Toby Bennett

Drawing on a deep and long-term first-hand engagement with major labels in the early years of the 21st century, this book sheds new light ‘behind the scenes’, at a time of drastic and far-reaching transformation. Refreshingly, it centres not on artists and the most powerful decision-makers but on everyday experiences of work and back-office corporate employees. Doing so reveals the internal activities and conflicts that, while hidden from public view, enable processes of change: from paperwork, data systems, managerial pressures and redundancies to graduate training schemes, departmental politics and shared playlists, providing a new route into understanding the broader cultures and infrastructures of the global recording industry. This oft-forgotten office work tells a different story of contemporary digital music , one more sensitive to the complex intersections that texture the conduct of work and organizational life.

Drawing on a deep and long-term first-hand engagement with major labels in the early years of the 21st century, this book sheds new light ‘behind the scenes’, at a time of drastic and far-reaching transformation. Refreshingly, it centres not on artists and the most powerful decision-makers but on everyday experiences of work and back-office corporate employees. Doing so reveals the internal activities and conflicts that, while hidden from public view, enable processes of change: from paperwork, data systems, managerial pressures and redundancies to graduate training schemes, departmental politics and shared playlists, providing a new route into understanding the broader cultures and infrastructures of the global recording industry. This oft-forgotten office work tells a different story of contemporary digital music , one more sensitive to the complex intersections that texture the conduct of work and organizational life.

How long have the stars been the same? Longer than weary eyes may count. Tonight, a wanderer burns on the surface of Khusu's pool, and soon all other lights will seem pale. How many ages have rolled since the gods have seen a sail from the world beyond? The rising sun shall rob them of their isolation. My time is coming. They called me fool, but none have known my pain. The pattern shifts; neither man nor god may know its final weaving. What some call madness, I call vision. I have seen, and now one comes - haunted, driven before the winds of a fate he dare not face. I have called the Serpent from his prison. A man of war, seeking peace, yet disease and ruin will follow in his wake. What he bears will cast a shadow to drown the distant lights of Tel Aphos and make the gods who dwell there remember fear. All that remains is to find the one to serve me when the general falls. Is that you Hetephes? Are you to be my handmaiden or will you choose your false father? So many others have failed. You are restless in your narrow bed. Do you sense me watching? Do you dream? Should not the God of Visions and Crossroads know? It is selfish not to share. It matters not The ships are here, the star returns, and no novice's dream could encompass what is to come... If you want to know that, you must share The Serpent's Quest.

"In days gone by there were places you could sell a shadow. Their owners never felt the lack, but believe me when I say you never want to hear a shadow scream." The city of Umbra is powered by something far less wholesome than the steam and gas that run through its grimy pipes. When Edmund Tyler is forced to flee his drunken father and sleep outside the slag works he cannot imagine that this will lead to a chance encounter with a disembodied shadow, Charlotte. Together they must thwart the machinations of a mad scientist, reunite the shadow with her body and ultimately save the gloom-shrouded city.

All oceans are one ocean, water without end. Every story, every legend you have ever heard about the sea is true somewhere and at the heart of it all there is a truth that shapes the destiny of all other worlds, including our own: the Inner SeaThe Endless Ocean is the story of Clare and Adrian Watts find themselves suddenly caught up in the currents of this larger world. With the arrival of a shipwrecked sailor their lives are forever changed as they are swept into a world of ritual and myth where only their unique heritage holds any hope of averting impending destruction.