The Library’s acclaimed Crime Classic series is launching a new edition of “The Conjure-Man Dies” this month, a staple of the Harlem Renaissance and the most important work of long-overlooked novelist Rudolph Fisher. First published in 1932, the book was the first full-length mystery novel to feature an all-Black cast of characters, including detectives, suspects and victims.
"The Metropolitan Opera Murders," the latest entry in the Library's Crime Classics series, is a novel from a woman who knows the score. Helen Traubel, a longtime star soprano who performed at the Met for years, wrote the book in 1951, shortly before she left the opera to pursue a career in popular entertainment.
Lin-Manuel Miranda and his production team researched Jonathan Larson's papers at the Library for the new musical, "tick...tick...Boom!" Here's how they did it.
Mark Eden Horowitz, a senior music specialist in the Music Division, recounts his long friendship with Stephen Sondheim and how the maestro's papers will come to the Library.
Author and journalist Michelle Farrell researched her latest work at the Library -- the Bermuda experiences of W.W. Denslow, the original illustrator of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." Denslow bought a small island there in the early 1900s using royalties from his works.
Theater historian Jennifer Ashley Tepper writes about how she used the Library's collections to research the musicals of Johnathan Larson, author of "Rent" and others.
