A hillside with an ocean view seems an ideal spot to spend a lonely Christmas Eve. When Jessica, a journalism major, and Beth, a high-profile politician, discover they both have the same idea, they exchange the sort of explosive little gifts that are usually left wrapped. Although barely acquainted, over the course of the day they discover that through their mutual relationship with Jeff, a Government Minister, their lives are intimately connected. This discovery and the substance of their...

Max and Marion are usually the sort of friends who can go for a year without seeing each other and catch up on everything in a second once they do. In these four strange and amusing encounters, however, something new seems to be happening. Max finds himself increasingly flummoxed by his interesting friend, as Marion plays about with various scenarios in which she sidesteps work, suspends the kids and liberates her life partner while making a direct and long overdue approach towards more ti...

Showfolk duo Joan and Peter defer the usual pre-lunch cocktail and anxiously await the arrival of their bright new young director. Reviewing their career high and lowlights to date, this exciting new project promises them a big break in the face of their comically fast-maturing professional viability. At this point, when their careers are about to go over the top, the action of the play retreats 40 years to the world of personal and professional security they enjoyed in the 1970s. Married ...

It is December 1948. While their husbands self-sacrificingly remain at work in town, Sarah and her sister-in-law Jennifer spend yet another summer by the sea, watching the children in the deep water and trying to avoid the annual judgement-by-mother-in-law at the hands of the indomitable Alice. Secret relief comes for Jennifer when she meets an older man, Henry, who listens to her and provides an occasional oasis of sanity in the midst of her holiday madness. At the same time, Sarah is det...

Athena, an Australian nurse working overseas, is raped and murdered. Her father, John, must decide whether to grant clemency to her murderer, who is facing execution by beheading. Margaret, an ex-school teacher on a career change as a junior Australian Government official, is sent in to counsel and assist the grieving man. When the situation proves predictably challenging, Margaret’s daughter, Nina, provides a clarity of counsel and assistance that is so irresistibly logical it may well pr...

Finally, the new play is up and running but Ellen’s problems are just beginning. Imogen, her daughter and primary theatrical asset, is tiring of the spotlight. Glenn, her co-producer with privileges, is demanding something more. Then on opening night, Lana appears. Ten years ago, she walked into Ellen’s life, changed it and left. Ever since Ellen has been wondering why. Now she is also wondering what Lana wants with Imogen.

Every weekday April has the 4WD waiting at the school gate well before 3.30pm and a raft of afterschool activities in hand to keep them all occupied. But seven years’ worth of long lunches with her single friend Louis and two half-days a week at the gallery have left this doctor’s wife wondering if there is anything else. When Jeremy the private tutor comes into her life, and her foster daughter May comes of age, April begins to feel like a hothouse orchid, although she really longs to be ...

Ellen hasn’t done a show since well before she had kids. Why she allowed herself to be roped-in at the last minute to sing, play the cello as well as the lead in Glenn’s one-night stand production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It is a mystery.By the end of the first rehearsal she is floundering, by the end of the second, she is in love. Or, at least, she has a crazy thing for Lana, an utterly relaxed and experienced actor with no apparent responsibilities. The problem is, with one r...

When internationally renowned and self-confessed soloist Rachael Marlin comes to live with Holly and James in their Salon d'Art, everyone falls madly in love with her. Only Joy, a young doctor, sounds a note of caution when she sees Rachael's effect on her fiancé, Matthew, and her potential to turn their little Salon d'Art into a large theatre of the absurd. As Joy anticipates, when Rachael's affections and creative energies turn closer towards her instrument than to her hosts, she reveals...

Helena, grand dame of the Melbourne and Sydney theatre scene, thinks she has settled nicely into a restful performance regime of comedy classics in judiciously subsidised spaces. When her somewhat intense undergraduate daughter, Emmeline, hurls an asylum seeker/detention centre drama at her, Helena’s professional certainties are shaken not so much by the play’s contents as by its lead actor, Violet. A student of Australian theatre, Violet has chosen Helena to be her mentor and she sets abo...

Transforming Universities with Digital Distance Education explores the ways in which higher education stakeholders can apply and leverage the benefits of online learning. Systems-wide access, scale and quality are achievable goals but require forms of teamwork and financial modelling beyond those at the instructor or programme level. This book’s organisational view tackles the systems and practices that will help senior managers and decision-makers guide an entire institution away...

New biography of one of the key figures in British history focusing on both his writing and legacy.Mark Nicholls is President and Librarian of St John's College, Cambridge.