Today in Bookish and Literary History, December 30

1926 In Abraham's Bosom by Paul Eliot Green - US

The play takes place in the Southeast of the United States, from 1885 to the beginning of the 20th century.

Abe McCranie is a mixed-race African-American field worker, the son of Colonel McCranie, a white man. He tries to start a school to educate black children, as they were underserved by the state. Ultimately, he gets a school, but the white people run him out of it and drive him to murder.

1964 Tiny Alice by Edward Albee - US

TINY ALICE begins with a venomous exchange between a lawyer and a cardinal whose contempt for each other careens back to their school days.

1982 Whodunnit by Anthony Shaffer - UK

This Broadway success by the author of Sleuth takes audiences to Agatha Christie's England. Six strangers and a butler have gathered for a black tie dinner in a wealthy lawyer's mansion during a thunderstorm. The guests include an aged rear admiral a bitchy aristocrat a doddering old archeologist a dashing young cad and other Christie types.

2025 Run for Your Life, Callie Kingman by Alli Frank and Asha Youmans - US

A blindsided soon-to-be divorcée rediscovers herself in this witty, celebratory novel about a hard-fought comeback by the authors of The Better Half.

2025 Good Kids, Bad Choices by Shanti Hershenson - US

A fire is starting at Littlewood Charter School—or has the damage been done?

2025 Society Women by Adriane Leigh - US

Ellie works as an accountant at her father’s successful investment company in New York City. She enjoys all the comforts her privileged lifestyle affords—a two-bedroom apartment overlooking Central Park, a generous trust fund, and a devastatingly attractive if often absent husband who works long hours for her father as well. Yet the introverted young woman who wants for nothing feels aimless and untethered. Ellie lost her mother at a young age and still has nightmares about her death. She sometimes sleepwalks at night and finds herself stumbling through the days.

2025 Five and a Quarter by Brandon Q. Morris - Germany

What if you deleted the source code of your own life?

In 2040, digital archivist John receives a strange assignment from his boss: he has to read the contents of an ancient floppy disk and then destroy it immediately.