A plane crashes on an uninhabited island and the only survivors, a group of schoolboys, assemble on the beach and wait to be rescued. By day they inhabit a land of bright fantastic birds and dark blue seas, but at night their dreams are haunted by the image of a terrifying beast.

In this, his first novel, William Golding gave the traditional adventure story an ironic, devastating twist. The boys' delicate sense of order fades, and their childish fears are transformed into something deeper and more primitive. Their games take on a horrible significance, and before long the well-behaved party of schoolboys has turned into a tribe of faceless, murderous savages.

First published in 1954, Lord of the Flies is now recognized as a classic, one of the most celebrated of all modern novels.

Ti-Jean and his Brothers was Derek Walcott's first venture into musical plays and is still his most popular work. A lilting St Lucian folk-tale, it tells the story of a poor family who dwell on the edge of a magical forest haunted by the devil's spirits. The brilliance of Walcott's writing draws us into the realms of fantasy where the actual and the miraculous collide. Dennis Scott's An Echo in the Bone is set during a traditional Nine-Night Ceremony held to honour the spirit of the dead. Shattering sequential time in a series of dreamlike episodes the play takes us back to the time of plantations and slavery - and the savage murder of the white estate owner. Who killed Mr. Charles? The answers lie deep in the racial memory, they 'echo in the bone'. The giddy atmosphere of carnival is the setting for Errol Hill's Man Better Man, a rumbustious, colourful comedy musical about stickfighters. With dance and song the battling troubadours and the calypsonian weave a tale of braver, superstition and fraudulence. When first performed the Times described it as 'a blazing electrifying feast of rhythm and colour'.

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte, was published in 1847. It tells the story of the orphan Jane Eyre, her terrible schooling and her time as a governess at brooding Thornfield Hall. Here she falls in love with its owner, Mr Rochester - and discovers his terrible secret. Essential Classics is a wonderful new series that offers a quick way into a range of exciting stories. Fast-moving and accessible, each story is a shortened, dramatically illustrated version of the classic novel, which loses none of the strength and flavour of the original.

The master-storyteller turns his pen to rural village life with Ways of Sunlight in Trinidad: gossip and rivalry between village washerwomen; toiling cane-cutters reaping their harvest; superstitious old Ma Procop protecting the fruit of her Mango tree with magic. With equal wit and sensitivity, he reflects the depression of hard times in London, where people live in cold, damp basements, hustling for survival.

Andy Russell tries--he really does. But his teacher, Ms. Roman, can be so boring. He daydreams in class and forgets about tests, and finally Ms. Roman has had enough. Andy always knew she had it in for him But when Ms. Roman is out sick, Andy's class gets a fishy substitute teacher and things turn from bad to worse. Guess who is sent to the principal's office when someone starts playing tricks on the sub

From the moment she sees Noelle, the beautiful ballerina doll in the toy store window, Ilyana knows that Noelle is the Christmas present she wants more than anything in the world. But Noelle has a dream of her own: to be a real ballerina, performing on stage for adoring fans. When the Imperial Ballet Company chooses Noelle to be the doll that Clara, the little girl in The Nutcracker, finds under the Christmas tree, it seems that Noelle’s dream is the one that will come true. Then, an unexpected setback makes Noelle realize that maybe, for a doll, being loved by one little girl is the best dream of all.

Finally, Angel’s family life is nearly perfect: one mother (who is able to spend more time at home), one new father (who turned out all right despite being a TV clown), and one little brother (even though he gets an embarrassing case of head lice). All’s fine, that is, until Angel’s mother returns home from a doctor’s appointment with some shocking news: a baby! For beloved worrywart Angel, things will never stay the same.

Mama's away one night, and her son can't sleep. He tries to relax by counting stars, but the more of them he sees, the more determined he is to count every single one. Then the boy finds that Daddy can't sleep either. Together, the two of them set off on an unforgettable all-night journey of discovery.

"The novel successfully challenges stereotypical notions of bothstrong, matriarchal black mothers and of poor, abused powerless black women... a valuable contribution to Caribbean and postcolonial literature."
- Choice

A beautifully written and paced story, sure to capture the imagination of both teenagers and adult readers.

Set in Toronto, two girls, Margaret -- a second generation West Indian immigrant -- and Sulma -- fresh up from a joyous life with her grandmother in Tobago to a tense and unhappy relationship with her mother and stepfather -- become friends and comrades in various adventures.

Have you seen the New Windmills Language File ? It provides imaginative photocopiable activities to help you teach writing, grammar and punctuation using A Christmas Carol and other popular New Windmills.

