Entertainment & Performing Arts

Trevor Noah is the host of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, where he gleefully provides America with its nightly dose of serrated satire....

A memoir of leadership and success: The executive chairman of Disney, Time’s 2019 businessperson of the year, shares the ideas and values he embraced during his 15 years as CEO while reinventing one of the world’s most beloved companies....

Wildflower is a portrait of Drew Barrymore's life in stories as she looks back on the adventures, challenges, and incredible experiences of her earlier years....

Tina Fey was just a young girl with a dream: a recurring stress dream that she was being chased through a local airport by her middle-school gym teacher....

Journalist Dina Temple-Raston shares the stories of adolescents who made astonishing choices - from joining ISIS to planning a school shooting - that led to disastrous results....

Mindy Kaling has lived many lives: the obedient child of immigrant professionals, a timid chubster afraid of her own bike, a Ben Affleck-impersonating Off-Broadway performer....

Actor, voice actor, and comedian H. Jon Benjamin helps us all feel a little better about our own failures by sharing his own - despite his success starring on Archer and Bob's Burgers - in a hilarious, self-helpful memoir....

In 2016 comedian Mike Birbiglia and poet Jennifer Hope Stein took their 14-month-old daughter Oona to the Nantucket Film Festival. When the festival director picked them up at the airport she asked Mike if he would perform at the storytelling night....

A wryly funny and surprisingly moving account of an extraordinary life lived almost entirely in the public eye....

Lin-Manuel Miranda's groundbreaking musical Hamilton is as revolutionary as its subject: the poor kid from the Caribbean who fought the British and defended the Constitution....

Nothing "goes viral". If you think a popular movie, song, or app came out of nowhere to become a word-of-mouth success in today's media environment, you're missing the real story....

David Foster Wallace brings to nonfiction the same curiosity, hilarity, and exhilarating verbal facility that has delighted readers of his fiction, including the best-selling Infinite Jest....

Parks and Recreation actor Nick Offerman shares his humorous fulminations on life, manliness, meat, and much more in his first book....

Here's what started the phenomenon: This book has been a best seller for over 15 years and has been used by screenwriters around the world! Blake Snyder tells all in this fast, funny, and candid look inside the movie business....

In this heartfelt, funny, and touching memoir, one of the stars of Netflix’s Emmy Award-winning smash-hit Queer Eye reveals how an Englishman raised in a traditionally religious home became a fashion icon - and the first openly gay, South Asian man on television....

From breakout stand-up comedian Iliza Shlesinger comes a subversively funny collection of essays and observations on a confident woman's approach to friendship, singlehood, and relationships....

Doug Stanhope is one of the most critically acclaimed and stridently unrepentant comedians of his generation....

Rainn Wilson's memoir about growing up geeky and finally finding his place in comedy, faith, and life....

Officer Clemmons: A Memoir details the incredible life story of François Clemmons, beginning with his early years in Alabama and Ohio, marked by family trauma and loss, through his studies as a music major at Oberlin College, where Clemmons began to investigate....

Jenna Fischer's Hollywood journey began at the age of 22 when she moved to Los Angeles from her hometown of St. Louis. She was determined, confident, and ready to work hard. So, what could go wrong? Uh, basically everything....

A deeply personal and revealing Hollywood-survival story.....

What? You don’t know Adam Wade? Here’s your chance! His personal-yet-universal stories and vulnerable delivery have made him one of the most popular storytellers and comedians in the country on "story slam" platforms like The Moth and Comedy Central’s Whiplash....

In the mid-70s, Steve Martin exploded onto the comedy scene. By 1978 he was the biggest concert draw in the history of stand-up....

From actor Cary Elwes, who played the iconic role of Westley in The Princess Bride, comes a first-person account and behind-the-scenes look at the making of the cult classic film....

In this follow-up to her critically acclaimed memoir, Home, Julie Andrews shares reflections on her astonishing career, including such classics as Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, and Victor/Victoria....

Audible records stand-up in nightclubs and festivals year-round, and hand-picks standout moments, exclusively for Members’ ears. We blend those fresh bits with selections....

The untold stories behind The Office, one of the most iconic television shows of the 21st century, told by its creators, writers, and actors....

Rabbit is an unflinching memoir of cinematic scope and unexpected humor that offers a rare glimpse into the harrowing reality of life on America's margins....

Andi Dorfman, star of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, talks candidly about what it's like to be courted by 25 handsome single men....

In this engagingly witty, wise, and heartfelt memoir, Martin Short tells the tale of how a showbiz-obsessed kid from Canada transformed himself into one of Hollywood’s favorite funnymen....

Film historian David Thomson, leads us into this very delicate subject. While unpacking classics such as Seven, Strangers on a Train, The Conformist, The Godfather, and The Shining, he offers a disconcerting sense of how the form of movies makes us accomplices in this sinister narrative process. Murder and the Movies admits us into what Thomson calls "a warped triangle": the creator working out a compelling death; the killer doing his and her best; and the entranced spectator trying to cling to life and a proper sense of decency.

