Trilogy

The steamy book is called "Fifty Shades of Grey," and many people have never heard of it. But for those who have - boy, do they want to spread the word. "I told my mahjong group, ‘Oh my god, you have to read it,' " said Janice Abarbanel, 57, an art-jewelry maker from Sharon. The married mother of two stayed up so late reading "Fifty Shades of Grey" and "Fifty Shades Darker," the second book in the erotic trilogy, that she vowed to take a week off to get some rest.

The heat is on: Sales for E.L. James' "Fifty Shades" trilogy are at 10 million and counting, making it among the fastest-selling series of all time. The explicit sensation has topped charts practically from the moment Vintage Books released it in early April. Reprints have exceeded 900,000 copies in a single day, the publisher announced Tuesday. Totals sales include paperbacks, e-books and audio books. Vintage is a paperback imprint of Random House Inc. The "Fifty Shades" books began as fan fiction, inspired by the "Twilight" series, and were a word-of-mouth hit after first being...

Some crimes seem too enormous for one tale to tell - they demand the slow, horrible disclosure of weekly tabloid installments or a television miniseries. Or a single extended endurance test. The three “Red Riding’’ films, themselves winnowed down for British TV down from four interrelated crime novels by David Peace, unspool one after the other at the Kendall starting this week. That’s 300 minutes of tawdry secrets vomited into the cold Yorkshire air, covering a decade of fictional mayhem, murder, and almost Shakespearean corruption.

The third and final volume of the late William Manchester's beloved series on Winston Churchill is coming out this fall, nearly 25 years since the previous book. In November, Little, Brown and Company will publish "The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965. " The new work was started by Manchester and completed by Paul Reid, a former writer for Cox Newspapers. Manchester, who began the Churchill series in the 1980s, was in poor health during his latter years and asked Reid to take over the project.

When he was nearly 70, the great Greek director Theo Angelopoulos made the bold decision to embark on a trilogy. This is newsworthy because he's also the least hasty of filmmakers: Most of his films -- 1995's bewitching "Ulysses' Gaze," with Harvey Keitel as an Angelopoulos stand-in, is the best known in America -- can last two and a half hours. And they come sporadically. His previous picture, "Eternity and a Day," was eight years ago, so he could be 85 before his trilogy is finished.

E.L. James' "Fifty Shades of Grey" trilogy, a word-of-mouth romance smash so erotic it's sometimes labeled "mommy porn," has been signed up by a paperback division of Random House Inc. Vintage Books announced Saturday that it had acquired the three books — "Fifty Shades of Grey," "Fifty Shades Darker" and "Fifty Shades Freed. " E-book editions will be out Monday and paperbacks are expected in early April. The novels had been distributed by an Australia-based publisher, the Writer's Coffee Shop Publishing House.

THE BROTHERS SIZE and MARCUS; OR THE SECRET OF SWEET Plays by: Tarell Alvin McCraney Directed by Summer L. Williams Sets, Erik Diaz. Lights, David Roy. Costumes, Sarah Nelson. Sound, Aaron Mack. Presented by Company One. At: Plaza Theater, Boston Center for the Arts, Boston. Through Dec. 3. Tickets $33-$38, 617-933-8600, www.companyone.org A twofold challenge confronts any cast tackling "The Brother/Sister Plays," the trilogy by the gifted young playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, now playing at Company One. On the one hand, the actors have to ground their...

Deepa Mehta began her "elemental trilogy" with 1996's "Fire," followed by "Earth" in 1998. The final film, "Water," is just now opening here -- not because Mehta ever hesitated in her quest to portray the oppression of women in India, but because that quest so enraged Hindu fundamentalists that they shut down the production. The Toronto-based writer and director persevered, ultimately filming in Sri Lanka. The resulting story of outcast widows, though burdened by outbursts of melodrama in both its script and its score, nevertheless makes exactly the kind of...

The heat is on: Sales for E.L. James' "Fifty Shades" trilogy are at 10 million and counting, making it among the fastest-selling series of all time. The explicit sensation has topped charts practically from the moment Vintage Books released it in early April. Reprints have exceeded 900,000 copies in a single day, the publisher announced Tuesday. Totals sales include paperbacks, e-books and audio books. Vintage is a paperback imprint of Random House Inc. The "Fifty Shades" books began as fan fiction, inspired by the "Twilight" series, and were a...

