Other books that might interest you

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  The Dance of Death

  August Strindberg

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  The Dance of Death is a play in two parts by the Swedish dramatist August Strindberg, written in 1900. It depicts the dissolution of a marriage between Edgar, an artillery captain, and Alice, a former actress. Increasingly isolated in their fort-like house, they manipulate and bait each other, until the unexpected arrival of Curt, Alice's cousin. His presence creates a tense triangular relationship that escalates throughout Part One, and is complicated with the introduction of two of the trio's children, Allan and Judith, in Part Two. (Summary by Elizabeth Klett) 
  CastEdgar: Bob NeufeldAlice: Elizabeth KlettCurt: Bruce PirieJenny: AvailleOld Woman: Bev J. StevensAllan: mbJudith: Arielle LipshawLieutenant: VictoriaNarrator: Sean DaleyAudio edited by Elizabeth Klett

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  Venus & Adonis

  William Shakespeare

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  These two great poems date from Shakespeare’s early years and are full of passion and invention. In Venus and Adonis, the goddess of love pleads with the beautiful boy to submit to her advances and become her love – but he only wants to hunt boar. In the more serious Rape of Lucrece, Shakespeare draws on the Roman take of the Emperor Tarquin’s desire for Lucrece and its tragic consequencies. These poems give prominent parts to the two heroines, and Clare Corbett and Eve Best shine.

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  Bird Sisters

  Julia Webb

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  'Bird Sisters exerts a powerful hold, as if to read it is to be haunted by things one half-remembers.' – Moniza Alvi
  'All is strange or estranged in fact, but it is articulated in poems of supple inventive concentration. In that sense Bird Sisters is a book that casts deep shadows.' – George Szirtes
  Julia Webb's Bird Sistersis a surreal journey through sisterhood and the world of the family via the natural world. Fascinated by the 'otherness' of things, her poems expose places and relationships that are not always entirely comfortable places to exist. Many of them feature transformations of some kind – both real and metaphorical: a woman wears a dress of live bees or becomes a bird and family members turn into owls and sparrows.
  In exploring the ways in which both adults and children are casually cruel to one another, often within a mythological framework, Julia Webb blurs the boundaries between fairy tale and reality. These families are terrifying in their complexity and dysfunction, yet utterly compelling and convincing and with dark undercurrents of humour that ensure the poems are never bleak.

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  Fast (NHB Modern Plays)

  Fin Kennedy

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  A twenty-four-hour school fundraiser in a semi-rural town takes on a new urgency when farmer's daughter Cara refuses to eat again until the supermarkets she holds responsible for her father's suicide agree to her demands.
  Fast is an ensemble play for teenage performers created by award-winning playwright Fin Kennedy.

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  Short Story Press Presents...

  Short Story Press, James England

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  In the summer of 777 AD, Charlemagne rode out to conquer the Saracens and reclaim Hispania for the Holy Roman Empire. While immortalized in the words of medieval poets, scholars, and historians, the story never told is the one of what happens when all the men leave and the village is left to run itself. This is a story of Lady Matilda, the wife of Lord Harold, one of Charlemagne’s many lieutenants. After Lord Harold departed, nearly two years ago, Matilda, her maiden Marta, and her steward Otto, had been left to maintain the affairs of their small hamlet of Doblesmark. 
  With resources stretched thin from the long war, rumors of plague and highwaymen besetting them, Matilda must boldly find a way to meet the needs of her people, the pressing urgency of the papacy, and most of all her own sanity. Accompanied by her maiden, Marta, she must deftly navigate the intricacies of managing the affairs of the folk of Doblesmark while ensuring their own survival. When will Lord Harold return? Will Bandits beset the village in its sleep? And what of this strange pagan festival that will begin the rites of summer? And what will ever befall them in this ever perilous Summer of Saracens? 
  Short Story Press publishes short stories by everyday writers.

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  The Lightest Element (NHB Modern...

  Stella Feehily

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  'Nothing compares with being the first person in the history of the world to see something, but timing is everything. The world has to be ready for you.'
  Boston, 1956. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, one of the most eminent astronomers of the twentieth century, is about to be appointed Chair of Astronomy and the first woman to head a department at Harvard University. Only two things stand in her way: a covert investigation aimed at exposing her as a Communist sympathiser, and the entrenched conservatism of her male colleagues.
  When a student journalist asks to profile her, it feels like an opportunity to control her own narrative – assuming, of course, that the invitation is actually what it seems…
  Stella Feehily's play The Lightest Element is a taut drama exploring how a challenge to social norms can be almost as difficult as overturning scientific orthodoxy. It premiered at Hampstead Theatre, London, in 2024, directed by Alice Hamilton.

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