The official playscript of the original West End production of Harry Potter And The Cursed Child.

It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn't much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband, and father of three school-age children. While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.

The playscript for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was originally released as a 'special rehearsal edition' alongside the opening of Jack Thorne's play in London's West End in summer 2016. Based on an original story by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany and Jack Thorne, the play opened to rapturous reviews from theatregoers and critics alike, while the official playscript became an immediate global bestseller.

This revised paperback edition updates the 'special rehearsal edition' with the conclusive and final dialogue from the play, which has subtly changed since its rehearsals, as well as a conversation piece between director John Tiffany and writer Jack Thorne, who share stories and insights about reading playscripts. This edition also includes useful background information including the Potter family tree and a timeline of events from the Wizarding World prior to the beginning of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

(Please note: This is written in a screenplay format and not a novelized format.)

A profound version of the theme of self discovery, this novel explores the thoughts and experiences of a Ghanaian girl on her travels in Europe.

One of a series of fiction titles for schools. Scout, the keen-eyed narrator, and her brother Jem interrupt their games to champion their lawyer father when, in a hostile, racist town in the American South, he battles to defend Tom, who is black and accused of murder.

Little Mouse worries that the big, hungry bear will take his freshly picked, ripe, red strawberry for himself.

The Lost World was written by Arthur Conan Doyle in 1912 and was his first work of science fiction. It tells the story of Professor Challenger, who leads a scientific expedition to the Amazonian rainforest. The professor and his team stumble upon a lost world and get trapped there. As they struggle to escape they encounter great danger from wild animals, ape-men and even dinosaurs! This title is part of a wonderful new series that offers a quick way into a range of exciting stories. Fast-moving and accessible, each story is a shortened, dramatically illustrated version of the classic novel, which loses none of the strength and flavour of the original.

Shortlisted for Bolton's Children's Book of the Year.

The New Windmills series provides unabridged versions of pre-20th-century novels, complete with an introduction, glossary, extended writing questions and activities. The sewn binding and hard laminated covers make them hardwearing for class use and excellent value for money.

Shakespeare and Cultural Appropriation pushes back against two intertwined binaries: the idea that appropriation can only be either theft or gift, and the idea that cultural appropriation should be narrowly defined as an appropriative contest between a hegemonic and marginalized power. In doing so, the contributions to the collection provide tools for thinking about appropriation and cultural appropriation as spectrums constantly evolving and renegotiating between the poles of exploitation and appreciation. This collection argues that the concept of cultural appropriation is one of the most undertheorized yet evocative frameworks for Shakespeare appropriation studies to address the relationships between power, users, and uses of Shakespeare. By robustly theorizing cultural appropriation, this collection offers a foundation for interrogating not just the line between exploitation and appreciation, but also how distinct values, biases, and inequities determine where that line lies. Ultimately, this collection broadly employs cultural appropriation to rethink how Shakespeare studies can redirect attention back to power structures, cultural ownership and identity, and Shakespeare's imbrication within those networks of power and influence. Throughout the contributions in this collection, which explore twentieth and twenty-first century global appropriations of Shakespeare across modes and genres, the collection uncovers how a deeper exploration of cultural appropriation can reorient the inquiries of Shakespeare appropriation studies. This collection will be of great interest to students and scholars in theatre and performance studies, Shakespeare studies and adaption studies.

This book lays bare the dialogue between Shakespeare and critics of the stage, and positions it as part of an ongoing cultural, ethical, and psychological debate about the effects of performance on actors and on spectators. In so doing, the book makes a substantial contribution both to the study of representations of theatre in Shakespeare's plays and to the understanding of ethical concerns about acting and spectating-then, and now. The book opens with a comprehensive and coherent analysis of the main early modern English anxieties about theatre and its power. These are read against 20th- and 21st-century theories of acting, interviews with actors, and research into the effects of media representation on spectator behaviour, all of which demonstrate the lingering relevance of antitheatrical claims and the personal and philosophical implications of acting and spectating. The main part of the book reveals Shakespeare's responses to major antitheatrical claims about the powerful effects of poetry, music, playacting, and playgoing. It also demonstrates the evolution of Shakespeare's view of these claims over the course of his career: from light-hearted parody in A Midsummer Night's Dream, through systematic contemplation in Hamlet, to acceptance and dramatization in The Tempest. This study will be of great interest to scholars and students of theatre, English literature, history, and culture.