In Jonathan Rabb’s popular “Berlin trilogy,’’ Inspector Nikolai Hoffner spends a lot of time nodding at people as if he understands what they’re talking about, even when he doesn’t. (“Hoffner knew almost nothing. He was having trouble enough keeping up . . .’’; “Hoffner . . . hadn’t the slightest idea what any of it meant’’; “Hoffner nodded, not understanding what the boy meant, and not caring.’’) Well, neither did I. Too much of this trilogy, and this installment in particular, is a frustrating tangle of hypothetical and factual history, family drama,...

The steamy book is called "Fifty Shades of Grey," and many people have never heard of it. But for those who have - boy, do they want to spread the word. "I told my mahjong group, ‘Oh my god, you have to read it,' " said Janice Abarbanel, 57, an art-jewelry maker from Sharon. The married mother of two stayed up so late reading "Fifty Shades of Grey" and "Fifty Shades Darker," the second book in the erotic trilogy, that she vowed to take a week off to get some rest.

Award-winning cult animator Don Hertzfeldt will be at Coolidge Corner Theatre April 2 to premiere his newest animated short film, "It's such a Beautiful Day," the third installment of a trilogy of films about Bill, a stick-figure character, as he navigates daily life. The Coolidge will show the entire trilogy, along with a few additional shorts by Hertzfeldt, followed by a question-and-answer session moderated by Adam Savje from MassArt's animation department. Tickets are on sale now, $12, $9 for Coolidge members, at the box office, 290 Harvard St., or online at www.coolidge.org.

E.L. James' "Fifty Shades of Grey" trilogy, a word-of-mouth romance smash so erotic it's sometimes labeled "mommy porn," has been signed up by a paperback division of Random House Inc. Vintage Books announced Saturday that it had acquired the three books — "Fifty Shades of Grey," "Fifty Shades Darker" and "Fifty Shades Freed. " E-book editions will be out Monday and paperbacks are expected in early April. The novels had been distributed by an Australia-based publisher, the Writer's Coffee Shop Publishing House.

NEW YORK - John Christopher, a prolific British science fiction writer whose "Tripods" trilogy became a perennial favorite among young American readers and inspired a popular BBC television series on PBS in the 1980s, died Friday in Bath, England. He was 89. The cause was complications of bladder cancer, said his daughter, Rose Youd. Mr. Christopher's best known work includes two other trilogies for young adults, "The Sword of the Spirits" and "The Fireball," and 13 novels for adults.

THE BROTHERS SIZE and MARCUS; OR THE SECRET OF SWEET Plays by: Tarell Alvin McCraney Directed by Summer L. Williams Sets, Erik Diaz. Lights, David Roy. Costumes, Sarah Nelson. Sound, Aaron Mack. Presented by Company One. At: Plaza Theater, Boston Center for the Arts, Boston. Through Dec. 3. Tickets $33-$38, 617-933-8600, www.companyone.org A twofold challenge confronts any cast tackling "The Brother/Sister Plays," the trilogy by the gifted young playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, now playing at Company One. On the one hand, the actors have to...

THE BROTHER/SISTER PLAYS Presented by Company One At: Plaza Theatre, Boston Center for the Arts, through Dec. 3. Tickets: $33-$38, seniors $30, students $15. 617-933-8600, www.companyone.org NEW YORK - As a shy, creative kid growing up in the 1980s and '90s in a rough-and-tumble Miami housing project, Tarell Alvin McCraney learned to recognize and appreciate the duality of human behavior. Whether it was watching his mother's struggle with crack addiction and caring for her kids, or being taught to ride a bike by the local drug dealers, McCraney's eye-opening early...

So we’ve waited the better part of a year to discover whether it’s curtains for Lisbeth Salander. OK, some of us have waited. Some of us have turned for our final Stieg Larsson fix to Europe, where “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest’’ has been a blockbuster bestseller for 36 months. The more patient among us have been permitted to speculate, until the book’s tardy US release last week, about the bullet in Salander’s head, the men who buried her alive, and how on earth she’ll live to see another day. The shame is that it turns out we’ve waited to discover that she’s in...

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT Presented by Chester Theatre Company At: Chester Town Hall, 15 Middlefield Road, Chester, through July 31. Tickets: $28-$33. 800-595-4849, www.chestertheatre.org. When your theater company performs in a 144-seat town hall auditorium on a rural road in the Berkshires, you have to work extra hard to get the word out. Last summer the Chester Theatre Company took a risk to raise its profile by devoting three of its four productions to Arlene Hutton's "Nibroc Trilogy.