Keith Waterhouse

Collected Plays

Keith Waterhouse is one of Britain's most popular writers in nearly every field. This collection brings together for the first time his most celebrated plays from a career spanning more than forty years.

Keith Waterhouse

Office Life

What I meant was, what does the company do? What is British Albion in aid of? It was a very good question. Granted that British Albion was a very comfortable billet for Clement Gryce, but it had to be admitted that it was a rather peculiar company to work for.

Even Gryce — a lifelong clerk with an almost total lack of ambition — can't help wondering why the telephones never ring.

Soon he finds that some of his colleagues share his curiosity about the true purpose of the company that employs them — Pam Fawce in particular (introduced to him along with Mr Graph-paper and Mr Beastly, as 'Miss Divorce'). She also turns out to be the membership secretary of the Albion Players: a very exclusive amateur dramatics club…

Stuart Woods

Fast and Loose

Stone Barrington

Stone Barrington is enjoying a boating excursion off the Maine coast when a chance encounter leaves him somewhat the worse for wear. Always able to find the silver lining in even the unhappiest circumstances, Stone is pleased to discover that the authors of his misfortune are, in fact, members of a prestigious family who present a unique business opportunity, and who require a man of Stone’s skills to overcome a sticky situation of their own.

The acquaintance is fortuitous indeed, for as it turns out, Stone and his new friends have an enemy in common. He’s the sort of man who prefers force to finesse, and who regards any professional defeat as a personal and intolerable insult. And when Stone’s sly cunning collides with his adversary’s hair-trigger-temper, the results are sure to be explosive...

Andrea White

Radiant Girl

A girl’s 11th birthday always brings big changes to her world, but for Katya Dubko, it is truly the end of the world as she knows it. In the northern Ukraine, an area of dense forests, abundant wild life, and sparkling rivers, Katya’s little village of Yanov has been a fairytale home. Her family life is rich with ancient traditions and magical beliefs, and her father has a good job working for the government at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station, a complex bigger than her whole village. Steeped in the imagery of her people, Katya believes that the station is a magical factory, and she looks for men in white robes, the angels she has heard push buttons to create electricity. When she asks her father about the station, he reassures her that it is safe: “so safe I would let you and Mama sleep there. I’d let a baby sleep there.” Yet when Katya is sent into the forest to play while her family prepares her birthday dinner, she meets Vasyl, a mysterious otherworldly boy who tells her the agonizing truth: her world will be destroyed in an explosion. What is she to believe? On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded, and the Soviet government refused to acknowledge the extent of the disaster. As Katya struggles to survive in the aftermath, Vasyl reenters her life and helps her to realize that there can be no healing without truth, however difficult it may be to face. As she reconnects with her friends from before the explosion, she begins to learn more about the scientific concepts that have changed their world, and she discovers that blind patriotism like her father’s can be the undoing of a country as well as a man. With the help of friends she could have never imagined in her old life, Katya begins to understand that the things that are most important about her homeland and herself have survived the disaster. Combining the mythological truths of her ancestors with an understanding of the science behind the Chernobyl explosion, Katya finds the strength to fulfill a promise she made to herself many years before. And from her new vantage point she realizes that she is no longer the little girl in the fairy tale, she has become the author of her own story. Radiant Girl weaves history, fantasy, photographs and illustrations together to create a fictional coming of age tale that offers readers insight on surviving the powerful forces of change that rock their own lives, both from within and without.

Tim Washburn

The Day After Oblivion

AND SO IT BEGINS… In the United States, the Department of Defense and the NSA computer networks have been hacked. A nuclear-armed CIA drone has lost all flight control. North Korea… Iran… Russia… and soon the gates of Hell will open. DEFCON 1—FULL SCALE NUCLEAR WAR Humanity’s most terrifying nightmare has become reality. Bombs are detonated, missiles are launched, counterstrikes are ordered, and within minutes, untold thousands of megatons have left countless millions dead or dying. Devastation of biblical proportions has fallen over the land… and the USA has been hit the hardest. NOW THE SURVIVORS ARE ON THEIR OWN… The death toll is incalculable. Following the devastation, there is no law, no power, no communication. But there are survivors. And now the real battle begins, on the ground, hand to hand, person to person. Can those who remain survive long enough to rebuild a world… or will it just take a little longer for them to die?

