'Who said smashing things up was a bad thing?'Three strangers are about to face their demons head on. Balanced precariously on the tipping point, they might just be able to save one another – if they can only overcome their urge to self-destruct.Passionate, painful and playful, Stef Smith's Swallow takes a long, hard look at the extremes of everyday life. The play premiered at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, as part of the 2015 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, ...

A young woman finds herself washed up back home on the Scottish archipelago of Orkney, trying to rebuild her life after a decade of addiction.The life she has left behind in London, with all its intoxicating temptations, has pushed her to the point of destruction. Now there is wildness of a different form – an alluring wilderness that she must learn to navigate.Speaking to the impact of isolation and loneliness and – ultimately – the resilience of people, Amy Liptrot's best...

'When I walk into a room, in my uniform. There is a look that gets thrown my way. When I walk into a room, in my uniform. It's as if for second everything stops.'Jane and Toni are immaculate, iconic, accommodating flight attendants. They're here for your safety, your comfort and your pleasure. Or so you think. But 30,000 feet below them their seemingly perfect lives are rapidly unravelling.In the sky, over the sea and in cheap hotel rooms around the world, they can...

In the overcrowded city, nature is getting out of control. The mice are scratching between walls, the pigeons are diseased and the foxes are beginning to rule the streets. The problem is growing. It's contagious. It has to be stopped, before it's too late.Stef Smith's play Human Animals premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in May 2016, in a production directed by Hamish Pirie.

On her lunch break in Melbourne, Kim Leamy is approached by a stranger investigating the disappearance of a little girl from her Kentucky home twenty-eight years earlier. He believes Kim is that girl. At first she brushes it off, but soon finds herself questioning her family history and begins to unravel an unexpectedly dark past.

WINNER OF THE AUSTRALIAN/VOGEL’S LITERARY AWARDIn those first moments, that admission felt precious to me: it was something that I alone had been deemed worthy enough to carry and I was grateful. I was grateful to finally know, but I still couldn't speak.Something was wrong, she knew it, but she was entirely unprepared for what he would tell her.Viewed through the lens of a relationship breakdown after one partner discloses to the other that they are transgender, th...

Greer O’Reilly needs to start over. Her partner of twelve years has left her and she’s moved to a blueberry orchard in the Victorian hills. When she and daughter Sophie arrive to take possession, the former owner, 81-year-old jazz lover Charlie Chandler, refuses to move out. Dying and desperate to spend his last days in his old home, the unlikely pair soon form a close bond – one that will offer the strength and inspiration Greer needs.

Sarah and Hannah are on a cruise from San Diego, California to Sydney, Australia. Sarah, Hannah's grandmother, is returning to the country of her birth, a place she hasn't seen since boarding the USS Mariposa in 1945. Then she, along with countless other war brides, sailed across the Pacific to join the American servicemen they had married during World War II. Now Hannah is the same age Sarah was when she made her first journey, and in hearing Sarah tell the story of her life, realises the...

It is the scale and range of creative collaboration inherent in theatre that sits at the very heart of National Theatre Connections.National Theatre Connections 2022 draws together ten new plays for young people to perform, from some of the UK's most exciting playwrights. These are plays for a generation of theatre-makers who want to ask questions, challenge assertions and test the boundaries, and for those who love to invent and imagine a world of possibilities.

In Riversend, an isolated country town brought to its knees by endless drought, a charismatic and dedicated young priest steps out of his church and calmly opens fire on his congregation, killing five parishioners before being shot dead himself. A year later, troubled journalist Martin Scarsden arrives in Riversend to write a feature on the anniversary of the tragedy. But the stories he hears from the locals about the priest and incidents leading up to the shooting don't fit with the accep...

The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller'Gripping, atmospheric and ultimately deeply satisfying' Val McDermidHe had started to remove his clothes as logic had deserted him, and his skin was cracked. Whatever had been going through Cameron's mind when he was alive, he didn't look peaceful in death.Two brothers meet at the remote border of their vast cattle properties under the unrelenting sun of the outback. In an isolat...

Random House presents the audiobook editon of Bridge of Clay, written and read by Markus Zusak.THE EPIC NEW NOVEL FROM THE AWARD-WINNING, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE BOOK THIEF***********************Here is a story told inside out and back to frontFive Dunbar brothers are living – fighting, loving, grieving – in the perfect chaos of a house without grown-ups...