Books published by Samuel French Ltd

Long after returning from Neverland, Wendy decides that she must find Peter in order to reclaim her kiss and move on with her life. Along the way, she meets other girls who went to Neverland and learns she is not alone. A coming-of-age exploration of first love and lasting loss, Lost Girl continues the story of J.M. Barrie’s beloved character – the girl who had to grow up.

When Bella boards a train west to reunite with her Buffalo soldier sweetheart, she encounters the most colorful and lively characters ever to roam the Western plains. Bullets and fists will fly, heads and hearts will break, but – blessed with a big heart, and a voluptuous figure – Bella will breeze on through it all.

In The Gun Show, award-winning playwright E. M. Lewis tells the story of America’s relationship with guns through the prism of her own personal experiences. From a farming community in rural Oregon to the big cities of Los Angeles and New York, an actor shares Ms. Lewis’s unique perspective and true stories about America’s most dangerous pastime as if they were his or her own, with brutal honesty and poignant humor. Leaning neither right nor left, The Gun Show jumps into the middle of the gun control debate and asks, “Can we have a conversation about this?”

Lillian, a British middle-aged woman who’s the bookish type, falls for a man half her age, Jimmy. She divorces her husband, re-marries the young man, and buys a flower shop to support his desire to be a gardener. What she doesn’t know is that Jimmy has a heart condition, and that his restless energy is because he doesn’t have long to live. 

Harry Clarke is the story of a shy midwestern man who feels more himself when adopting the persona of cocky Londoner Harry Clarke. Moving to New York and presenting himself as an Englishman, he charms his way into a wealthy family’s life, romancing two family members as the seductive and sexually precocious Harry, with more on his mind than love. With his spellbinding and emotionally nuanced storytelling, Cale has created a riveting story of a man leading an outrageous double life.

Based on the electrifying novel by Bret Easton Ellis, the musical tells the story of Patrick Bateman, a young and handsome Wall Street banker with impeccable taste and unquenchable desires. Patrick and his elite group of friends spend their days in chic restaurants, exclusive clubs, and designer labels. But at night, Patrick takes part in a darker indulgence, and his mask of sanity is starting to slip…

For nearly twenty years, playwright Lauren Yee’s father, Larry, has been a driving force in the Yee Family Association, a seemingly obsolescent Chinese American men’s club formed a hundred fifty years ago in the wake of the Gold Rush and the building of the transcontinental railroad. But when her father goes missing, Lauren must plunge into the rabbit hole of San Francisco Chinatown and confront a world both foreign and familiar. At once bitingly hilarious and heartbreakingly honest, King of the Yees is an epic joyride across cultural, national, and familial borders that explores what it means to truly be a Yee.

As Mary Jane navigates both the mundane and the unfathomable realities of caring for Alex, her chronically ill young son, she finds herself building a community of women from many walks of life. Mary Jane is Pulitzer Prize finalist Amy Herzog’s remarkably powerful and compassionate portrait of a contemporary American woman striving for grace.

A coming-of-age story set in Calhoun Hall, The Earth is Flat follows purple-haired Ethan as he takes his first tentative steps toward self-knowledge. Day one he meets his roommate, Derek, who’s popular, social, and seems to have it all together. Day two, Ethan’s brother dies in an accident, sending Ethan back home to deal with his ambitious sister and his pill-addicted mother. While there, Derek and Ethan write letters in which Derek reveals he’s become obsessed with conspiracy theories about the earth being flat. When Ethan returns to college, he and Derek share a kiss, but Derek isn’t gay, and Ethan’s embarrassment propels him further toward the theories. Will Derek and he ever repair their friendship? Will college ever be “normal”?

The boys are back, but their war isn't over. Bandstand is a defiant and unflinching original musical that confronts the cost of war and the salvation that can be found in song. Featuring an exuberant jazz score and the modern musical theatre hit, Welcome Home, discover a new musical that plumbs the depths of celebration and suffering in post-war America. Now, the sheet music of Bandstand is available in one volume.This Vocal Selections book contains fifteen songs from the Broadway musical:Just Like It Was BeforeDonny NovitskiI Know A GuyAin't We ProudWho I WasFirst Steps FirstYou Deserve ItLove Will Come And Find Me AgainRight This WayNobodyI Got A TheoryEverything HappensBand In New York CityThis Is LifeWelcome Home

Chaos arises when letters begin to fall from a town monument and government officials ban them one by one. The community depends on the strength of a determined teenage girl to fight for their freedom of speech. Adapted from Mark Dunn’s 2001 award-winning debut novel, Ella Minnow Pea, this unique musical is part romance, part clever word game, and part adult fable that reminds us how precious our liberties are and how important it is to have the courage to stand up for what we believe.

In a small town in the Old West, the mayor can’t keep his people from running away or dying at the hands of the local brute. And just when things can’t get any worse, an omen predicts that a demon ghost might soon return to possess one of the town’s few remaining people, and then to ravage the rest. Which tyrant will be more awful, the demon or the brute? And assuming the mayor can’t save the day – for it seems he can’t do much – will Catalina, the town vagrant, be the one who steps up? Tumacho considers hope in the face of evil,  the community struggle to act, and demon cuisine, all in a deadpan ode to comedies of yore. 

Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden defined beauty standards for the first half of the twentieth century. Brilliant innovators with humble roots, both were masters of self-invention who sacrificed everything to become the country’s first major female entrepreneurs. They were also fierce competitors whose fifty-year tug-of-war would give birth to an industry. From Fifth Avenue society to the halls of Congress, their rivalry was relentless and legendary – pushing both women to build international empires in a world dominated by men.

Lauren Bacall made a triumphant return to Broadway in this Tony(R) Award-winning musical adaptation of the famous Tracy/Hepburn film. Tess Harding is a high-powered anchorwoman of a network TV morning news show. She makes some derogatory remarks about comic strips on the air and comes head-to-head with Sam Craig, a famous cartoonist who introduces a lampoon of Tess into his comic strip. The feud turns to romance and marriage but not to harmony in this delightful battle of the sexes between two outsized egos.

A father, mother and two of their three surviving children drive from Newark, New Jersey to Camden to visit their married daughter, who has recently lost her baby in childbirth. Their journey is punctuated by talk, laughter, memories (some mundane, some happy, some painful), and appreciation of the Now - ham and eggs, flowers, family, sunsets and the joy of being alive. In this family drama, nothing much happens-and yet everything important happens. As Ma Kirby says, "There's nothin' like bein' liked by your family."

On Broadway, Julie Harris played the good hearted and guileless child of nature who is hauled before the magistrate on a charge of murder, having been found unconscious, nude, and clutching a gun, with her lover dead beside her. What is most shocking to the magistrate is the complete frankness with which she describes her life as a parlor maid and her affairs with both the dead chauffeur and her aristocratic employer. She is so ingenious that the magistrate, at the risk of his juridical neck, decides that she could not have committed the murder. The investigation expands to include both the aristocratic employer, who cannot answer yes or no in less than a paragraph and whose own polysyllables make him yawn, and his wife who descended in direct line from Attilla the Hun and looks it. She has been having an affair with her husband's best friend. The magistrate finds the right culprit and the open hearted little parlor maid offers herself to him as a present.

It's nearing midnight in Wyoming, where four young conservatives have gathered at a backyard after-party. They've returned home to toast their mentor Gina, newly inducted as president of a tiny Catholic college. But as their reunion spirals into spiritual chaos and clashing generational politics, it becomes less a celebration than a vicious fight to be understood. On a chilly night in the middle of America, Will Arbery's haunting play offers grace and disarming clarity, speaking to the heart of a country at war with itself. - back cover

As Thor struggles with the stress of final exams, his brother Loki finds himself under a different sort of pressure. Neither are beneath pranks in the endless competition for their parents' favor. But underneath all the thunder and mischief, these two Princes of Asgard discover a bond that will last millennia.

Kamala attempts to boost Ms. Marvel's fledgling super hero profile by writing her own fan fiction. But when building a fandom becomes an obsession, Kamala's schoolwork and relationships begin to suffer. To become the Jersey City hero of her dreams, Kamala must learn to accept herself just as she is - imperfections and all.

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.

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.

As Stella leaves her job at the shopping channel, Alex prepares for a night out, and Paula can’t stop thinking of the girl who’s gone missing, her face all over the news. Slowly the missing girl weaves her way through all their lives in the course of a very wet and wild night.

Hansard; nounThe official report of all parliamentary debates. Hansard is an intimate domestic drama about a long and troubled marriage. It is also a comedy about politics and identity and the failings of the ruling class. Set around the passing of the Section 28 legislation in 1988, which banned the “promotion” of homosexuality.It is funny, tender, brutal, and ultimately devastating. Hansard premiered at the National Theatre, London,in August 2019.

“Are me feet off the floor yet? Are me feet off the floor?” In a rainy town in the north of England, there are strange goings-on. Dad is building a pair of wings, eating flies, and feathering his nest. Auntie Doreen is getting cross and making dumplings. Mr Poop is parading the streets, shouting louder and louder, and even Mr Mint, the head teacher, is getting in a flap. And watching it all is Lizzie, missing her mam and looking after her dad and thinking how beautiful the birds are. What’s behind it all? It’s the Great Human Bird Competition, of course. Who will be the first to fly across the River Tyne?David Almond’s barmy, tender and funny tale about wings and faith, written for the Young Vic to accompany their production of Skellig. It has since been performed many times around the world, and also adapted by Almond into a much-loved, much-translated novel, with illustrations by Polly Dunbar.

Man, bird or angel? Who, or what, is Skellig?Michael was looking forward to moving house. It was all going to be wonderful. But now his baby sister’s ill, his parents are frantic, and Doctor Death has come to call. Michael feels helpless. Then he steps into the crumbling garage. What is this thing beneath the spider webs and dead flies? A human being, or a strange kind of beast never seen before? The only person Michael can confide in is Mina. Together they carry the creature into the light, and Michael’s world changes for ever.David Almond’s own adaptation of his renowned novel, winner of The Carnegie Medal, The Whitbread Children’s Book Award, and a string of prizes around the world. A timeless classic, published in over 40 languages, it touches the minds, hearts and souls of people of all ages. The story has become a movie, an opera, a radio play and this stage play, first produced at the Young Vic, and directed by Trevor Nunn.