Needham

Cambridge, Mass. — Tickets are on sale now for George V. Higgins’ The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Stickball Productions’ world premiere stage adaptation of the quintessential Boston crime novel. The production runs Dec. 8–Jan. 15 at Oberon in Harvard Square, for tickets, visit www.thefriendsofeddiecoyle.com

It is the winter of ‘69 in Boston and Eddie Coyle is a bottom of the barrel hood attempting to stay alive and out of jail among his “friends” – cops, bartenders, radical hippies, bank robbers, hit men and informants. Weeks away from a prison sentence for trucking stolen booze, Eddie’s making a few bucks supplying the guns for a rash of brazen bank heists, while looking to tip someone in for a kind word to the judge.

George V. Higgins’ classic novel has been called the “best crime novel ever written” by Elmore Leonard, and literary scholars have compared his unforgiving and realistic depiction of Boston’s underworld with the works of Dickens, Dostoevsky, and Balzac. Through dialogue quintessentially Bostonian, and the most poignant homage to Bobby Orr and the ’69-’70 Boston Bruins in literature, The Friends of Eddie Coyle has set the bar for Boston crime stories for nearly 40 years.

The MBTA reports a woman was so intent on trying to light her cigarette at the Needham Center station last night she didn't notice how close she was to the tracks - and the train that was entering the station.

The woman, 44, a worker at the Center Cafe next to the platform, was taken to Beth Israel Hospital with a non-life-threatening head injury and a broken collarbone following the incident around 8:50 p.m.

According to an MBTA Transit Police report, the woman:

[W]as walking on the platform attempting to light a cigarette. While focusing on the cigarette, [she] did not notice the incoming train and walked into the side of the train, knocking her to the ground.

MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo says the woman was not cited for smoking on the platform, since the reason she walked into the train was she wasn't able to get the cigarette lit.

A Mississippi woman charges Boston and Cambridge companies conspired with AOL to figure out how to track consumers online even if they turned all their cookies off and has, of course, sued them.

In a lawsuit filed yesterday in US District Court in Boston, Sandra Person Burns charges Brightcove of Cambridge and ScanScout of Boston figured out a way to use Flash on her computer to track her Web activity for year. She is seeking to become the lead plaintiff in a class-action suit against the two companies and AOL, which uses their platforms. The suit claims damages of more than $5 million.

To preview your primary ballot for tomorrow, click on the link from the Secretary of State's website:

then enter your address and select a political party. It will show you what choices you'll have on tomorrow's primary ballot.