One day in 1968, at the height of the Biafran civil war, Ijeoma’s father is killed and her world is transformed forever. Separated from her grief-stricken mother, she meets another young lost girl, Amina, and the two become inseparable.

Theirs is a relationship that will shake the foundations of Ijeoma’s faith, test her resolve and flood her heart. From Ijeoma’s childhood in war-torn Biafra and through the perils and pleasures of her blossoming sexuality, Okparanta takes us on a journey through thwarted hopes and wrong turns and into the everyday joys and sorrows of marriage and motherhood.

Under the Udala Trees – Chinelo Okparanta – 9781847088383

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This widely used abridged edition keeps Shakespeare’s original language while making the play more manageable for students to follow, discuss and perform.

This carefully abridged version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream keeps the lovers, fairies, mechanicals, comic confusion and play within the play, while presenting a streamlined script that is easier for students to read, rehearse and perform.

Originally devised for a Theatre in Education tour, this script has been successfully staged with as few as four actors and adapted for larger school casts. It is equally effective for classroom exploration of scenes and for full productions in a drama studio, school hall or theatre space.

This edition includes:

• A streamlined performance script.
• Short scene introductions to guide understanding.
• Staging advice based on real school productions.
• Classroom drama activities to support literary study.

Ideal for classroom work, Shakespeare study, school productions, drama activities, tutoring and home education. Let younger readers meeting Shakespeare for the first time.

Written by an experienced teacher and director, this edition helps students engage actively with Shakespeare’s language, characters and themes. Through both study and performance.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Abridged for Schools and Performance – Shakespeare & KJ O’Hara – 9781502311412.

Au programme de la quatrième pour la section internationale des collèges Camille Claudel et Simone Veil à Montpellier.

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In January, 1965, the growing town of Ballycrea has four new residents.

The O’Leary siblings arrive in their new village under suspicious circumstances. Desperate to make a new start and leave their troubled life behind, the O’Learys offer few, contradicting details about their past.

As they slowly settle in to town, the siblings are taken under the wing of Betty and Bill Nevan, a wealthy couple in their forties who have always wanted children. However, as one O’Leary sister grows close to Betty, lines are crossed and their intense relationship becomes difficult to define. All the while, the O’Leary’s buried secrets keep bubbling up, threatening to ruin their new future.

Gothic, lush, and suspenseful, Chloe Michelle Howarth spins a tangled web that leaves you wondering who to trust until the very last page.

Heap Earth Upon It – Chloe Michelle Howarth – 9780857309471

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A bittersweet story of love between two women, nested in an artful exploration of language, history, and power. Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer.

May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She’s been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear.

Soon a Taiwanese woman–who is younger even than she is, and who shares the characters of her name–is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko’s travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook. Over scenic train rides and braised pork rice, lively banter and winter melon tea, Chizuko grows infatuated with her companion and intent on drawing her closer. But something causes Chizuru to keep her distance. It’s only after a heartbreaking separation that Chizuko begins to grasp what the « something » is.

Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer.

Taiwan Travelogue – Yang Shuang-zi – 9781916751651

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Ever since the first furore was created on its publication in 1929, this novel has been considered one of the key novels of this century. Depicting the gradual disintegration of the Compson family through four fractured narratives, the novel explores intense, passionate family relationships where there is no love, only self-centredness. At its heart, this is a novel about lovelessness – ‘only an idiot has no grief; only a fool would forget it.

What else is there in this world sharp enough to stick to your guts?’

The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner – 9780099475019

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On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomas and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one.

Tomas, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster.

The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomas is sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father.

What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomas and how is Liam, aged only ten, going to finish the mapping, and get them both home?

Land by Maggie O’Farrell – 9781472289094

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Meet Frankie, Miriam and Bronagh: three very different women from Belfast, but all mothers to 18-year-old boys.

Gorgeous Frankie, now married to a wealthy, older man, grew up in care.
Miriam has recently lost her beloved husband Kahlil in ambiguous circumstances.
Bronagh, the CEO of a children’s services charity, loves celebrity and prestige.

When their sons are accused of sexually assaulting a friend, Misty Johnston, they’ll come together to protect their children, leveraging all the powers they possess. But on her side, Misty has the formidable matriarch, Nan D, and her father, taxi-driver Boogie: an alliance not so easily dismissed.

Brutal, tender and rigorously intelligent, The Benefactors is a daring, polyphonic presentation of modern-day Northern Ireland. It is also very funny.

The Benefactors – Wendy Erskine – 9781399741705

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Broke and directionless, our young protagonist takes a job in the Italian countryside as the assistant to Lisabetta. Who’s better known to her friends as Coco : a strong-willed, wealthy aristocrat of great local renown. Trained as an archivist, he thinks he’s been hired to catalogue the contents of the beautiful, crumbling mansion nestled in the green Tuscan hills.

But what are his actual duties? Days are spent in a series of increasingly eccentric pursuits. From entertaining an endless carousel of guests (from bohemian painters to elderly princesses to unnervingly handsome nephews), to attending a funeral in order to make off with the urn. And aiding and abetting Coco’s great and final plan. To reunite with the lost love of her life before it’s too late. As summer turns into autumn and the Italian countryside begins to work its magic, the secrets of Villa Coco and its inhabitants are slowly brought to light.  And with them, an unforgettable story of the enduring power of friendship.

A ‘charm novel’ for our times, Villa Coco is a sun-drenched paean to youth, to age and to the fulfilment of love. Filled with great wisdom and a spirit of unadulterated joy.

Villa Coco – Andrew Sean Greer – 9781399757287

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Berlin’s underground, where techno rattles buildings still scarred with the violence of the last century. There, nineteen-year-old Nila finds her tribe. In their company she can escape the parallel city that made her. The public housing block packed with refugees and immigrants. There the bathrooms are infested with silverfish and the walls outside are graffitied with swastikas. Escaping into the clubs, Nila tries to outrun the shadow of her dead mother, once a feminist revolutionary; her catatonic, defeated father; and the cab-driver uncles who seem to idle on every corner. To anyone who asks, her family is Greek, not Afghani.

And then Nila meets American writer Marlowe Woods. His literary celebrity, though fading, opens her eyes to a world of patrons and festivals, one that imbues her dreams of life as an artist with new possibility. But she finds herself drawn further into his orbit and ugly, barely submerged tensions begin to roil and claw beneath the city’s cosmopolitan veneer. Everything she hopes for, hates, and believes about herself will be challenged.

Good Girl – Aria Aber – 9781526679109

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Recently dumped and stuck in a dead-end job, Vi’s life is a lonely mess. That is, until she stumbles across a mysterious sentient blob outside a drag club. She takes it home, feeding it a diet of cereal and reality TV.

Soon Vi realises she can shape her gelatinous companion into the perfect man: attentive, outgoing, and with more than a passing resemblance to Ryan Gosling. But is Bob the blob really the answer to all her problems, or just a catalyst for further disaster?

BLOB : A Love Story – Maggie Su – 9781399731959

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