 Peckinpah: A Portrait in Montage (The Definitive Edition) is a comprehensive biography on the American filmmaker Sam Peckinpah, creator of such films as The Wild Bunch, Ride the High Country, Straw Dogs, and Junior Bonner. Written by Garner Simmons, whose relationship with Peckinpah began in 1973 and continued until the director’s death in December of 1984, the book is read by the gifted actor Jason Culp, son of the late Robert Culp. 

Of all the voice-over genres, movie-trailer narration is one of the most famous, yet also the most difficult to learn about. If you want to add trailers to your VO tool belt, this is your book. Thompson Howell, narrator of blockbuster movie trailers, shares his insider’s knowledge of this traditionally closed world.  

Joseph Jacoby, screenwriter, director, producer and NYU Film School classmate of Martin Scorsese, began his career as a writer and creator of television game shows and as a professional puppeteer. Jacoby, who worked in the early days of live TV and went on to become a pioneering filmmaker, has until now never revealed that most of his early years were spent as a ward of the state. He survived a childhood shadowed by his mother's unpredictable and dangerous behavior, which forced friends to commit her. Jacoby then grew up in seven foster homes in Brooklyn, and two institutions.

What’s your favorite science fiction film? At the start of the new millennium, fans who attended science fiction conventions persuaded Flynn and Blackwood - a.k.a. “The Film Doctors” - to conduct a survey of the top 10 science films of the 20th century. They then embarked on a 10-year odyssey to gather thousands of fan votes. The result: a list of science-fiction films that probably contains at least one of your favorites. 

In Westworld and Philosophy, philosophers, filmmakers, scientists, activists, and ethicists ask the questions you're not supposed to ask and suggest the answers you're not supposed to know. There's a deeper level to this game, and this book charts a course through the maze of the mind, examining how we think about humans, hosts, and the world around us on a journey toward self-actualization. 

Learning how easy improv is can be the hard part. There are important lessons in life that can lead to better improv scenes. And there are important lessons in improv that can lead to a better life. By putting improv techniques under an electron microscope of reason, The Tao of Improv: A Philosophy of Creating a Scene can improve the way we function, understand, and interact - on stage and off. Excerpts from the Tao Te Ching are woven into an overall philosophy of scenic improv acting.

This book introduces important concepts in philosophy through the vast array of provocative issues raised by the series, such as the ethics of the Prime Directive, Star Trek's philosophy of peace, Data and Voyager's Doctor as persons, moral relativism and the Federation's quest for liberation, the effect of alternate universes on reality and identity, the Borg as transhumanists, Federation Trekonomics, Star Trek's secular society, and much, much more!  

There'll Be Peace When You Are Done: Actors and Fans Celebrate the Legacy of Supernatural is an emotional look back at the beloved television show Supernatural as it wraps up its final season after 15 unprecedented years on air. With heartfelt chapters written by both the series' actors and its fans, There'll Be Peace When You Are Done traces Supernatural's evolution, the memorable characters created by its writers and brought to life by its talented actors, and the many ways in which the show has inspired and changed the lives of both its viewers and cast.

A native of New Jersey, Roy Scheider was his own man. He did his work well and was not afraid to butt heads with producers and directors with whom he disagreed, even to the detriment of his career. Michael B. Druxman’s Roy Scheider & the Bigger Boat finds the actor in 2002 during a lull in his career. He hasn’t done a major film for several years, as he ponders how he can change his luck.

Alan Zweibel started his comedy career selling jokes for seven dollars apiece to the last of the Borscht Belt standups. Then one night, despite bombing on stage, he caught the attention of Lorne Michaels and became one of the first writers at Saturday Night Live, where he penned classic material for Gilda Radner, John Belushi, and all of the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players. From SNL, he went on to have a hand in a series of landmark shows - from It’s Garry Shandling’s Show to Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Veteran script consultant Jill Chamberlain discovered in her work that an astounding 99 percent of first-time screenwriters don't know how to tell a story. What the 99 percent do instead is present a situation. In order to explain the difference, Chamberlain created the nutshell technique, a method whereby writers identify eight dynamic, interconnected elements that are required to successfully tell a story. Now, for the first time, Chamberlain presents her unique method in audiobook form with The Nutshell Technique: Crack the Secret of Successful Screenwriting.

With intimate detail, author Maria Riva reveals the rich life of her mother, Marlene Dietrich, the charismatic star of stage and screen whose career spanned much of the 20th century. Opening with Dietrich's childhood in Schöneberg, Riva's biography introduces us to an energetic, disciplined, and ambitious young actress whose own mother equated show business with a world of vagabonds and thieves.  

Arrested Development earned six Emmy awards, a Golden Globe award, critical acclaim, and a loyal cult following. Fortunately, this book explores the fascinating philosophical issues at the heart of the quirky Bluths and their comic exploits. Whether it's reflecting on Gob's self-deception or digging into Tobias's double entendres, you'll watch your favorite scenes and episodes of the show in a whole new way.

Unearth the terrifying and true tales behind some of the scariest Horror movies to ever haunt our screens, including the Enfield poltergeist case that was retold in The Conjuring 2 and the serial killer who inspired Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs. Behind the Horror dissects these and other bizarre tales to reveal haunting real-life stories of abduction, disappearance, murder and exorcism.