Torben Betts: 13 books

Three pitch-black comedies from an exciting new writer. A Listening Heaven, which focuses on one family’s painful inability to grieve for a dead son, was first produced in 1999 to critical acclaim at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where Betts was the resident dramatist. Mummies...

Includes the plays The Optimist, The Swing of Things and The Company Man In this third volume of his collected plays Torben Betts portrays a world of floundering, sub-alpha males and suicidally miserable women, of bullying parents, torturous childhoods and failing relationships, characters...

One night in January 2010 and an earthquake in Haiti leaves around a hundred thousand people dead and almost two million homeless. Meanwhile, somewhere in a leafy North London suburb, a group of six individuals convene over avocado and prawns, followed by a monkfish stew. They struggle with worries...

Includes the plays Incarcerator, Five Visions of the Faithful, Silence and Violence, The Last Days of Desire, The Biggleswades. With an Introduction by David Pownall, and an essay by Peter Craze A volume of language-rich, theatrically-ambitious tragedies. Betts’ hugely popular verse...

Set in the future, this savagely funny poetic drama deals with a city couple who relocate to a remote rural wilderness to escape the rat race and the rising anarchy of city life. But will a desolate house by the sea provide them with The Answer? Lie of the Land premiered at the Pleasance at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2008.

‘Only love brings happiness into this earth, the poetical love of youth, sweeping away the sorrows of the world.’ As guests assemble at a country house for the staging of an avant-garde open air play, artistic temperaments ignite a more entertaining drama behind the scenes, with romantic...

May 2015: The most important General Election for a generation. All is not well for Tom Savage, an ex-Labour minister parachuted into a safe North East constituency, trying to win hearts and minds as well as an Election. Wrestling with a heady cocktail of mid-life crisis, growing dependency...

The recession is biting hard so Emily and Oliver have decided to downsize and shift their middle-class London lifestyle to a small town in the north of England. They want to live, work and raise their two young children in a friendly community, among what Emily terms ‘real people’, away from the...

Caroline Mortimer, the nation’s second-favourite TV cook, has it all – a sparkling career, a big house in Highgate, a (golf) loving husband, smart kids and the best kitchen money can buy. But beneath the immaculate furnishings, studio lighting and away from the glare of the ever-present...

"One day you will say something from the heart, a truth forced raw and screeching from the howling depths of your soul." Powerful poetic language, dark humour and provocative ideas build a fast moving story around a fiercely intelligent young girl and her relentless refusal of the...

At the turn of the sixteenth century the two most powerful people on the planet, Queen Isabella of Castile and King Ferdinand of Aragon are making plans to expand their empire. They are plundering the riches of the New World, removing all Jews and Moors from their territories and waging war on the...

From a playwright rated by Alan Ayckbourn and Howard Barker to be the most exciting new voice in British theatre comes a shattering re-imagining of life as we live it now, set in the context of a bloody revolution. Witness to a brutal political assassination, we are introduced to a society...

Will the Prime Minister give Rupert the political prize he’s been hoping for? How much more can Livvie take of her mother Mary and her withering put-downs? Will Charlie get off her phone for long enough to listen to anyone, let alone her boyfriend? Home truths emerge and a reputation could...