The Self-Centred Art is a study of the plays of Ben Jonson and the actors who first performed in them. Jakub Boguszak shows how the idiosyncrasies of Jonson's comic characters were thrown into relief in actors' part-scripts-scrolls containing a single actor's lines and cues-some five hundred of which are reconstructed here from Jonson's seventeen extant plays. Reading Jonson's spectating parts, humorous parts, apprentice parts, and plotting parts, Boguszak argues that the kind of self-absorption which defines so many of Jonson's famous comic creations would have come easily to actors relying on these documents. Jonson's actors would have moreover worked on their cues, studied their speeches, and thought about the information excluded from their parts differently, depending on the type they had to play. Boguszak thus shows that Jonson brilliantly adapted his comedies to the way the actors worked, making the actors' self-centredness serve his art. This book addresses Jonson's dealings with the actors as well as the printers of his plays and supplements the discussion of different types of parts with a colourful range of case studies. In doing so, it presents a new way of understanding not just Ben Jonson, but early modern theatre at large.

Staging Detection reveals how the new figure of the stage detective emerged in nineteenth-century Britain. The first book to explore the productive intersections between detection and performance across a range of Victorian plays, Staging Detection foregrounds the role of the stage detective in shaping important theatrical modes of the period, from popular melodrama to society comedy. Beginning in 1863 with Tom Taylor's blockbuster play, The Ticket-of-Leave Man, the book criss-crosses London following the earliest performances of stage detectives. Centring the work of playwrights, novelists, critics and actors, from Sarah Lane and Horace Wigan to Wilkie Collins and Oscar Wilde, Staging Detection sheds new light on Victorian acting styles, furthers our understanding of melodrama, and resituates the famous Wildean dandy as a successor to the stage detective. Drawing on histories of masculinity and gender performance as well as developing scientific theory and nineteenth-century visual culture, Staging Detection shows how the earliest stage portrayals of the detective shaped broader Victorian debates concerning fraud, omniscience and earned authority. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of theatre history, Victorian literature and popular culture - as well as anyone with an interest in the figure of the detective.

This volume explores the relationship between the emphasis on performance in Elizabethan humanist education and the flourishing of literary brilliance around the turn of the sixteenth century. This study asks us what lessons we can learn today from Shakespeare's Latin grammar school. What were the cognitive benefits of an education so deeply rooted in what Demosthenes and Quintilian called "actio"-acting? Because of the vast difference between educational practice then and now, we have not often followed one essential thread: the focus on performance. This study examines the connections relevant to the education offered in schools today. This book will be of great interest to teachers, scholars, and administrators in performing arts and education.

This book compares the theatrical cultures of early modern England and Spain and explores the causes and consequences not just of the remarkable similarities but also of the visible differences between them. An exercise in multi-focal theatre history research, it deploys a wide range of perspectives and evidence with which to recreate the theatrical landscapes of these two countries and thus better understand how the specific conditions of performance actively contributed to the development of each country's dramatic literature. This monograph develops an innovative comparative framework within which to explore the numerous similarities, as well as the notable differences, between early modern Europe's two most prominent commercial theatre cultures. By highlighting the nuances and intricacies that make each theatrical culture unique while never losing sight of the fact that the two belong to the same broader cultural ecosystem, its dual focus should appeal to scholars and students of English and Spanish literature alike, as well as those interested in the broader history of European theatre. Learning from what one 'playground' - that is, the environment and circumstances out of which a dramatic tradition originates - reveals about the other will help solve not only the questions posed above but also others that still await examination. This investigation will be of great interest to students and scholars in theatre history, comparative drama, early modern drama, and performance culture.

This book compares the theatrical cultures of early modern England and Spain and explores the causes and consequences not just of the remarkable similarities but also of the visible differences between them. An exercise in multi-focal theatre history research, it deploys a wide range of perspectives and evidence with which to recreate the theatrical landscapes of these two countries and thus better understand how the specific conditions of performance actively contributed to the development of each country's dramatic literature. This monograph develops an innovative comparative framework within which to explore the numerous similarities, as well as the notable differences, between early modern Europe's two most prominent commercial theatre cultures. By highlighting the nuances and intricacies that make each theatrical culture unique while never losing sight of the fact that the two belong to the same broader cultural ecosystem, its dual focus should appeal to scholars and students of English and Spanish literature alike, as well as those interested in the broader history of European theatre. Learning from what one 'playground' - that is, the environment and circumstances out of which a dramatic tradition originates - reveals about the other will help solve not only the questions posed above but also others that still await examination. This investigation will be of great interest to students and scholars in theatre history, comparative drama, early modern drama, and performance culture.