In a bleak, remote town, a small child is murdered. Suspicion falls on nine-year-old Lizzie. Angela, Lizzie's young mother, is convinced her daughter is guilty. She must make the torturous choice between ignoring what her intuition tells her, and presenting Lizzie to the police with painfully extracted information. Lizzie is constantly haunted by a 'Wolf', which seems to overwhelm her and, in her own words, 'swallow' her. It is not only Lizzie who is changed forever by the act. Her father Warren, bewildered and full of denial, and the local policeman, Ray, find their accepted beliefs crumbling around them. And Angela, at the end of the play, does not know how she will go on. (2 male; 2 female).

In 1948, Angela left Malta. Having gathered up five children, she sailed out on the Strathnavar, leaving poverty and the war behind. Her destination: Australia. In Surry Hills, she could build a bright new life. Back in Malta, someone else has made a journey. Making his way along Kalkara's glistening harbourside, a young man with flowing black hair has returned to claim his past. Paul Capsis is walking home.

This brilliant new collection of ten plays for young people will prove indispensable to schools, colleges and youth theatre groups. Specially commissioned by the National Theatre for the Connections Festival 2012 involving 200 schools and youth theatre groups across the UK and Ireland, each play is accompanied by production notes and exercises. Power struggles, rites of passage, love and forbidden relationships are some of the rich themes that run through the 2012 cycle of plays. Some are deeply funny, some are provocative and some reflective; and one has really catchy songs! For the 2012 Festival, the anthology has an international feel and offers a window on the world. It includes from Australia a play based on a nineteenth century court case in which a teenage girl was falsely convicted; from Brazil a drama about young lovers doomed to tragedy; set in Russia, a play exploring differing attitudes to National Service and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991; a drama about students' rights to an education and the Cultural Revolution of 1966 in China; and a comedy involving a group of Irish country girls travelling to London to audition for the X-Factor.