Reading Into It- Broadway Books for 2024/25

A new Broadway season is here, full of exciting new shows and revivals of beloved classics. While many of them are original concepts or based on plays, some are based on books or the lives of famous people or real events, which you can add to your reading list today. If you are seeing any of the below productions in 2024/25, check out how you can study up beforehand or unpack afterwards!

See: Left on Tenth

Read: Left on Tenth by Delia Ephron

When Delia's beloved first husband Jerry died of cancer in 2015, after thirty-five years of marriage, she struggled without him. Focusing on the day-to-day, she decided to make one small move forward and cancel Jerry's dedicated landline. This spiralled into days of frustration, prompting Delia to turn to words to process her grief and bewilderment. Her New York Times piece about the woes of customer service caught the eye of Peter, who emailed to commiserate. He was recently widowed himself and reminded Delia that years ago, when they were college students, they had been set up by her sister Nora. Cautiously, Delia replied. Over a few short weeks of email exchanges, Delia realized that she and Peter were undeniably soulmates. Months later, still caught up in this whirlwind romance, Delia made another life-changing discovery: she was profoundly sick with cancer.

Left on Tenth is running on Broadway at the James Earl Jones Theatre.

See: Gypsy

Read: Gypsy: A Memoir by Gyspy Rose Lee

The memoir, which Gypsy began as a series of pieces for The New Yorker, contains photographs and newspaper clippings from her personal scrapbooks and an afterword by her son, Erik Lee Preminger. At turns touching and hilarious, Gypsy describes her childhood trouping across 1920s America through her rise to stardom as TheQueen of Burlesquein 1930s New York—where gin came in bathtubs, gangsters were celebrities, and Walter Winchell was king.

Gypsy will play on Broadway at the Majestic Theatre.

See: A Wonderful World

Read: Satchmo My Life In New Orleans by Louis Armstrong

"In all my whole career the Brick House was one of the toughest joints I ever played in. It was the honky-tonk where levee workers would congregate every Saturday night and trade with the gals who'd stroll up and down the floor and the bar. Those guys would drink and fight one another like circle saws. Bottles would come flying over the bandstand like crazy, and there was lots of just plain common shooting and cutting. But somehow all that jive didn't faze me at all, I was so happy to have some place to blow my horn." So says Louis Armstrong, a tough kid who just happened to be a musical genius, about one of the places where he performed and grew up. This raucous, rich tale of his early days in New Orleans concludes with his departure to Chicago at twenty-one to play with his boyhood idol King Oliver, and tells the story of a life that began, mythically, on July 4, 1900, in the city that sowed the seeds of jazz.

A Wonderful World will play on Broadway at Studio 54.

See: Tammy Faye

Read: Tammy: Telling It My Way by Tammy Faye Messner

Tammy tells of her difficult upbringing in Minnesota, where her mother's divorce brought unwarranted shame upon her family. She frankly discusses her early courtship at Bible school by "the fabulous Bakker boy," and the struggling couple's efforts to find work, make ends meet, and establish a ministry. And in never-before-reported detail, Tammy confides her painful bouts with depression, loneliness, and addiction that coincided with the couple's rise and demise on television.

Tammy Faye will play on Broadway at the Palace Theatre.

See: Operation Mincemeat

Read: The Man Who Never Was by Ewen Montague

As plans got under way for the Allied invasion of Sicily in June 1943, British counter-intelligence agent Ewen Montagu masterminded a scheme to mislead the Germans into thinking the next landing would occur in Greece. The innovative plot was so successful that the Germans moved some of their forces away from Sicily, and two weeks into the real invasion still expected an attack in Greece. This extraordinary operation called for a dead body, dressed as a Royal Marine officer and carrying false information about a pending Allied invasion of Greece, to wash up on a Spanish shore near the town of a known Nazi agent…

Operation Mincemeat will play on Broadway at the John Golden Theatre.

See: Floyd Collins

Read: Trapped!: The Story of Floyd Collins by Robert K. Murray

When Floyd Collins became trapped in a cave in southern Kentucky in early 1925, the sensationalism and hysteria of the rescue attempt generated America's first true media spectacle, making Collins's story one of the seminal events of the century. The crowds that gathered outside Sand Cave turned the rescue site into a carnival. Collins's situation was front-page news throughout the country, hourly bulletins interrupted radio programs, and Congress recessed to hear the latest word. Trapped! is both a tense adventure and a brilliant historical recreation of the past. This new edition includes a new epilogue revealing information about the Floyed Collins story that has come to light since the book was first published.

Floyd Collins will play on Broadway at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre.

See: Just In Time

Read: Roman Candle: The Life of Bobby Darin

A sensitive, startling portrait of the legendary singer-timed to hit stores just as the Kevin Spacey movie Beyond the Sea has kindled intense new interest in every aspect of Darin's life and tragically early death. By age 8 Bobby Darin knew he was doomed to die young. So he set out to become a showbiz legend by age 25. From his Grammy-winning smash hit "Mack the Knife" to his Oscar-nominated supporting role in Captain Newman, M.D., Darin left his mark on every aspect of show business that he touched. Now, 32 years after his death at age 37, we finally have an elegantly written, multilayered portrait of this brash, gifted artist.

Just In Time will play on Broadway at the Circle in the Square Theatre.

See: Midnight in the Graden of Good and Evil

Read: Midnight in the Graden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

Shots rang out in Savannah's grandest mansion in the misty,early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. John Berendt's sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative reads like a thoroughly engrossing novel, and yet it is a work of nonfiction. Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil will play on Broadway at a theatre TBD.

See: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Read: The Picture of Dorian Gray by John Oscar Wilde

Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray makes a Faustian bargain to sell his soul in exchange for eternal youth and beauty. Under the influence of Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, where he is able to indulge his desires while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only Dorian's picture bears the traces of his decadence.

The Picture of Dorian Gray will play on Broadway at a theatre TBD.

Need more Broadway reading material? Check out 32 books for your Fall 2024 reading list.