Fiction Drama

Falstaff is both a comic and tragic central protagonist in Shakespeare's three Henry plays. He is companion to Prince Hal (the future Henry V), who loves him, goads him, teases him, indulges his vast appetites, and commits all sorts of mischief with him. Award-winning author and esteemed professor Harold Bloom examines Falstaff with the deepest compassion and sympathy and also with unerring wisdom. He uses the relationship between Falstaff and Hal to explore the devastation of severed bonds and the heartbreak of betrayal.

All of the Shakespeare plays within the Argo Classics catalogue are performed by the Marlowe Dramatic Society and Professional Players. The Marlowe was founded in 1907 with a mission to focus on effective delivery of verse, respect the integrity of texts and rescue neglected plays by Shakespeare’s contemporaries and the less performed plays of Shakespeare himself. The Marlowe has performed annually at Cambridge Arts Theatre since its opening in 1936 and continues to produce some of the finest actors of their generations.

A collection of four ghostly tales inspired by M. R. James: Casting the Runes, Lost Hearts, The Treasure of Abbott-Thomas and A View from the Hill.

Callie Miller loves drama. As a theater major, that's a given. It's hard to date in the theater department when all the guys are either taken or gay - like her best friend and longtime crush. When Callie becomes the lead in the biggest production of the year, she realizes she has no time for love. Until Sebastian "Bash" Moore reenters her life, stage left. He left everything behind three years ago to chase his dreams. But his heart remained at home, tied to memories of a tiny blonde with a flair for the dramatics - on and off the stage.

The identity comes first: Evie Porter. Once she’s given a name and location by her mysterious boss, Mr. Smith, she learns everything there is to know about the town and the people in it. Then the mark: Ryan Sumner. The last piece of the puzzle is the job. Evie isn’t privy to Mr. Smith’s real identity, but she knows this job isn't like the others. Ryan has gotten under her skin, and she’s starting to envision a different sort of life for herself. But Evie can’t make any mistakes—especially after what happened last time.

Like many couples, Michael and Jolene Zarkades have to face the pressures of everyday life—children, careers, bills, chores—even as their twelve-year marriage is falling apart. Then a deployment sends Jolene deep into harm's way and leaves defense attorney Michael at home, unaccustomed to being a single parent to their two girls. As a mother, it agonizes Jolene to leave her family, but as a solider, she has always understood the true meaning of duty. In her letters home, she paints a rose-colored version of her life on the front lines, shielding her family from the truth.

It’s rumoured that Dickens wanted to return to his classic novel Oliver Twist, to bring him back into a later book as an older character, but he never managed this before he died. However, if Oliver had returned, what would he have been like? Would the scars of his childhood affect the man he would become? And what of ‘Dodger’, sent to a land halfway around the world, his friend, mentor and master dead because of Oliver? Dodge & Twist is that story. The tale of two boys, 12 years later, returning into each other’s lives - for both good and bad.

In the northernmost reaches of Scotland, where a string of little islands in the North Sea stretches towards Norway, lives Gertie MacIntyre, a proud island girl by birth. Her social circle is small but tight: family and friends, particularly the women in her knitting circle. In the whitewashed cottages of their hometown, everyone knows everyone, and the ladies of the knitting circle know more than most. In a place of long dark winters and geographic isolation, the knitting circle is a precious source of gossip, home, laughter, and comfort for them all.

Before Owen Michaels disappears, he smuggles a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her. Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers—Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. Bailey, who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother. As Hannah’s increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered, as the FBI arrests Owen’s boss, as a US marshal and federal agents arrive at her Sausalito home unannounced, Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn’t who he said he was.

Hedda and George have just returned from their honeymoon, but when her former lover Eilert appears with a brilliant new manuscript, George’s hopes for a professorship are dimmed. Hedda’s desperate dissatisfaction with her life leads to dangerous choices in this startling portrait of a woman hell-bent on destruction.

Macbeth is one of William Shakespeare's more brilliantly populated plays and remains among the most widely read. Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom investigates Macbeth's interiority and unthinkable actions with razor-sharp insight, agility, and compassion. He also explores his own personal relationship to the character. The book also becomes an extraordinarily moving argument for literature as a path to and a measure of our humanity.

Together with The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of Shakespeare’s most magical plays. One night, two parties creep from Athens into the surrounding forest. One includes sweethearts Lysander and Hermia, fleeing from Athenian law and the disapproval of Hermia’s father to get married. In pursuit is Demetrius, the suitor of Hermia favored by her father, and the doleful Helena, formerly affianced to Demetrius.

Cleopatra is one of the most famous women in history - and thanks to Shakespeare, one of the most intriguing personalities in literature. Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom delivers exhilarating clarity and invites us to look at this character as a flawed human who might be living in our world. He also explores his own personal relationship to the character: Just as we encounter one Anna Karenina or Jay Gatsby when we are in high school and college and another when we are adults, Bloom explains his shifting understanding of Cleopatra over the course of his own lifetime.

A small community tucked deep in the forest, Beartown is home to tough, hardworking people who don’t expect life to be easy or fair. But they’ve always been able to take pride in their local ice hockey team. So it’s a cruel blow when they hear that Beartown ice hockey might soon be disbanded. What makes it worse is the obvious satisfaction that all the former Beartown players, who now play for a rival team in the neighboring town of Hed, take in that fact. As the tension mounts between the two adversaries, a newcomer arrives who gives Beartown hockey a surprising new coach and a chance at a comeback.

“These poems were written in an attempt to excise the illness that had taken root in me because of my silence. I’ve spent my entire life keeping the secrets of men, my body aches from carrying the weight of their sins. My freedom lives in these pages, and I hope that my words can inspire others to take back their happiness and their identity by using their voice to illuminate what’s been buried, but not forgotten, in the darkness,” says Fox.

At a shadowy company (Karoli Robotics Corporation) owned by a Sillicon Valley billionaire, a scientist named Jim creates an AI that can fool the Turing test at the same time as his colleague, Daniel, successfully synthesizes DNA in a test tube. Daniel's attempts to reanimate dead chimps using his discovery have been unsuccessful, but when his friend Laura Bocelli is killed by being trapped inside a lab freezer, Daniel is presented with the perfect specimen. However, Laura is irreparably brain dead.

The complete BBC Radio collection bringing together two full-cast dramatisations of Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently novels. In Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Dirk Gently has an unshakable belief in the interconnectedness of all things, but his Holistic Detective Agency mainly succeeds in tracking down missing cats for old ladies. Then Dirk stumbles upon an old friend behaving bizarrely - and he's drawn into a four-billion-year-old mystery that must be solved if the human race is to avoid immediate extinction....

Tressie faithfully prays every night that God will send her a thug. It isn't long before her prayers are answered, and she meets a handsome ex-convict named Payce Boyd. He is a fine roughneck, everything Tressie imagined and more - that is until Tressie experiences firsthand the reality of being a thug's girl. Seeking solace and comfort in the sanctuary, Tressie soon learns valuable lessons and shocking truths about herself and others.

In Baby Momma Drama, sisters Jasmine and Stephanie struggle to understand the complicated relationships they have with the men in their lives. Luckily, they’ve got each other to turn to when the going gets tough.

After a tragic accident claims the life of one of her children, Marie Egide is desperate to carve out a fresh start for her family. With her husband and their three surviving children, Marie travels to New Hampshire, where she plans to sell a family estate and then, just maybe, they’ll be able to heal from their grief. Marie’s plans are thwarted when she realizes a war veteran known by locals as “the river witch” is living in a cabin on the property, which she claims was a gift from Marie’s grandfather. If Davina refuses to move on, Marie won’t be able to either.