Books published by Hansen Publishing Group, LLC

The World of Tennessee Williams offers a survey of the life and career of one of American's greatest dramatists from birth in 1911 to his death in 1983. Richard Leavitt was in a unique position to create such a volume, since he was a friend of Tennessee's and followed his career close up. Kenneth Holditch, who has undertaken the task of completing the text, was a friend of Leavitt's and knew Tennessee Williams. It has been his desire to carry to fruition the original plan Dick Leavitt conceived in the 1970s and augmented in 1983 when Williams died.

THE UNDERSTUDY is the story of Nina Landau, an actress, living in New York City in the early ’70’s and trying hard to make it on Broadway.  We follow her from her Broadway audition nerves, to her eventual success on stage. Along the way we discover what goes on backstage during a Broadway show, how actors deal with the mistakes that occasionally occur and how exciting it is to be at an opening night party at Sardi’s! Nina experiences thrilling triumphs as well as crushing setbacks and has a passionate love affair with her leading man. 

Territory of Colorado, 1864. Millie and Dom Drouillard return with more murder, mayhem, and misadventures in J.v.L. Bell’s latest novel, Denver City Justice.The newlyweds are barely settled into wedded bliss when their neighbor the Widow Ferris is found dead with an icicle piercing her cold heart. Suspects abound—Widow Ferris has been blackmailing most of the upstanding citizens of Idaho Springs, including its sheriff. Millie’s new husband Dom soon becomes the main suspect and is hauled off to jail for a taste of Denver City justice.Can Millie arrive in Denver City in time? Joined by an unusual ensemble of proper matrons, her best friend Mary—a free black woman—and Idaho Springs’ “fancy girl,” Millie heads to Denver City willing to do anything to keep Dom from swinging from the end of a rope. Denver City Justice is a historical novel, rich in frontier lore, interesting Colorado history, and endearingly quirky characters.

The widowed Doctor Dante Rivera is forced to leave his home in Pamplona, Spain when he is thrown into a politically charged circumstance that threatens his life and those of his two small children. A timely request for a doctor from a clinic in Napa Valley, California seems a godsend. Dr. Rivera and his children emigrate to the Napa Valley to start a new life. There he meets the love of his life, the young Juanita Delgado. Their meeting begins the saga of these two Californian families and their multigenerational struggle spanning from 1855 to 1967. Cultural restraints, heartbreaking circumstances, prejudice, war, and reversal of fortune keep lovers apart while the mystery of their love lives on.

From the advent of the talkies to the emergence of the ratings system, Ten Movies at a Time covers four decades of American movies, notably the glory days of the studio system, or, as it is more glamorously tagged, the Golden Age of Hollywood.Through reviews of 350 representative films, author John DiLeo tells an alternative, idiosyncratic history of the movies, focusing on the trends, the sub-genres, the cultural and historical shifts, offering, in the process, the parallel story of America itself.The 1930s include the birth (and near-death) of the movie musical, the wave of anti-war films for peacetime, the pre-Production Code looseness followed by an abrupt transition to “respectability,” and depictions of Depression America both realistic and escapist.The 1940s show Hollywood in full war-effort mode, in battle and on the home front, followed by a post-war cinema consisting of groundbreaking realism as well as a spate of fantasy films, plus the new and exciting “film noir,” not to mention portraits of Cold War panic and the domestic bliss of suburbia.The 1950s saw longtime stars like James Stewart admirably stretching their talents, with comparable maturity and depth brought to musical biopics and westerns, just as original movie musicals peaked and subsided, while television was being challenged by wider screens and colorful remakes of ’30s classics.The 1960s courted audiences with soapy spectacles, macho epics, titillating sex farces, and mammoth Broadway-musical adaptations, but, as black and white was fading away, and as movies were getting more bloated, Hollywood was heading toward a new permissiveness and an uncharted landscape.As Ten Movies at a Time moves with the times, DiLeo presents a vibrant vision of just how the movies traveled from 1930 to 1970, enhanced by his lively and piercing perceptions of the 350 movies highlighted. Whether they are wonderful or terrible, beloved or forgotten, significant or routine, each one contributes something worthy to the conversation about our film legacy.

A recipe for true love or murder? Ingredients: one Southern belle, one Colorado gold miner, a wife wanted classified, and a fainting goat. Let simmer.What’s a Southern belle to do in 1863? Wife-wanted ads are always risky business, but Millie Virginia never imagined she’d survive the perilous trip across the Great Plains to find her intended husband in a pine box. Was he killed in an accident? Or murdered for his gold mine? Stuck in the mining town of Idaho Springs, Colorado territory, without friends or means, Millie is beleaguered by undesirable suitors and threatened by an unknown assailant. Her troubles escalate when the brother of her dead fiancé, Dominic Drouillard, unexpectedly turns up.Dom is an ill-mannered mountain man who invades Millie’s log cabin, insists that his brother was murdered, and refuses to leave until he finds the killer. Compelled to join forces with her erstwhile brother-in-law, Millie discovers the search for Colorado gold is perilous, especially with a murderer on their trail.The Lucky Hat Mine interlaces the tale of a feisty heroine with frontier legend and lore making for an arousing historical murder mystery.

Gregg Barrios captures the heady times of living and loving in Los Angeles in the 1980s in his play I-DJ. The play is a coming of age story of a gay Mexican-American dance club DJ Amado Guerrero Paz (aka Warren Peace). This two-act play takes place in one evening even though the story covers the decades of the 1960s to the ''80s. DJ Warren Peace sets the audience straight right away: "Tonight''s ground rules are simple. Play original A&M Record vinyl releases-Nada más." I-DJ is scored with the strategically placed music of A&M recording artists Herb Alpert & Tijuana Brass (The Lonely Bull and Whipped Cream) The Carpenters (Yesterday Once More, One Fine Day, and Fun, Fun, Fun) Chris Montez (Call Me), Cat Stevens (Peace Train), Procol Harum (Conquistador) Humble Pie (I Don''t Need a Doctor). DJ Warren Peace''s life journey captures the turmoil of his times, the struggle for gay identity, the Chicano civil rights movement, and the AIDS crisis in a dramatic and personal way.

Screen Savers II is John DiLeo''s three-part grab bag of classic movies, beginning with his extensive essays about ten remarkable and underappreciated movies, as in the first Screen Savers, and representing a variety of genres and stars such as Barbara Stanwyck, James Stewart, Ginger Rogers, and DiLeo favorite Joel McCrea. Part Two collects and categorizes posts from DiLeo''s classic-film blog screensaversmovies.com, containing his musings on classics revisited, sleepers and stinkers, films old and new, plus his memorial tributes to Hollywood notables. Part Three might be called a delayed bonus round to DiLeo''s 1999 quiz book, with all-new matching quizzes. Can you identify the films in which a character writes a book titled Hummingbird Hill; Fred Astaire dances with Betty Hutton; a character named Sean Regan is important but never seen?