A "truly wonderful" exploration of power dynamics between servant and employer is a "slender, beautiful novel with as much heart as a book twice its size." — San Francisco Chronicle"this is my book and i am writing it by my own hand."Mary and her three sisters rise every day to farmwork that threatens to suppress their own awakening desires, whether it's Violet's pull toward womanhood or Beatrice's affinity for the Scriptures. But it's their abusive ...

Frank lies in bed, his dying dreams haunted by memories of one long-ago summer, the sticky heat of night, and the stories his father told about Christ, the red-breasted robin, and kings Arthur and Alfred. But other images also rise to the surface, unbidden and unwanted, and Frank finds himself forced to recall his older sister, Iris, whose existence – and terrible crime – he has spent long years struggling to forget.

The Colour of Milk is the new novel by Orange longlisted author and playwright Nell Leyshon.'this is my book and i am writing it by my own hand'The year is eighteen hundred and thirty one when fifteen-year-old Mary begins the difficult task of telling her story. A scrap of a thing with a sharp tongue and hair the colour of milk, Mary leads a harsh life working on her father's farm alongside her three sisters. In the summer...

Winner Evening Standard Most Promising Playwright.Shortlisted for Susan Smith Blackburn Award.Autumn, and the orchard is full of cider apples: Beauty of Bath, Kingston Black and Glory of the West.Inside the farmhouse, the rule of the matriach Irene is challenged when her estranged daughter returns and her middle-aged son, beginning to tire of being tied to the unprofitable farm, grows restless.A richly evocative tale about life in our changing rural landscape...

'A reading experience that hums with an electric energy that never gets boring and feels shockingly, painfully real.' - The Times'There's different ways to do it: I can slowly move closer step by step, or I can do it in one movement and bump into them. Easiest is in a pub then I can put my drink too close to theirs. Move my stool near theirs. Anything to cross the line.'Gary is a dipper, a burglar, a thief. He is still at junior school when his fat...

Late August down on the Somerset levels: deep in the water and the silt, something is moving, unfurling... Suffused with the austere poetry of the West Country, Glass Eels tells the story of a girl's sexual awakening as she struggles to free herself from the shadows of her childhood and the stifling atmosphere of an all-male household. Glass Eels was produced by Hampstead Theatre and the Brewhouse Theatre (Somerset) and premiered in June 2007.

Nominated for an Olivier Award 2022"I'll tell you one more thing. I got more songs in my head than I ever told you. I got enough to sing for days..."1903, Somerset. Rooted in the land where she has lived her entire life, Louie Hooper's mind overflows with its songs – more than 300 of them passed down from her mother. Cecil Sharp, a composer visiting from London, fears England's folk songs will be lost forever and sets out on a mission to transcribe...

The VoiceA daughter’s vigil for her mother, and her lost childhood.F SharpMasako is married to Freya’s former boyfriend. The only other thing the two women have in common is the piano – though their experiences are worlds apart.

You think you have everything. A happy marriage. Children you love. A job you enjoy. A house you've made into a home. Then, almost in the blink of an eye, you lose it. All.When Rachel decides things aren't working and asks Andrew to move out, she thinks she knows what she's doing; she thinks she knows how it will be, how Andrew will react, how the children will cope. After all, relationships end all the time, and everyone survives -- don't they?But Rachel is wrong, and her ...

'Nothing I do has changed. I'm doing what's always been done on this piece of land.'The farm is running at a loss, but Vic is determined to keep working. He'll do everything he can, work day and night, but he won't admit that his small farm has no future.As the rural crisis deepens the three generations of his family look for ways to save the farm. But tensions between the old and new worlds threaten to tear the family apart.

Set in the notorious 18th Century lunatic asylum that gives the play its name, Bedlam is the story of how a cruel and unusual institution starts to crumble, after the arrival of an unassuming country girl.Nell Leyshon's new play is an anarchic tale of madness and sanity, authority and incarceration and the arbitrary lines that separate them.Full of violence, romance and reverie, Bedlam will make history this September when it becomes the first ever production by a f...

Following the death of their young daughter, John and Laura visit Venice to try and escape their grief. But when the couple meet two aged sisters, one of whom claims to have psychic visions of the dead girl, strange things start to happen.Filmed in 1973 with Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, Daphne du Maurier's classic thriller starts as a moving examination of grief but gradually becomes a chilling tale with a dark and terrifying climax.This adaptation of Don't Look No...