Janice Hallett

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.

A Novella

The Christmas Appeal

Laura Dobie

I need to sweet-talk the vicar into removing a stud wall behind the stage to make room for the beanstalk. It's enormous, is over forty years old and has been in countless pantos, but it's by far the best beanstalk in the local area. We need a good, sturdy stem for Jack to climb up. When you can clearly see that a group has cobbled a beanstalk together and Jack mimes climbing it, well, the story loses all credibility for me.

The Grange Estate is on the other side of the big Tesco, and most people there don't have cars or much interest in theatre. Celia

Finally, a reminder of the good cause that will benefit from this fundraising production. The church hall in Lockwood is where The Fairway Players have staged their plays for nearly forty years. It is our home. This spring it was discovered that a family of bats had inadvertently wreaked havoc when their urine and feces built up in a roof cavity, which was damp from a water leak the previous spring. This perfect storm nurtured a destructive fungus that ate the wooden beams. The hall had to be closed for two weeks while the bats were humanely evicted, a giant patty of petrified dung was cut out and the damage patched up.

The Christmas Appeal quotes

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