HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'Stars, hide your fires! Let not light see my black and deep desires.' One of Shakespeare's darkest and most violent tragedies, Macbeth's struggle between his own ambition and his loyalty to the King is dramatically compelling. As those he kills return to haunt him, Macbeth is plagued by the prophecy of three sinister witches and the power hungry desires of his wife.

What is home? The answer seems obvious. But Telling Our Stories of Home, an international collection of eleven plays by and about women from Lebanon, Haiti, Venezuela, Uganda, Palestine, Brazil, India, UK, and the US, complicates the answer. The "answer" includes stories as far-ranging as: enslaved women trying to create a home, one by any means necessary, and one in the ocean; siblings wrestling with their differing devotion to home after their mother's death; a family wrestling with the government's refusal to allow the burial of their soldier-son in their hometown; a young scholar attempting to feel at home after studying abroad; a young man fleeing home due to his sexual orientation only to discover the difficulty of creating home elsewhere, and Siddis (Indians of African descent) continuing to struggle for acceptance despite having lived in India for over 600 years. These are voices seldom represented to a larger audience. The plays and performance pieces range from 20 to 90-minute pieces and include a mix of monologue, duologue, and ensemble plays. Short yet powerful, they allow fantastic performance opportunities particularly in an age of social-distancing with flexible casts that together invite the theme of home to be performed and studied on the page. The plays include: The House by Arze Khodr (Lebanon), Happy by Kia Corthron (US), The Blue of the Island by Evelyne Trouillot (Haiti), Nine Lives by Zodwa Nyoni (UK), Leaving, but Can't Let Go by Lupe Gehrenbeck (Venezuela), Questions of Home by Doreen Baingana (Uganda), On the Last Day of Spring by Fidaa Zidan (Palestine) Letting Go and Moving On by Louella Dizon San Juan (US), Antimemories of an Interrupted Trip by Aldri Anunciacao (Brazil), So Goes We by Jacqueline E. Lawton (US), and Those Who Live Here, Those Who Live There by Geeta P. Siddi and Girija P. Siddi (India)

Sex isn't just about how big and how long. What is it about then? All sorts of things. Joy is struggling to remain interested in sex. Her husband thinks of little else. And their teenage son is ready to burst. Nick Payne's frank and compassionate play explores sex and intimacy - and asks whether the two are inevitably and inextricably linked.

Irascible author Algy Waterbridge is hard at work on his thirty-third crime novel. While Algy's wife is getting more forgetful, and his PA frequently oversteps the mark, the constant interruptions come to a head with an unfortunate newspaper interview. As Algy's fictional characters take over, the lines between fiction and reality become blurred. A comedy of confusion about a grumpy old man who might not be so grumpy after all.

"Well we've got three floors right. Plenty of room... Room for a children's bedroom. Room for two." London, the present day. A woman is driven to the unthinkable by her desperate desire to have a child. Written and directed by Simon Stone, this radical new version of Lorca's tragedy of yearning and loss won universal critical acclaim when it premiered at the Young Vic in July 2016. Yerma triumphed at the 2017 Olivier Awards, with the production winning Best Revival, and Piper winning Best Actress. She also won the Evening Standard Natasha Richardson Award for Best Actress. Maureen Beattie, Brendan Cowell, John MacMillan and Charlotte Randle received unanimous praise for their performances.

"So there's a theory that we all have a fi nite number of heartbeats. We all have a billion heartbeats to live. Humans, cats, dogs, rats - all our hearts beat at different speeds but we all have the same amount. A clock with a billion ticks." Inspired by the incredible true story of the last greater mouse-eared bat living in Britain, Vespertilio explores the tender romance between introverted bat-enthusiast Alan and Josh, the charming young runaway he meets in an abandoned railway tunnel. As their relationship develops, these two damaged men might fix one another. If only a little. Vespertilio is a story of love, loneliness and bats, an exploration of the difference between merely surviving and truly living.

Elspeth and Arthur are celebrating forty years of quiet, safe, unspectacular, ordinary marriage. Or so most of the guests attending their anniversary party are led to believe. But knowing her and knowing him as they do, their son and daughter know differently.

Clayton James, a 17-year-old Nottingham lad, dreams of becoming the next Viv Anderson. With a prodigious talent, the offer of a professional contract at a First Division club and a growing romance with girlfriend Serena, he appears to have the world at his feet. But life at the beginning of the 1980s isn't easy for Clayton and his family, trying to make it in an era of racism and hooliganism. And Clayton's steelworker dad Patterson faces an uncertain future as the Thatcher government faces off against the unions. When his charismatic and powerful former coach, Lafferty, returns after four years away, Clayton is forced to confront painful memories of the past. Can he protect his loved ones from the truth of what he endured? A world premiere, inspired by the recent football abuse scandals, First Touch is a gripping and heartfelt drama about what it takes to fulfil your dreams, by screenwriter Nathaniel Price (BBC's Noughts and Crosses and Sky's Tin Star).

Melissa wants to get on with her life but never knows when her father is going to turn up next. Over thirty years she struggles to overcome her past while her family, torn apart by alcohol, try to repair the damage. Nick Payne's play about history and hope is a poignant, unflinching reflection on the ties that bind us.

Contemporary Queer Plays by Russian Playwrights is the first anthology of LGBTQ-themed plays written by Russian queer authors and straight allies in the 21st century. The book features plays by established and emergent playwrights of the Russian drama scene, including Roman Kozyrchikov, Andrey Rodionov and Ekaterina Troepolskaya, Valery Pecheykin, Natalya Milanteva, Olzhas Zhanaydarov, Vladimir Zaytsev, and Elizaveta Letter. Writing for children, teenagers, and adults, these authors explore gay, lesbian, trans, and other queer lives in prose and in verse. From a confession-style solo play to poetic satire on contemporary Russia; from a play for children to love dramas that have been staged for adult-only audiences in Moscow and other cities, this important anthology features work that was written around or after 2013-the year when the law on the prohibition of "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors" was passed by the Russian government. These plays are universal stories of humanity that spread a message of tolerance, acceptance, and love and make clear that a queer scenario does not necessarily have to end in a tragedy just because it was imagined and set in Russia. They show that breathing, growing old, falling in love, falling out of love, and falling in love again can be just as challenging and rewarding in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia as it can be in New York, Tokyo, Johannesburg, or Buenos Aires.

I am scared, that once this war is over, and I am sent home, that you won't be here. That you will have left. Leonard and Violet, young, restless and in love, spend their first night together knowing it may also be their last. It's 1942 and, in a hotel room in Bath, they dream of their future while preparing for Leonard's departure to the war. But the bombs begin to fall and their world will never be the same again. In the year 2002, the couple look back at what might have been. Examining the impact of the Second World War on two ordinary lives and a love that spans more than sixty years.