Blood, chrome and betrayal.Sergeant Harry Kabutt has seen better days. He's been shot down, blown up, and then tossed to the wayside by the corporations, left to rot in a ratty apartment in gang territory.His own limbs? Shredded, cut away, and left to rot on a mountainside. The replacement mods? Likely to fall apart or leave him to die in sepsis.No longer an operator of the feared APS mecha, Kabutt has hit rock bottom. But he’s on foot, he’s armed, ...

'This house. It's called "Sea View". It's just I've looked out of every window, and you can't. You can't see the sea.'Blackpool, 1976. The driest summer in two hundred years. The beaches are packed. The hotels are heaving. In the sweltering backstreets, far from the choc ices and donkey rides, the Webb Sisters are returning to their mother's run-down guest house, as she lies dying upstairs.Jez Butterworth's play The Hills of California was first performed...

" Dictionary Stories isn't just a book for word nerds, but for anyone for whom language and story matter. Everybody will find themselves thoroughly in love with this book." —Kory Stamper, editor for Merriam-Webster, and author of Word by WordEveryone has looked up a word in the dictionary. Some of us have even asked for it to be used in a sentence during our 2nd grade spelling bee. But few of us have ever really considered those example sentences:...

One of the biggest names in the musical landscape of the 1970s, Steely Dan released a string of albums that pushed the boundaries of what was possible in a recording studio. With albums like The Royal Scam and Aja, the songs of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen drew from their love of jazz, their ability to write memorable pop hooks and their penchant for subversive humour, to produce a catalogue of unparalleled brilliance. With worldwide album sales in excess of 40 million ...

Any consideration of the songwriting craft would be incomplete without the inclusion of American singer/songwriter Aimee Mann. From her first steps as singer and bass player with 1980s synth pop band ‘Til Tuesday, who scored a massive MTV hit with ‘Voices Carry’ in 1985, she has continually produced starkly autobiographical songs, with a sense of melody that cuts through the emotional detail.With a career now spanning almost forty years, she has built a catalogue of nine studio alb...

'Come, you drunken spirits. Come, you battalions. You fields of ghosts who walk these green plains still. Come, you giants!'When Jez Butterworth's ***Jerusalem***premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2009, it served notice of an astonishing development in the career of a writer whose debut, Mojo, had premiered on the same stage nearly fifteen years before.Unearthing the mythic roots of contemporary English life, and featuring Mark Rylance in an ...

'I like London. I like the pavements. I like to walk out my door and not sink up to my tits in primordial sludge.'A comedy thriller from the author of the Olivier Award-winning Jerusalem.West waits in a burnt-out farmhouse, on Dartmoor, in the depths of winter, for two associates from the city. The wine has been poured and the revolver loaded. But who is waiting upstairs?Jez Butterworth's play The Winterling was first performed at the Roya...

A blackly hilarious exploration of deceit, paranoia and murderous desire, as the spirit of the Blues lands in leafy suburbia.Demolition expert Ned lives in a nice new house on a nice new estate on the edge of the English countryside. He loves his job. Barbecues. Car-boot sales. Fitness programmes. Outwardly his life is entirely unremarkable. Not unlike his friend and neighbour Dale.So why has he not slept a wink in six months? Why is he so terrified of his attractive wife J...

On a moonless night in August when the sea trout are ready to run, a man brings his new girlfriend to the remote family cabin where he has come for the fly-fishing since he was a boy. But she's not the only woman he has brought here – or indeed the last.A bewitching story from the author of global smash hit Jerusalem, Jez Butterworth's play The River was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in October 2012.

A dark, funny, spellbinding play about a group of outcasts and eccentrics gathered in the Cambridgeshire fens, from the author of Jerusalem and The Ferryman.The sighting of a rare bird attracts attention to a remote part of the fens. The visiting birdwatchers cannot know what dangers lie in the freezing darkness of the marshes. In an isolated cabin, Wattmore, bruised and bleeding, is recording the Old Testament onto cassette. Griffin arrives with fish and chips. ...

One day, Isaac Thompson is just your average fifth grader playing the part of a porcupine in the school play. The next, he has strayed into a mysterious subterranean realm that has been lurking beneath his school Castle Elementary and launches his quest to knighthood. When Isaac's little sister Lily goes missing from their school's creepy basement, he and his best friends Max and Emma set out in search of her. Their search takes them to the Underground, where they encounter an army of spea...

Warfare below the streets, backstabbing and brutality.Kabutt is out. Out of the army, out of patience and out of control, he's found a home, people to fight for, and once again, the city seems determined to screw that up for him.He's got backstabbing elves trying to rip him off, corpos forcing him and his team into unsanctioned deathmatches for live broadcasts, and of course, the usual skulduggery, not to mention more goddamn goblins.He's got his su...