Benjamin Wray

Acid Reign: Genesis

Acid Reign

In a mutated and desolate future, where a corrupt government, commerce barons, and renegades fight for control, a group of scavengers has to choose self-preservation or save what’s left of humanity.

Winfred Wong

Son of the Tank Man

Ashton, son of The Tank Man, and his sister were forced to move to the Port in 1989. He was contented with his life in the Port, but everything changed on that day when he was deprived of the right to vote against the dissolution of the government, a plebiscite initiated by a group of people who called themselves freedom-pursuers. His grudge against those freedom-pursuers, who he deemed as a bunch of hypocrites, prompted him to leave the country and start a new life in the place where he was born despite others’ objections, but it turned out to be a journey that he could never forget. And the chance of telling this story has only come to him after he passed away.

Jt Warren

Remains

J. Warren’s Remains is an insular story, almost claustrophobic as we first join Mike Kendall where he lives: walled up in his own mind. As the book progresses, Kendall is drawn back to his hometown of Placerville, when the remains of a long-missing boy are finally found, a boy Kendall had shared a complicated history. No matter how much Kendall tries to resist the underside of the mystery behind Randy McPherson’s disappearance, he must confront the lies that he has built his life upon.

Daniel Wyatt

The Mary Jane Mission

When the B-29 Superfortress Mary Jane is discovered in 1945 sitting in thick jungle with no visible damage, and her crew and mysterious payload are missing, the incident is hushed up and forgotten. But in 1990, mysterious radar images start to appear. F-18 crews sent up to investigate discover a B-29 flying towards Japan. What is this mysterious plane? If it is the Mary Jane continuing her mission, how can they stop it? [55000 words]

Urban Waite

Far Cry: Absolution

Far Cry 5

The official prequel to the latest instalment of the Far Cry video game series. Hope County, Montana. Land of the free and the brave, but also home to a fanatical doomsday cult known as The Church of Eden’s Gate that has slowly been infiltrating the residents’ daily lives in the past years. Mary May Fairgrave, a local barkeep, has lost almost everything to the Church: her parents died in suspicious conditions and her brother, entranced by the cult leader’s charismatic words, has vanished. When the authorities refuse to investigate further, she decides to take matters in to her own hands. Local hunter William Boyd was saved by Eden’s Gate years ago, during the darkest moments of his life. When his duties lead him to cross paths with Mary May, the daughter of one of his old friends, he soon discovers that what is happening in the county is far from what he believed. Up against an omniscient and dangerous adversary, Mary May stands little chance. But the unexpected intervention of William Boyd will change her journey—as well as his. Interview with Urban Waite:

Herbert Herbert Wells

The Open Conspiracy

The Open Conspiracy: Blue Prints for a World Revolution was published in 1928 by H. G. Wells, when he was 62 years old. It was revised and expanded in 1930 with the additional subtitle A Second Version of This Faith of a Modern Man Made More Explicit and Plain. In 1931 a further revised edition appeared titled What Are We to To with Our Lives? The final version appeared in 1933 under its original title. Many of its ideas are anticipated in Wells's 1926 novel The World of William Clissold. The book is, in Wells's words, a "scheme to thrust forward and establish a human control over the destinies of life and liberate it from its present dangers, uncertainties and miseries." It proposes that largely as the result of scientific progress, a common vision of a world "politically, socially and economically unified" is emerging among educated and influential people, and that this can be the basis of "a world revolution aiming at universal peace, welfare and happy activity" that can result in the establishment of a "world commonweal." This is to be achieved by "drawing together a proportion of all or nearly all the functional classes in contemporary communities in order to weave the beginnings of a world community out of their selection." This will ultimately "be a world religion." — Wikipedia

