Family Humor

It's 1991, and Tara Maureen Murphy is finally on top. A frightening cross between Regina George and Tracy Flick, Tara Maureen Murphy is any high school's worst nightmare. She's a senior, poised to star as Sandy in South High's production of Grease. Cinching the role is just one teensy step in Tara's plot to get out of her hometown and become the Broadway starlet she was born to be. It gets tricky with the arrival of freshman Matthew Bloom, whose dazzling audition for the role of Danny Zuko turns Tara's world upside down.

When Quaker Pastor Sam Gardner is asked by the ill Unitarian minister to oversee a wedding in his place, Sam naturally agrees. It's not until the couple stands before him that he realizes they're two women.

Kate has taught herself to be careful, to be meticulous. To mark the anniversary of a death in the family, she plans a dinner party—from the fancy table settings to the perfect Baked Alaska waiting in the freezer. Yet by the end of the night, old tensions have flared, the guests have fled, and Kate is spinning out of control. But all we have is ourselves, her father once said, all we have is family.

Take a trip to the Yorkshire village of Burley Bridge, where a very special little cookbook shop is about to open its doors.... In the beginning...Kitty Cartwright has always solved her problems in the kitchen. Her cookbooks are her life, and there isn't an issue that 'Cooking with Aspic' can't fix. Her only wish is that she had a book entitled Rustling Up Dinner When Your Husband Has Left You. Forty years later.... On Rosemary Lane, Della Cartwright plans to open a very special little bookshop.

When Rita McCall discovers her husband’s affair, there isn’t a lick of surprise—not a single tear or broken heart. Just a wife and mother who’s over it and ready to watch her twenty-three-year marriage go up in flames. Sticking close, thick as thieves since childhood, Rita’s unfailingly loyal cousins Jemel and Sharae become her lifeline. They stand beside her as she contemplates a new career and navigates the murky waters of being a preacher’s daughter disgraced by scandal.

Felicity Lewis' 50th birthday party in her newly renovated home, loving husband and daughter Greta by her side, is going off with a bang when disaster strikes. Her father, Franklyn, with his usual impeccable timing, has keeled over and died. For some members of the family, his wife Hazel, for example, Franklyn's death is not the great loss it first appears to be. But when his toxic and inexplicable will is read out, it becomes clear that long-buried secrets are about to surface, starting with the astonishing reappearance of Hazel's long-lost sister.

Emily Glass knows she’s neurotic. But she’s got it under control. Sort of. She dons compression socks when she flies (because, you know, deep vein thrombosis) and responds to people routinely overestimating her age with more Lifespin classes and less gluten. Thankfully, she also has David, the wonderful man she’ll soon call husband - assuming they can survive wedding week with her wildly dysfunctional family. Emily’s therapist mother, Marla, who’s been diagnosing her children since they were in diapers, sees their homecoming as the perfect opportunity for long-overdue family therapy sessions. Less enthused are Emily and her two siblings.

Wo eine Mama ist, da ist ein Zuhause. Und Mathilde weiß, ihre Mama – das Mädchen, das sie zum Leben erweckt hat – lebt an dem Ort, an dem die Sonne untergeht. So macht sich die Vogelscheuche abenteuerlustig auf den Weg, gemeinsam mit Mats Piep. Mats ist ein Schwatz (halb Schwalbe, halb Spatz) und hat wegen seiner Flugangst den Vogelzug gen Süden verpasst. Auf ihrer Reise erleben die beiden viele bunte Abenteuer an fantastischen Orten, und bald werden der Vogel und die Vogelscheuche die allerbesten Freunde.

Eine Mutter, die mit verführerischer Sogwirkung schwarzsieht. Ein Vater, der mit Nebelkerzen wirft, wenn er von sich erzählen soll. Und ein vermeintliches Unglückshaus, das es endlich zu verlassen gilt. Miriam Böttgers aberwitziger, tragikomischer und abgründiger Roman für alle, die sich auch mit ihrer Familie herumschlagen. "Eigentlich ist jede Familie eine Sekte für sich, mit irgendeiner speziellen Idee oder Wahnvorstellung, um die alles kreist", grübelt die Ich-Erzählerin in Miriam Böttgers Roman.

