Below is a manageable selection of recently published or forthcoming theater books that look to be good summer reads: Four memoirs or biographies, two books of history or criticism, four first-rate scripts, and three beach reads by and about theater people.

BIOGRAPHIES AND MEMOIRS

Voice of A Century:
The Life and Artistry of Marian Anderson

(Penguin Press, 352 pages)
Anthony Tommasini, former classical music critic of the New York Times, tells the story of the singer who gripped international audiences with her masterful renditions of Handel arias, German lieder, Scandinavian songs, and Negro spirituals — bold programming for her time – but infamously faced racism at home. Barred from singing at Constitution Hall because of her skin color, she sang instead at the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday, 1939 for 75,000 people. 

Jazzed
Jack Cole and Twentieth-Century American Dance 

(University Press of Kentucky, 336 pages)
Debra Levine chronicles the celebrated dancer, director and choreographer Jack Cole (1911-1974) who performed in Ziegfeld Follies of 1943 and choreographed “Man of La Mancha” two decades later, but became better known for his film choreography:Gilda (1946), There’s No Business Like Show Business (1954), Les Girls(1957), Some Like It Hot(1959), and Let’s Make Love(1960). In Gentlemen Prefer Blondes(1953), he famously directed Marilyn Monroe, who was not a formally trained dancer, in “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend,” making the most of her natural grace.

Kids, Wait Til You Hear This

(Grand Central, 490 pages)
Liza Minnelli’s long-gestating memoir “as told to Michael Feinstein with Josh Getlin  and Heidi Evans” that traces the journey of this entertainer born of entertainers who has survived to age 80,

A Very Unusual Way: 
Maury Yeston and His Singular Path to Broadway and Beyond

  (State University of New York Press, 312 pages) 
Author Joshua Rosenblum has written the first book-length study of the career and works of the Broadway composer and lyricist best-known for the Tony Award–winning musicals Nine and Titanic

HISTORY AND CRITICISM

Too Darn Hot:
Kiss Me, Kate & the Making and Remaking of a Broadway Musical  

(Oxford University Press, 240 pages) 
Author Hannah Robbins looks at this backstage musical built around Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. From its 1948 debut to its 75th anniversary revival, it’s been both celebrated and critiqued, reflecting shifting cultural attitudes and artistic sensibilities.

Late Stage:
 Theatrical Perspective on Age and Aging

 (University of Michigan Press, 508 pages)
An anthology that includes critical analysis of key works by Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen, Caryl Churchill, Clare Barron, Naomi Iizuka, Tracy Letts, David Lindsay-Abaire, Judith Malina, Robbie McCauley, Florian Zeller, and Peggy Shaw. 

SCRIPTS

The Balusters

(Theatre Communications Group, 174 pages)
The Tony-nominated play by David Lindsay-Abaire. 
From my review of the Broadway production: The squabbling over whether to put a stop sign on the neighborhood’s prettiest street might not sound substantial enough to build a play around. But David Lindsay-Abaire’s fresh and funny comedy uses the pettiness, blind spots and outright biases of the diverse characters who are involved to comment with sharp insight on The Way We Live Now

Giant

(Nick Hern Books, 144 pages)
Mark Rosenblatt’s inaugural play imagines the details of the true story involving children’s book author Roald Dahl.
From my review of the Broadway production: I can see three main reasons why some theatergoers might want to sympathize with the antisemite at the center of the incendiary true incident being dramatized in  “Giant.” The man, for one, is Roald Dahl, the children’s book author whose titles (including “Matilda” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”) many have read and loved since childhood. Dahl is being portrayed in another virtuoso performance by John Lithgow, the fine eighty-year-old actor who has been able to locate the humanity in such insufferable villains as the Trinity Killer in Dexter, Lord Farquaad in Shrek and Roger Ailes in Bombshell. Then, some might agree with Dahl’s criticism of Israel, which he made four decades ago, but that is even more commonly heard in March of 2026  — that Israel has exhibited “appalling behavior” and exerted “powerful influence over the US treasury [and] over the presidency.”
But it becomes harder to muster up much sympathy when such lines of dialogue about Israel, imagined by “Giant” playwright Mark Rosenblatt, bump up against lines about Jews taken verbatim from Dahl’s writings and interviews,  which get increasingly explicit: 

Liberation

(Concord Theatricals, 102 pages)
The Pulitzer Prize winning comedy by Bess Wohl,
From my review of the Broadway production: Playwright Bess Wohl wants us to know about the time before she was born when “women’s lib” was neither pejorative nor ironic. In “Liberation,” her warm, funny play opening tonight on Broadway about a group of feminists meeting weekly in 1970, she looks back without polemics, without parody; just with lots of questions. The real-life gathering that inspired the consciousness-raising group in the play was led by her mother.

Every Brilliant Thing: 2026 Broadway Edition

(Methuen Drama, 78 pages)
An update of Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe’s script for the solo show. From my review of the Broadway production: Before Daniel Radcliffe gets on stage to start this funny and moving play that’s built around his character compiling a list of “everything worth living for,” he rushes around the Hudson Theater, greeting and chatting up individual members of the audience. He’s recruiting volunteers for the show, but in a way so up-close and sociable that the thought occurred to me: Had he been the star of “Every Brilliant Thing” when I first saw a production of it Off-Broadway in 2014, several theatergoers each night might have fainted.

BEACH READS

Limelight

(Penguin Workshop, 344 pages)
A Young Adult novel written by Broadway veteran actor Andrew Keenan-Bolger about a student at LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts in the gritty New York City of 1996.

Musical Theatre Mondays

(Bold Stroke Books, 194 pages)
In Marie Incontrera’s queer romance, Soleil is confronted with two big decisions: How to develop her Off-Broadway musical, and whether to fall in love with Veronika, a seductive Wall Street executive, or Maya, a road-hardened truck driver.

Triple Threat: 
The Story of a 1920s Broadway Star 

(Sibylline Press, 352 pages)
A fictionalized biography of Elizabeth Hines, a real-life 1920s star and George M. Cohan’s leading lady. written by Leisha Douglas, Hines’s granddaughter,

Your purchase through some of the links above may generate a small commission, which helps support my work. Many of these books are (or will be) available to borrow at the New York Public Library and other local libraries.