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The Christmas Appeal by Janice Hallett
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The Christmas Appeal

A Novella

$18.89

Get for $14.99 with membership
Length 3 hours 35 minutes
Language English
Narrators Aysha Kala, Daniel Philpott, Rachel Adedeji & Sid Sagar

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This immersive holiday caper from the “modern Agatha Christie” (The Sunday Times, London) follows the hilarious Fairway Players theater group as they put on a Christmas play—and solve a murder that threatens their production.

The Christmas season has arrived in Lower Lockwood, and the Fairway Players are busy rehearsing their festive holiday production of Jack and the Beanstalk to raise money for a new church roof. But despite the season, goodwill is distinctly lacking among the amateur theater enthusiasts with petty rivalries, a possibly asbestos-filled beanstalk, and some perennially absent players behind the scenes.

Of course, there’s also the matter of the dead body onstage. Who could possibly have had the victim on their naughty list? Join lawyers Femi and Charlotte as they investigate Christmas letters, examine emails, and pore over police transcripts to identify both the victim and killer before the curtain closes on their holiday production—for good.

Janice Hallett is a former magazine editor, award-winning journalist, and government communications writer. She wrote articles and speeches for, among others, the Cabinet Office, Home Office, and Department for International Development. Her enthusiasm for travel has taken her around the world several times, from Madagascar to the Galapagos, Guatemala to Zimbabwe, Japan, Russia, and South Korea. A playwright and screenwriter, she penned the feminist Shakespearean stage comedy NetherBard and cowrote the feature film Retreat. She lives in London and is the author of The ExaminerThe Mysterious Case of the Alperton AngelsThe AppealThe Christmas Appeal, and The Twyford Code.

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Reviews

"Four gifted narrators bring listeners this holiday treat told through emails. A dozen members of the Fairway Players, an English amateur theater group, discuss their upcoming pantomime of “Jack and the Beanstalk.” Their emails reveal the essence of each writer—their subtle power grabs, petty jealousies, and barely concealed hatreds. With so many characters, it could have been difficult to identify each speaker. Happily, Aysha Kala, Daniel Philpott, Rachel Adedeji, and Sid Sagar so deftly individualize the dialogue that the production sounds like it has more than four narrators. The story includes a dead body and crime solving, but what's best is its dry humor and wonderfully depicted characters." Expand reviews
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