~I once picked up a mystery novel solely based on the fact that it happened in a theater that may have been haunted. I was between productions and wanted a small taste of the world I wasn't experiencing on a nightly basis. The main characters were not part of the acting company, so they had to have people and positions often explained to them. I remember laughing out loud as some of the job descriptions sounded like they were pulled out of a high school level book of “so you want to work in theater” and then these people promptly acted in ways that were convenient for the novel, but didn't suit who they should be if they really were that role, that position. It was then I decided to avoid the entire theory of theater in books.
Reading romance made it very hard to avoid that idea. Desolate dukes patronize opera singers. The theater is the place to be seen and to trade the latest gossip. Theater, and all the cast of characters involved, started creeping back into my reading. Most of the incidentals were never developed enough for me to object, and before I knew it I was picking up novels with deeper theater roots. Some were more well done than others, but three stick out. These three had a very different approach to my profession playing out in between princes and dukes dodging death or magistrates tackling the seedy underworld.
The Dressmakers series is the most recent series offering from veteran author 
Within the first few pages of 
Every summer my parents would pack up the family to set off on a family vacation. Each of these trips were preceded by several magical hours spent in the local Waldenbooks acquiring paperbacks to keep us quiet and entertained for the hours of interstate we’d have to endure. My mother would head for the suspense; my father would get lost wandering through the entire store while I was inevitably drawn to the back right hand corner where the science fiction/fantasy took up twelve feet of realms to explore.