Patchwork ist mehr als ein Fleckerlteppich! Thessa ist mit ihrem Leben ganz zufrieden, doch als ihr Mann Wolfgang einen Posten als Förster in Voralberg annimmt, bleibt sie mit Sohn Nicky in Wien. Dennoch verbringen die Drei ihre Urlaube nach Möglichkeit gemeinsam. Doch dann verliebt sich Wolfgang in seine Praktikantin und Thessa stellt fest, dass ihr Chef eigentlich ein ebenso angenehmer wie begehrenswerter Mann ist. Sohn Nicky gefällt das gar nicht und als Wolfgang dann noch erfährt, dass er in Hamburg eine fünfzehnjährige Tochter hat, ist das Chaos erst einmal perfekt.

This is a story about a man, his son, and their three-day mission to cheat death. Sometimes funny, often sardonic, with shifting perspectives and unpunctuated dialogue, Nearly Dead in North Dakota is a fast and loose journey through history, science, religion, pop culture, and a closer examination of the kind of world we live in but never get enough time to really think about.

Claire Flannery has just quit her office job, hoping to take some time to discover her real passion. The problem is, she's not exactly sure how to go about finding it. Without the distractions of a regular routine, Claire confronts the best and worst parts of herself: the generous, attentive part that visits her grandmother for tea and cooks special meals for her boyfriend, Luke, and the part that she feels will never measure up and makes regrettable comments after too many glasses of wine.

Helen Moran is 32 years old, single, childless, college educated, and partially employed as a guardian of troubled young people in New York. She is accepting a furniture delivery in her shared studio apartment when her uncle calls to break the news: Helen's adoptive brother is dead. According to the Internet, there are six possible reasons why her brother might have killed himself. But Helen knows better: she knows that six reasons is only shorthand for "the abyss".

Jesse Few peddles lies. His boss and clients order a couple. His married girlfriend gets a few. His family buys several. But he saves the top-of-the-line dishonesty to sell to himself. The 49-year-old suburban rogue focuses on carousing with his golf buddies, chasing women much too young for him, and surviving the Great Recession that’s raging across the South like it's the Big Banks March to the Sea.

In this "bittersweet and utterly beguiling novel" (Publishers Weekly) each of the MacKenzie family tells their stories in nine, wildly opposed points of view. Starting at a family reunion, three generations of the MacKenzies face off against each other. They discover that terrorism is as intimate as one's own family. Selected as a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year", Duck and Cover is a "wicked black comedy" of a family who fights their wars "on the home front."

It’s spring of 2020 and Rachel Bloomstein—mother of three, recent divorcée, and Brooklynite—is stuck inside. But her newly awakened sexual desire and lust for a new life refuse to be contained. Leaning on her best friend Lulu to show her the ropes, Rachel dips a toe in the online dating world, leading to park dates with younger men, flirtations with beautiful women, and actual, in-person sex. None of them, individually, are perfect . . . hence her rotation. But what if one person could perfectly cater to all her emotional needs?

Twenty-year-old Sibel thought she had concrete plans for the summer. She would care for her grandmother in Istanbul, visit her father's grave, and study for the MCAT. Instead, she finds herself watching Turkish soap operas and self-diagnosing her own possible chronic illness with the four humors theory of ancient medicine. Also on Sibel's mind: her blond American boyfriend who accompanies her to Turkey; her energetic but distraught younger sister; and her devoted grandmother, who, Sibel comes to learn, carries a harrowing secret.

A new species has jumped into the Sol system for a quick look, leading the Stryx to assign humans to the greeting mission. Dorothy and Kevin leave on a trading mission in his new ship, bringing the dog, and Samuel and Vivian start at the Open University.

Ein Date, das höllisch schiefläuft, der nie vergessene Ex taucht auf, und dann mischt sich noch die lästige Familie ein … Dumm gelaufen! Meddelin Chan bringt versehentlich ihr Blind Date um, das ihre übergriffige Mutter für sie organisiert hat. Um die Leiche loszuwerden, bleibt Meddy nichts anderes, als ihre ebenso übergriffigen Tanten zu Hilfe zu rufen. Blöd nur, dass der Tote ausgerechnet bei einer Mega-Hochzeit landet, organisiert von der Hochzeitsagentur ihrer Familie. Als dann noch Nathan auftaucht, Meddys große (EX-)Liebe, wird das Chaos infernalisch.

In 1962 a pregnant girl staggers into a health clinic, gives birth, and flees. A foster family takes the baby in, and an unlikely couple, their lives unspooling from the recent death of their infant, adopts her. Forty years and many secrets and lies later, Cheri Matzner is all grown up and falling apart. Ironic and fierce, she's a former cop turned disgruntled academic, a frustrated wife trying to get pregnant, an iconoclastic daughter bearing war wounds from her dysfunctional family.