Kathleen Winsor

Forever Amber

Abandoned pregnant and penniless on the teeming streets of London, 16-year-old Amber St. Clare manages, by using her wits, beauty, and courage, to climb to the highest position a woman could achieve in Restoration England-that of favorite mistress of the Merry Monarch, Charles II. From whores and highwaymen to courtiers and noblemen, from events such as the Great Plague and the Fire of London to the intimate passions of ordinary-and extraordinary-men and women, Amber experiences it all. But throughout her trials and escapades, she remains, in her heart, true to the one man she really loves, the one man she can never have.

Martha Wells

All Systems Red

The Murderbot Diaries

In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety.

But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ’droid—a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is.

But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it’s up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.

Anne Elizabeth Winchell

The Last War

Sixty years after the genetically enhanced superhumans known as Díamonts incited World War III and sparked a new global order, humanity has finally settled into an era of relative peace. Within the United Eastern World, an underground revolution has a new leader who poses a serious threat for the first time in decades. Raven, an agent of the United Eastern World and a former revolutionary, is sent to locate the new leader but finds his old loyalties stirring as he reenters the slums of NeoLondon. He meets Nalia, a young woman with superhuman abilities who persuades him to rethink his mission and his past crimes. His actions, however, destabilize the careful balance of political power between the competing world governments and war seems imminent. Together, Raven and Nalia must face the start of a new war, one threatening to end life on Earth forever, as they follow their twin paths in an unknown and unforgiving world.

Caeli Wolfson Widger

Mother of Invention

Meet Silicon Valley executive Tessa Callahan, a woman passionate about the power of technology to transform women’s lives. Her company’s latest invention, the Seahorse Solution, includes a breakthrough procedure that safely accelerates human pregnancy from nine months to nine weeks, along with other major upgrades to a woman’s experience of early maternity.

The inaugural human trial of Seahorse will change the future of motherhood—and it’s Tessa’s job to monitor the first volunteer mothers-to-be. She’ll be their advocate and confidante. She’ll allay their doubts and soothe their anxieties. But when Tessa discovers disturbing truths behind the transformative technology she’s championed, her own fear begins to rock her faith in the Seahorse Solution. With each new secret Tessa uncovers, she realizes that the endgame is too inconceivable to imagine.

Caeli Wolfson Widger’s bold and timely novel examines the fraught sacrifices that women make to succeed in both career and family against a backdrop of technological innovation. It’s a story of friendship, risk, betrayal, and redemption—and an unnerving interrogation of a future in which women can engineer their lives as never before.

Ralph Walker

The Toxicity of Water: A Rising Waters Short

Rising Waters

The flood took almost everything from Hunter. Everything except his inheritance. If he can only get to it before the other scavengers. The Toxicity of Water is the third installment of the Rising Waters series. Rising Waters is an anthology of near future short stories. Similar to Black Mirror or Close Encounters before it, this episodic anthology follows everyday characters into a world challenged by accelerating technology and inevitable climate change. Each story stands alone, but together they paint a picture of what the world might be, just around the corner.

Stuart Woods

Quick & Dirty

Stone Barrington

When a slam-bang of a crime brings a beautiful new client into Stone Barrington’s office, little does he know his association with her will pull him into a far more serpentine mystery in the exclusive world of art. It’s a business where a rare find could make a career — and a collection — and mistakes in judgment are costly. And under its genteel and high-minded veneer lurks an assortment of grifters and malfeasants eager to cash in on the game.

In the upscale world of New York City’s luxury penthouses and grand Hamptons estates, it will take a man of Stone Barrington’s careful discernment and well-honed instincts to get to the truth without ruffling the wrong feathers... because when it comes to priceless and irreplaceable works of art, the money and reputations at stake are worth killing for.

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