Book picks similar to
The Witness by Vivienne Franzmann


africa
drama
plays-i-ve-seen
play-dramatisation

The Fall and Rise of Lucy Charlton


Elizabeth Gill - 2013
    Since she was a child, Lucy Charlton has dreamed of working with her father in the family solicitor's firm. But a scandal shatters her dreams and, when her father disowns her, she finds herself on the streets, fighting for survival.Joe Hardy has returned to London after the Great War to find his life in tatters - his father is dead and his pregnant fiancée has disappeared. Then Joe learns he's unexpectedly inherited an old river house in Durham from a stranger called Margaret Lee. With nothing left for him in London, he makes arrangements to travel north and claim it.Lucy's determination has finally secured her a job as a legal secretary, campaigning for the rights of the poorest in society. As Joe arrives in her office to collect the keys to his new home, she promises to help him uncover information about his mystery benefactor. But before long, the past comes back to haunt them both, with shocking consequences...

A Day in the Death of Joe Egg


Peter Nichols - 1967
    It's in the collisions between pious and rogue thoughts that the play's energy lies. We don't know what to feel. Which is why, once seen, Joe Egg won't go away.'Robert Butler, Independent on Sunday (1993)

Sinful


Victor McGlothin - 2007
    . . Everybody's got a weakness and Chandelle Hutchins' is a love of material possessions--a love that is causing serious trouble in her marriage. Chandelle's latest object of desire is an expensive new house. Her husband Marvin knows they can't afford it--and he also knows he can't talk Chandelle into giving it up. With their relationship crumbling under a mountain of debt, it may just be easier for Marvin to walk away. But with Chandelle's scheming cousin Dior in town, money may be the least of the couple's problems. . .Dior's weakness is her insatiable appetite for causing trouble--and her latest target is her cousin's marriage. When the time is right, Dior would like nothing more than to seduce Marvin on the rebound. But Dior is being trailed by her own troublemaker: a crazed female employer who refuses to release Dior from her twisted duties as nanny to her children and late night mistress to her kinky husband. Fortunately for everyone involved, the Lord works in mysterious ways. For despite a tangle of lies, manipulation, and mayhem, a series of unexpected events is about to bless everyone with a much needed second chance. . .

To Heaven by Water


Justin Cartwright - 2009
    When Nancy was alive, he had secrets that he kept from her. Now he has a secret that he must keep from his children, Ed and Lucy, namely that he is in some ways happier now than he was when their mother was alive. To Heaven by Water is a touching and hilarious portrait of the Cross family, trying in their own fashion to come to terms with their loss. David knows that his children are perplexed by his increasingly compulsive behaviour while Ed's marriage to the lovely Rosalie, a former ballet dancer, is suffering strain, and Lucy is being stalked by her ex-boyfriend. Both children worry that their father will soon find a new partner. Over all three of them hangs the memory of Nancy. The book opens as David is taking time out with his brother in the Kalahari Desert, re-living his tumultuous and uplifting memories of Rome where he worked on a film with Richard Burton. Back home in London, Ed is trying to balance his affair with a young woman in his office with his real love for his wife, who is unable to conceive the child she longs for. And Lucy, who has just been voted No. 6 in the Evening News section devoted to beautiful and brainy women, is a young woman in pursuit of her real self. To Heaven by Water is a wonderful story of friendship, forgiveness and of love that comes from unexpected directions; it is an exploration of what we might hope for from this life and. in particular. the possibility of transcendence. Into the beautifully observed and subtly composed texture of this tale of middle-class London life, Justin Cartwright weaves sudden shocks that tear it apart, moments of sex and revenge that appear from a cloudless sky to take the reader's breath away.

Photograph 51


Anna Ziegler - 2011
    Her more famous contemporaries Watson and Krick took all the kudos for the discovery of the molecule's double helix structure yet it was Franklin's skill with X-ray diffraction that first uncovered what's called "the secret of life." Includes an interview with Brenda Maddox, the world's foremost biographer of Rosalind Franklin and author of "Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA."Also includes and interview with Dr Pamela Bj rkman, the Max Delbruck Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology, and an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring:Miriam Margolyes as RosalindMatthew Arkin as CasparMaxwell Caulfield as WilkinsJon Matthews as WatsonDarren Richardson as GoslingNick Toren as CrickDirected by Michael Hackett. Recorded at the Invisible Studios, West Hollywood.

Night Music


Jojo Moyes - 2008
    When its reclusive owner dies intestate the Spanish House is left to his city-dwelling niece. For the recently-widowed Isabel, the house is a potential lifeline. For her neighbour Matt McCarthy, the house is revenge.

Erased


Jim Krusoe - 2009
    But when another card arrives he can no longer put off the urgent meeting, and so Theodore treks to Cleveland to track his mother down. In this strange, thoughtful novel by Jim Krusoe, Theodore travels through the worlds of Uleene, a member of the all-girl biker club Satan’s Samaritans; art; rodent extermination; and sport fishing, all the while realizing that the line between life and death is remarkably fluid.

The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes


Ruth Hogan - 2018
    Once a spirited, independent woman with a rebellious streak, her life has been forever changed by a tragic event twelve years ago. Unable to let go of her grief, she finds solace in the silent company of the souls of her local Victorian cemetery and at the town's lido, where she seeks refuge underwater - safe from the noise and the pain. But a chance encounter with two extraordinary women - the fabulous and wise Kitty Muriel, a convent girl-turned-magician's wife-turned-seventy-something-roller-disco-fanatic, and the mysterious Sally Red Shoes, a bag lady with a prodigious voice - opens up a new world of possibilities, and the chance to start living again.Until the fateful day when the past comes roaring back...

