No. 10 in the Small Beer Press chapbook series is An A-Z of the Fantastic City. Compiled and Arranged by Hal Duncan and illustrated by Eric Schaller, it also features an introduction by noted academic Henry V. Duncan.This guidebook leads readers and explorers through twenty-six cities of yore (Yore, while included, is one of the shorter entries), including such familiar and unfamiliar haunts asSexy, secretive, yet clear-eyed, Duncan brings pop, high, and low cultur...

It's 2017 and the End Days are coming, beings that were once human gathering to fight in one last great war for control of the Vellum - the vast realm of eternity on which our world is just a scratch. But to a draft-dodging Irish angel and a trailer-trash tomboy called Phreedom, it's about to become brutally clear that there's no great divine or diabolic plan at play here, just a vicious battle between the hawks of Heaven and Hell, with humanity stuck in the middle, and where the easy rhet...

X Marks the Spot is a slender anthology produced to celebrate the first ten years of NewCon Press. It includes original fiction from Adam Roberts, Rozanne Rabinowitz, and Paul Melhuish, a poem by Donna Scott, aand a collaborative short story written by Ian Whates, Ian Watson, Hal Duncan, Chaz Brenchley, Sarah Singleton, Andrew Hook and others which has been out of print for nearly eight years, and a sectio...

It's twenty years since the Evenfall swept across the Vellum and the bitmites took reality apart, twenty years since Phreedom Messenger disappeared into the wilderness and Seamus Finnan was imprisoned in his own past. Twenty years of chaos but the Dukes, the remnants of the Covenant, still cling to power in their enclaves of order in the bitmite-devastated wilderness . . . in their Havens in the Hinter.Across the folds of time and space, though, rogues and rebels are rising up agai...

In Is It True?, Max Cryer explores the truth or otherwise of facts and beliefs we may have always been told are true, but which on closer examination may not be. In a wide-ranging book encompassing social history, language, music, politics, the natural world and much more, we discover the truth behind some of our most cherished beliefs. Always fresh and amusing, Max Cryer will take you on a journey through your acquired knowledge, testing whether it is really up to scratch.

The Time Traveller's Almanac is the largest, most definitive collection of time travel stories ever assembled. Gathered into one volume by intrepid chrononauts and world-renowned anthologists Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, here is over a century's worth of literary travels into past and the future. The anthology covers millions of years of Earth's history – from the age of the dinosaurs to strange and fascinating futures, through to the end of Time itself. The Time Traveller's Alman...

Brooker on the BNP Party Political Broadcast: 'Nick Griffin's first line is "Don't turn it off!", which in terms of opening gambits is about as enticing as hearing someone shout "Try not to be sick!" immediately prior to intercourse.'Brooker on Philip from The Apprentice: 'If it were legal or even possible to do so, he'd probably marry himself, then conduct a long-term affair with himself behind himself's back, eventually fathering nine children with himself, all of whom w...

**'A sprinkling of delightful nuggets about the uses and abuses of the English Language'**Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year'[There are] myriad delights in Ben Macintyre's musings on language' The Times, Books of the Year_____________________Do you know your geek-speak from your geek-chic? Ever wanted to put Humpty Dumpty together again? Can you distinguish Spanglish from Chinglish?We adapt words from other l...

Polite, pensive, mature, reserved ...Charlie Brooker is none of these things and less. Picking up where his hilarious Screen Burn left off, Dawn of the Dumb collects the best of Charlie Brooker's recent TV writing, together with uproarious spleen-venting diatribes on a range of non-televisual subjects - tackling everything from David Cameron to human hair.Rude, unhinged, outrageous, and above all funny, Dawn of the Dumb is essential reading for anyone wit...

ORDER NONESUCH, THE NEW NOVEL FROM FRANCIS SPUFFORD, NOW'Anyone who reads or ever read children's books - read this. It's a joy.' Irish Times'Exhilarating.' New York Times Book Review'Sublime.' Peter Ackroyd, The TimesWhat would you find if you went back and re-read your favourite books from childhood?In The Child That Books Built Francis Sp...

Stories of dark desire and wicked payback from Jonathan Lethem, Joyce Carol Oates, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Richard Christian Matheson, and more.World Fantasy Award–Winning EditorFrom Shakespeare to Poe, revenge has always been one of the great themes in literature. This anthology contains eighteen stories of ruthless vengeance. A philanderer spends a night with one nameless woman too many. A second-rate music video talent turns down a chance at...

If it’s time for a rhyme, or you need a satiric lyric, the Collins Rhyming Dictionary is the fastest and easiest way to refine your line.The most accessible way to find the rhyme you need. Other rhyming dictionaries are characterised by the use of obscure words for padding, subsections for disyllabic and trisyllabic rhymes, and reverse phonetic order – but we avoid such complications and, as a result, have the most practical rhyming book available.The most satisfactory rhym...