Nick Hern Books: 842 books

'Who'd want to join in building a fucking playground.' It's 1979, rubbish is on the streets of Bristol, and it's tricky being Fiz. She's thirteen, she's got no money, her sister's pregnant and her mum thinks she's a waste of space... Rick remembers what it's like to be a teenager. So...

A heartbreaking short play about guilt, grief and responsibility, written for and performed at the Bush Theatre, London, in 2011.

An urgent political play from the writer behind Let The Right One In and This is England '86. Hope is a funny and scathing fable attacking the squeeze on local government. How do you save twenty-two million pounds? Mark and Hilary, the leaders of the Council, are about to find out. Jack...

Acclaimed for his screenplays for TV dramas including Skins, Shameless, The Fades, This is England '86/'88/'90 and Glue, Jack Thorne first emerged as a writer of unflinching, compassionate and often challenging plays for the stage. Described as a 'powerful voice for Britain's youth' (Independent),...

A painful - and painfully funny - play about being very young and in love - and coping with serious illness at the same time. Rachel and Peter are seventeen. They have been going out for six months. It's love's young dream. Then Rachel gets ill - seriously ill. She doesn't want her mum to fuss;...

Phil and Alice are in love - familiar, flawed, ordinary love. They are on a journey, but this journey doesn’t have an A to Z. Jack Thorne's The Solid Life of Sugar Water is an intimate, tender play about loss, hurt and rediscovery. It previewed at The Drum, Theatre Royal Plymouth, and premiered...

Rob finds life confusing in a world of unwritten rules. If there's no one around to tell him right from wrong, except for a copy of FHM and a call-centre supervisor, he just has to guess. But he's never been very lucky, and sometimes he gets his guesses very wrong. This play was first staged...

Mr and Mrs Twit are not very nice. In fact they're extremely nasty. They're nasty to each other, and they're VILE to everyone else. They hold a family of monkeys hostage in a cage and force them to stand on their heads. ALL THE TIME. We told you they weren't very nice. Can the monkeys...

Charlie Ashanti lives in a future where phones are powered by the sun, cars are banned and companies are more powerful than countries. Charlie is a perfectly normal boy, except for one thing: he can speak to cats. When his parents are kidnapped, he sets off on a rescue mission – with a little...

Arthur Ransome's famous and much-loved children's classic is brought thrillingly to life in Helen Edmundson's wonderfully theatrical adaptation, with 'delightfully catchy and often witty' (Telegraph) songs by Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy. When John, Susan, Titty and Roger are granted their...

A gritty adaptation of Dickens' least sentimental love story with a cast of some of his most unforgettable characters. Whilst at his parents' graveside, Pip is accosted by Magwitch, a convict escaped from one of the prison ships. Terrified, he is forced to help the man to get away. An unexpected...

A courageous and convincing play that sensitively tackles the important subject of child abuse. Tom works in digital analysis, investigating crimes against children. Faced with watching recordings of the most unforgiveable acts on a daily basis, in a job that barely anyone else can endure,...

A black comedy about the post-9/11 world and what happens when someone else's global problem becomes your local one. Fringe First Award, Edinburgh Festival 2003 If 9/11 changed everybody's life forever, somebody forgot to tell Nigel. With his Xbox, his TV and his spliff, Nigel's life...

In the darkest recesses of Ukraine, a war is raging. A journalist takes a research trip to the front line. Teenage girls wait for soldiers on benches. A medic mourns her lover killed in action. Natal'ya Vorozhbit's play Bad Roads is a heartbreaking, powerful and bitterly comic account...