Complete Works: Volume 1


Harold Pinter - 1976
    This, the first of four volumes, contains his first five plays, including The Birthday Party (1958), his first full-length drama; as well as two short stories—The Black and White and The Examination—both written before Pinter turned to the theatre. Pinter's exacting and complex use of language and the features that mark his "comedies of menace" are clearly realized in these plays and stories. His speech Writing for the Theatre introduces the volume and establishes the context for these early years.

The Incendiary's Trail


James McCreet - 2009
    Detective Inspector Newsome of the new Detective Force decides to recruit a recently-apprehended master criminal to help bring the culprits to justice. A polymath with a mysterious past, the man is no eager volunteer.And when the ghastly murder of conjoined twins galvanizes the city, Newsome blackmails his prisoner - Noah Dyson, as he calls himself - into working with the Force's finest: Sergeant George Williamson.Unknown to the policemen, the criminal genius behind the murder shares a dark past with their new associate. It is not justice that is on Dyson's mind, but retribution. As Williamson and Dyson together close the net, the murder-rate soars and the streets of London begin to burn. Ingeniously plotted and seething with grotesque characters, James McCreet's striking debut will grip readers from its first dark pages.

Everything in the Garden


Edward Albee - 1968
    Albee there is a theme beneath the surface, in this case the corruption of money and the rottenness of this bigoted exurbia where conformity to its illiberal standards and its hypocritical show of respectability is all that counts. The scene is the suburban home of Jenny and Richard, beautifully played by Barbara Bel Geddes and Barry Nelson. The only thing that seems to stand in the way of their happiness is a lack of money. The action starts in an entertaining comedy of manners style. Then abruptly there enters a Mrs. Toothe in the menacing and fascinating person of Beatrice Straight who offers Jenny the opportunity to make more money than they have ever had, to buy a greenhouse and all the other luxuries that they require for their garden and their lives. Richard's realization that their newfound money is being earned by his wife's whoring comes almost simultaneously with the return of their fourteen-year-old son from school and a champagne cocktail party which they are giving to impress their country club friends. As a result, his horror, disgust and rage has to be kept under wraps in order to keep up essential appearances until tragedy strikes, and Richard realizes that the assembled wives are all involved and their husbands are aware and condoning." More than that, they are prepared not merely to justify but defend the ends through which their means are attained and the devastated Richard, left in agonized despair by the ironic events that charge the final moments of the play, must face the fact of his own share in their communal guilt.

Queen Bee


Jane Fallon - 2020
    . .It is here that Laura, seeking peace and privacy after her marriage falls apart, rents a tiny studio. Unfortunately, her arrival upsets suspicious Stella - who fears Laura has designs on her fiancé, Al.When Laura stumbles on the big secret Al is hiding, suddenly Stella's perfectly controlled world, not to mention Laura's future, are threatened.Taking a chance on beating Al at his own twisted game, these two former strangers are fast becoming best friends.But has Laura forgotten that revenge never comes without a sting in the tail?

The Good House


Ann Leary - 2013
    But Hildy isn't one for self-pity and instead meets the world with a wry smile, a dark wit and a glass or two of Pinot Noir. When her two earnest grown-up children stage 'an intervention' and pack Hildy off to an addiction centre, she thinks all this fuss is ridiculous. After all, why shouldn't Hildy enjoy a drink now and then?But as the story progresses, we start to see another side to Hildy Good, and to her life's greatest passion - the lies and self deceptions needed to support her drinking, and the damage she causes to those she loves. When a cluster of secrets become dangerously entwined, the reckless behaviour of one threatens to expose the other, with devastating consequences.

The Sherlock Holmes Theatre


Arthur Conan Doyle - 2005
    This specially commissioned production by the Hollywood Theater of the Ear is a unique, must-have audio for all Sherlockians.In Sherlock Holmes, Professor Moriarity, the Napoleon of crime, plots with would-be blackmailers to have Holmes killed. And the normally love-proof Holmes falls for an exceptional woman.What is the secret of the shocking death of poor Enid’s sister, whose dying words were, "the speckled band”? Only Holmes can find the answer and save a helpless girl from certain death in The Speckled Band.When Holmes retired, it created a financial crisis for his friend Watson, who owes money to mobsters who want either their cash or his blood. The surprising upshot is: Ghastly Double Murder in Famed Detective’s Flat, a one-act comedy by producer-director Yuri Rasovsky, here receiving its audiobook premiere.

Some Day


Shemi Zarhin - 2011
    The air is saturated with smells of cooking and passion. Seven-year-old Shlomi, who develops a remarkable culinary talent, has fallen for Ella, the strange girl next door with suicidal tendencies; his little brother Hilik obsessively collects words in a notebook.In the wild, selfish but magical grown-up world that swirls around them, a mother with a poet’s soul mourns the deaths of literary giants while her handsome, wayward husband cheats on her both at home and abroad.Some Day is a gripping family saga, a sensual and emotional feast that plays out over decades. The characters find themselves caught in cycles of repetition, as if they were “rhymes in a poem, cursed with history.” They become victims of inspired recipes that bring joy and calamity to the cooks and diners. Mysterious curses cause people’s hair to fall out, their necks to swell and the elimination of rational thought amid capitulation to unhealthy urges.This is an enchanting tale about tragic fates that disrupt families and break our hearts. Zarhin’s hypnotic writing renders a painfully delicious vision of individual lives behind Israel’s larger national story.