Books by Sam Shepard

When his brother Lee - a drifter and petty thief - decides to stop by, he pitches his own idea for a movie and convinces the producer to ditch Austin's love story for his own trashy Western tale.Now they must work together to secure the deal.

"The greatest American playwright of his generation" (New York Magazine)

This collection shares decades of correspondence between the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and one of his closest friendsincluding personal photos.One of America's leading dramatists, as well as an accomplished actor, screenwriter, and director, Sam Shepard's legacy includes immortal plays like True West andBuried Child, as well as memorable film roles, including his Academy Award-nominated performance in The Right Stuff. Though Shepard remained an intensely private man, he wrote candidly about his life and work in letters to his close friend Johnny Dark. His former father-in-law, Dark became a surrogate brother to Shepard, and even an artistic muse. Two Prospectorsgathers nearly forty years of correspondence and transcribed conversations between them.In these letters, the men open themselves to each other with gripping honesty. Shepard's letters give us the deepest look we will ever get into his personal philosophy and creative process, while in Dark's letters we discover insights into Shepard's character that only an intimate friend could provide. The writers also reflect on the books and authors that stimulate their thinking, their relationships with women (including Shepard's anguished decision to leave his wife and son for actress Jessica Lange), personal struggles, and accumulating years. Illustrated with Dark's photographs of Shepard and their mutual family across many years, as well as facsimiles of numerous letters,Two Prospectorsis a compelling portrait of a complex friendship that anchored both lives for decades, a friendship also poignantly captured in Treva Wurmfeld's film,Shepard & Dark.

During the last decade, Sam Shepard's most recent plays have been produced in London by the Royal Court Theatre. This collection brings together "A Lie of the Mind", "A Love Ballad...A Little Legend About Love", "States of Shock", and Shepard's most recently staged play, "Simpatico".

His first major book of fiction: lyrical, personal, mythical, hilarious and mesmeric stories that shed new light on both the US and the writer through whose eyes we access this compelling and resonant land.

In these 17 stories, Sam Shepherd taps the same wellspring that has made him one of America's most acclaimed playwrights: sex and regret; the yearning for a frontier that has been subdivided out of existence and the anxious gulf that separates men and women.

"A poet of the theatre, shaping a new language out of broken words: an emotional seismograph registering the tremors which shake the substratum of human life" (The Times)

Shepard's play, "State of Shock", turns an anniversary party into a reopening of the wounds of war, sex and family betrayal. This volume includes his screenplays for the films "Far North", which explores the gap between generations and genders, and "Silent Tongue", about white settlers in America.

Also included are Curse of the Starving Class, The Tooth of Crime, La Turista, Tongues and Savage/Love. The volume is introduced by Richard Gilman, who provides a fascinating profile of the author and places the plays in the context of contemporary American drama.

Volume one of Shepard's collected plays brings into print 14 of his legendary short and full-length plays from the 60s, including "The Unseen Hand", "Chicago", "Icarus's Mother", "Red Cross", "Cowboys", "Operation Sidewinder" and "Killer's Head".