The story of the second British penal settlement in Australia, where a notoriously brutal convict regime became the template for penal stations in other states. Mark Dunn explores relations between the white settlers and the local Aboriginal landholders, and uncovers a long forgotten massacre.Shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Award for Australian History 2021In 1790, five convicts escaped Sydney by boat and were swept ashore near present...

A hilarious and moving story of one girl’s fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhereElla Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal phrase containing all the letters of the alphabet, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”Now Ella finds herself acting to save her fr...

From 1983 to 1987, author Mark Dunn worked as a court clerk for a justice of the peace in Travis County, Texas, where, he says, “I learned more about human nature . . . than I could have learned in any other job I might have taken up as a bushy-tailed kid from Tennessee.” Based on interviews with 200 justices of the peace from all parts of Texas, Texas People’s Court promises to take readers on a tour of what it means to be a Texas justice of the peace: an experience that is by tu...

From Geronimo! to gesundheit to haminahamina to holy mackerel , and from abracadabra to zoinks —a look at interjections like you've never seen them before.Often thought of as unnecessary verbal fringe ...

The 1950s television game show was a cultural touchstone, reflecting the zeitgeist of a flourishing modern nation. The author explores the iconography of the mid-20th century U.S. in the context of TV watching, game playing and prize winning. The scandals that marred the genre's reputation are revisited, highlighting American's propensity for both gullibility and winking cynicism.

We Five tells the story of five young female friends and co-workers through the voices of five different authors, the story unfolding against five distinct historic backdrops. The driving conceit is that an anonymously authored manuscript from the mid-1860s (perhaps the work of Dickens contemporary Elizabeth Gaskell) was discovered and later published. Over the succeeding decades four other authors choose to retell this story in their own time and in their own way. The last author...

A full-cast production inspired by Pygmalion, Shaw’s classic drawing room tale of language and class division, and its musical incarnation, My Fair LadyPIGmalion tells the story of one Eliza Doolittle, who sells homemade pork rinds at the Tri-Counties Fair and Livestock Show. The daughter of a hardscrabble Mississippi pig farmer, Eliza dreams of someday working as a waitress at “one of those nice downtown barbecue restaurants where all the tourists go.”

A full-cast production by award-winning playwright Mark DunnPlayed out over the course of ten years, Dix Tableaux is a story of friendship between two women in their sixties. Each year represents another reunion for Beverly and Addie, two participants in a series of annual tableaux sponsored by a museum in Dix, a small city in the South.

Althea Witlin has a five-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle among her large collection that she’s never worked on. She has less than a day to finish it because poor health has forced her to move in with her sister … without her puzzles.Van Choc Straw is a bittersweet comedy about tenuous family ties and the often stronger bonds of friendship that lattice the final years of our lives.

A serious comedy about the value of family and friendship, the importance of self-forgiveness, and the special healing joy that comes to those who know how to “drink life to the dregs.”Deep in the Heart, adapted from the award-winning comedy-drama The Deer and the Antelope Play, tells the story of an East Texas family—a mother, daughter, and grandmother—who face tragedy and assorted misfortunes head-on with the help of the strange young woman, believed to be a for...

Playwright Mark Dunn presents four audio plays about Southern women.In Dix Tableaux,two women chart the course of each other’s lives, nurturing a friendship that, in the end, becomes the strongest and most sustaining of their lives.Van Choc Straw is a bittersweet comedy about tenuous family ties and the often stronger bonds of friendship that lattice the final years of our lives.Inspired by My Fair Lady, PIGmalion tells the story ...

A hilarious and moving story of one girl’s fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhereElla Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal phrase containing all the letters of the alphabet, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”Now Ella finds herself acting to save her fr...