Award for Best Paperback Original. Finalist: Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original. Mickey Prada's a nice kid. He works hard at a neighbourhood seafood market in Brooklyn, putting fish on ice. He's got a nice girlfriend. He even delayed college a year to help his sick dad. But Mickey's got a problem. A customer at the fish store, Angelo Santoro, keeps asking Mickey to place bets for him, and Angelo keeps losing.

Published during a literary era marked by the ascendance of Black writers such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Alex Haley, this thinly fictionalized account of Claude Brown’s childhood as a hardened, streetwise criminal trying to survive the toughest streets of Harlem has been heralded as the definitive account of everyday life for the first generation of African Americans raised in the Northern ghettos of the 1940s and 1950s.

Living by my father's rules has never been easy. Who does he think he is anyway? Jase Steel has broken every rule he tries to make me live by. The last one though, that last D, ruined my virgin skin, my relationship with my father, and changed my whole life. No Decorating. I should have listened to him...but I didn't.  

What does it mean to be pretty? Do you really need someone to validate your appearance? Neil LaBute tackles our obsession with physical beauty head-on in a work nominated for multiple Tony and Drama Desk Awards. Our production, directed by the playwright, includes original Broadway cast member Thomas Sadoski, whose acclaimed performance also earned aTony nomination. Includes a backstage conversation with Neil LaBute and the cast. An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast production.

Set in LA against the backdrop of the 2008 financial crash, this is the story of Rudy Reyes (aka Glasses), a gangster turned double agent who wants out of the high-stakes, high-risk criminal life, and Ricky Mendoza Jr (aka Ghost), a DEA safecracker with terminal cancer who's got nothing to lose. When Ghost goes rogue and steals thousands of dollars from a safe that belongs to Rooster, an LA crime lord who happens to be Glasses' boss, he endangers a deal Glasses had with a DEA official.

In the sequel to Reasons to Be Pretty, Greg, Steph, Carly, and Kent return a little older, but not necessarily wiser. And don’t worry if you haven’t met them before - there’s more than enough humor and humanity to usher you into the second act of their lives. Includes a backstage conversation with Neil LaBute and the cast. An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast production featuring Jenna Fischer, Thomas Sadoski, Gia Crovatin, and Josh Stamberg. Written and directed by Neil LaBute. Recorded by L.A. Theatre Works before a live audience.

''It's the penthouse or the morgue.'' This is the philosophy adopted by Keshawn Wilson, a.k.a. ''K-Dawg',' self-proclaimed lord of the streets. Keshawn is the youngest of five kids and one of only two that doesn't belong to his mother's husband. As a little boy he feels the distance between he and his stepfather, and life becomes increasingly difficult for him as the years pass. His childhood and young adult years are spent in a home for boys and state prison, where he serves time for manslaughter.

All Pen wants is to be the kind of girl she's always been. So why does everyone have a problem with it? They think the way she looks and acts means she's trying to be a boy - that she should quit trying to be something she's not. If she dresses like a girl and does what her folks want, it will show respect. If she takes orders and does what her friend, Colby, wants, it will show her loyalty. But respect and loyalty, Pen discovers, are empty words.

Remy Morgan, a young girl born and raised in the heart of the ghetto, gets caught up in the life when she meets a drug lord who offers her the world. Young and naive, she is trapped in a game of lies, deception, and greed and learns the hard way that everything that glitters ain't gold. After her love is slain, Remy is forced back into the life that she desperately tried to forget. Remy has kept a diary of her life for the past two years. What she writes inside is a tale of love, passion, money, and secrecy - and ultimately a witness to her tragic end.

Jonas, the only boy in a family of four children, has always been a fighter. From the neighborhood bullies to the stepfather who uses him and his siblings as punching bags, his life has always been one battle after another. When he crosses paths with rogue homicide detective Louis "Lou" Ceavers, he's offered a bargain that will change the course of his life. Detective Ceavers becomes like a guardian angel and surrogate father to Jonas, teaching him the game and guiding him in his quest for power.

When she was twenty-six and broke, Skye didn’t think twice before selling her eggs and happily pocketing the cash. Now approaching forty, Skye still moves through life entirely—and unrepentantly—on her own terms, living out of a suitcase and avoiding all manner of serious relationships. Maybe her junior high classmates weren’t wrong when they voted her “Most Likely to Be Single” instead of “Most Ride-or-Die Homie,” but at least she’s always been free to do as she pleases.

Travis Coates has a good head…on someone else’s shoulders. A touching, hilarious, and wholly original coming-of-age story from John Corey Whaley, author of the Printz and Morris Award–winning Where Things Come Back.

When Sandra Leigh was seven years old, she fell into the role of protector of her mother and three younger siblings. One winter night, she ushered her mother out of the house during one of her father’s tirades, and then snuck her back into the dark home through a window. Sandra was used to events like these; what she wasn’t used to were the mountains and nature surrounding her new home in West Virginia.

Brooklyn, 1998. Biggie Smalls was right: Things done changed. But that doesn’t mean Quadir and Jarrell are cool letting their best friend Steph’s music lie forgotten under his bed after he’s murdered - not when his rhymes could turn any Bed-Stuy corner into a party. With the help of Steph’s younger sister, Jasmine, they come up with a plan to promote Steph’s music under a new rap name: the Architect. Soon, everyone wants a piece of him. When his demo catches the attention of a hotheaded music label rep, the trio must prove Steph’s talent from beyond the grave.

The only thing I ever wanted in this life was to be an artist. No matter how rough my childhood was, I knew tattooing would be my salvation. Trying to succeed in my father’s shadow was too much for me to handle, so I took off for the city the first chance I got. I didn’t realize until it was too late that there was a reason he wanted to hide me behind him. Now he’s dead, the shop I grew up in is in shambles, and the only person who can save me from his past is Driller.