The most recommended drama books

Today concerns over madness and disability are very much with us, especially if they connect with issues of power and masculinity. This was also true in the age of Shakespeare. Christina Gutierrez-Dennehy’s collection of essays on the topic of mad kings on the Renaissance stage is very readable and interesting, and tie in with contemporary issues. The book is divided into three sections: distracted kingship, fractured masculinity, and performed madness. The plays under discussion include Shakespeare’s King Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard III, Henry VI, and All’s Well That Ends Well. Gutierrez-Dennehy brilliantly and explicitly brings the topics raised in the collection into the twenty-first century. 

Delicious. Sexy. I Dare You is… honestly, I don’t know how to describe it. I think that’s why I love it so much. From the first page, you are immediately transported to this world full of chaos and depravity. Cole Reynolds is the ultimate book boyfriend with edge and a healthy dose of mystery to keep you enthralled until the middle of the night reading.

Lord Lavay is determined to recapture his family’s fortune. His housekeeper is just as determined not to fail her fatherless son. Drama and growth – the best ingredients of the most moving stories.

This novel was the first one I read in the Pennyroyal Green series from this author. I almost gave up writing then and there because she wrote so well, so powerfully that I doubted my ability to become as good as her. This novel now serves as my measure, against which every romance novel is placed – including my own.

The way her characters are drawn on the page, the way they move through their own journeys, and still come together at the end, is seamless. Great characters, flawed and relatable. Excellent plot and pacing, including the world building.

Not all archival work entails Indian Jones-style quests for hidden treasures; Steggle’s book—written at a crucial point when digital databases such as Early English Books Online and Google Books were accessible but rarely utilised to their maximum capabilities—proved how much crucial knowledge is hiding in plain sight. Steggle used a variety of search strategies to solve cruxes and mysteries that have plagued theatre historians for centuries, recovering the subject matter of lost plays that scholars routinely ignored on account of their opaque titles and scant evidence.

Let’s imagine the English people have decided to abolish the monarchy. We are back in the eighties, and the Windsor family, expelled from Westminster, is relocated to a poor neighborhood of London and is required to work. The ex-Queen tries to cook, Philip is depressed, Diana wonders about her wardrobe and Charles discovers gardening talents...The Queen and I is a book that plays wonderfully on the human and linguistic gap between high society and common people. Funny situations and the satirical tone made me laugh on each page. I recommend it to all the people who are struggling to make a living—they’ll think it could be worse. 

You can read a good screenplay with as much ease and pleasure as you read a novel, and the Fleabag scripts aren’t just good—they’re immaculate.

I pore over this book again and again, hoping that maybe this time I will see the trick, the moment of misdirection or sleight of hand that enables a story of profound personal pain—grief, loneliness, fear, they’re all here, all the big ones—to be so bloody funny. There is no trick, of course. There’s just flawless writing.

You should of course watch the TV show these scripts underpin, but do yourself a favour and read them too. Phoebe Waller-Bridge really did something here.

Another excellent book about plot and the importance of making sure you have a good one. The difference between a good plot and a great plot is a bestseller. If you want your story’s plot to speak of mastery, do not miss out on reading this insightful book. Add it to your personal library for good measure. It’s always a good idea to have it there, so you can reference it in the future even after finishing it.

The author of nearly three dozen nonfiction books for young people, Catherine Reef reveals through her clear writing, first-hand accounts, and photographs what it was really like for a child to grow up in an orphanage in America from the mid-1850s to the early 20th century when nearly all of these congregate dependent childcare institutions closed.

Reef also includes a satisfying Afterword that lets us know “where life led some of the children” who appeared in her book. Although intended for a young reader, Alone in the World also proved a strong resource to me in writing my book and will interest anyone who wants a thoughtful and deeply-researched overview of this topic.

Whoa, this book is a fun, chaotic dip into burnout. I had to just let go when I was reading, let the words crash over me like a wave, and get bashed around by the crazy stream-of-consciousness. The narrator's memories, fantasies, thoughts, delusions, worries, and everything else are all mixed up with crazy secondary characters and set in a realistically gritty and raw New York City. As a former resident of NYC, who has heard horror stories from lifelong residents, I could hear the desperate truth in every line. The narrator wants to quit—quit the trauma, the stress eating away at his nerves, but he keeps drinking, shooting up, and speeding to the next overdose, shooting, and heart attack. The narrator’s struggle between giving up on everything and trying one more time to find redemption in a broken city full of violence, sickness, and death took me one step closer… show more.

Much has been written about the Holocaust but enough can never be said. Tom Stoppard was born in Czechoslovakia in 1937 to a non-observant Jewish family forced to flee the Nazi terror. 

In his play Leopoldstadt Stoppard follows the history of a family living in that Jewish suburb of Vienna, from the turn of the 20th century to today. The story of the prejudice and restrictions they experienced, as well as the hopes they had of transcending them through business success and assimilation, are heartbreaking. A friend of mine came from such a family and from his recollections I know that Stoppard has described the situation accurately.

This play (as the family) is full of characters you care about deeply, and knowing about the coming Holocaust, we want to cry out a warning to them.  We can’t. But this is a warning about the future.