Literary Humor

Isabel Walker has flown to Paris to offer moral support for Roxy, her pregnant stepsister. Roxy's husband, Charles-Henri, favorite son of a powerful French family, is having a love affair. Divorce seems imminent. When her entire family arrives to help with legal issues, Isabel feels intense pressure to keep everything from falling apart. And in the background, the unstable husband of Charles-Henri's lover lurks menacingly.

Once upon a time four aspiring authors met at their very first writers' conference. Ten years later they're still friends, survivors of the ultra-competitive New York publishing world. Mallory St. James is a workaholic whose best sellers support a lavish lifestyle. Tanya Mason is a single mother juggling two jobs, two kids, and too many deadlines. Faye Truett is the wife of a famous televangelist and the author of inspirational romances: No one would ever guess her explosive secret.

Now a Lifetime original movie “Sex and the City meets Moonstruck…this first in a new trilogy from Trigiani is sly, sensual and dripping in style.” —People Poignant, funny, warm, and red hot, Very Valentine is a wonderful treat for Adriana Trigiani fans—a “delightful” (Boston...

"A stranger could drive through Miguel Street and just say 'Slum!' because he could see no more." But to its residents, this derelict corner of Trinidad's capital is a complete world, where everybody is quite different from everybody else. In this tender, funny early novel, V. S. Naipaul renders their lives (and the legends their neighbors construct around them) with Dickensian verve and Chekhovian compassion.

For every woman trying to strike that impossible balance between work and home-and pretending that she has-and for every woman who has wanted to hurl the acquaintance who coos admiringly, "Honestly, I just don't know how you do it," out a window, here's a novel to make you cringe with...

London Fields by Martin Amis is a forthcoming title from Farrar, Straus and Giroux...

Taking its title from a group of stories that begin the book, Bream Gives Me Hiccups moves from contemporary LA to the dorm rooms of an American college to ancient Pompeii, throwing the listener into a universe of social misfits, reimagined scenes from history, and ridiculous overreactions. In one piece a tense email exchange between a young man and his girlfriend is taken over by the man's sister, who is obsessed with the Bosnian genocide ("The situation reminds me of a little historical blip called the Karadordevo agreement").

Winner of the Ottawa Book Award Finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award A Globe and Mail Notable Book of the Year A Quill & Quire Top Five Canadian Fiction Book of the Year A Maclean’s Top Ten Book of the Year Elizabeth Hay’s runaway national bestseller is a funny, sad-eyed...

With The Last Days of California, Mary Miller bursts into the literary world, taking up the mantle of Southern fiction and rendering it her own with wry vulnerability and contemporary urgency. Miller’s revelatory protagonist, Jess, is fourteen years old and waiting for the world to end. Her evangelical father has packed up the family and left their Montgomery home to drive west to California, hoping to save as many souls as possible before the Second Coming.

It's all here: the story of how Robin lost his birthright as the King's Ranger at Locksley, his archery feats at Nottingham, the outlaws' war with the Sheriff, Robin's pursuit of Marian, and many tales of bravery, rescue, laughter and rivalry with Little John, Friar Tuck, Allan-a-Dale, Much the Miller, Will Scarlett, and all the others.Now you can have this incomparable story read to you, in a gripping full stereo audio book. The story is adapted from the Paul Creswick text. It is faithful to the entire original story.

Thirty-two-year-old actor Stephen C. McQueen (no, not that Steve McQueen) is waiting for his big break. His only screen credits so far are playing dead bodies on cop and doctor shows. At the moment, he's paying the rent by understudying hot movie star Josh Harper, who's trying to gain dramatic credibility in a West End play. If only Josh would miss a performance, Stephen-with-a-P-H could prove his talent and redeem himself in the eyes of his disapproving ex-wife and their precocious seven-year-old daughter.

Aisling is 28 and she’s a complete...Aisling. She lives at home in Ballygobbard (or Ballygobackwards, as some gas tickets call it) with her parents and commutes to her good job at PensionsPlus in Dublin. Aisling goes out every Saturday night with her best friend, Majella, who is a bit of a hames (she’s lost two phones already this year - Aisling has never lost a phone). They love hoofing into the Coors Light if they’re 'Out' or the vodka and Diet Cokes if they’re 'Out Out'.

The time is the early '80s. The characters go to the same schools and eat at the same restaurants. Their voices enfold us as seamlessly as those of DJs heard over a car radio. They have sex with the same boys and girls and buy from the same dealers. In short, they are connected in the only way people can be in that city.

"All I want is to be a success.That's all I ask." Joe fails to sell a single set of the Encyclopedia Britannica in six months. Then he fails to sell a single Electrolux and must eat hundreds of pieces of homemade pie, served up by his would-be customers who feel so sorry for him. Holed up in his trailer, Joe finds an outlet his for frustrations in a series of ingenious sexual fantasies, and at last strikes gold. His brain storm, Lightning Rods, Inc., will take Joe to the very top - and to the very heart of corporate insanity.

Shortlisted for the 2024 Grand Prix du livre de Montréal Shortlisted for the 2025 Sunburst Award Longlisted for the 2025 Leacock Medal for Humour In a pre-apocalyptic world not unlike our own, a young Instagram poet starts an affair with a California billionaire who’s promised a time machine...

Dining alone in an elegant Parisian brasserie, accountant Daniel Mercier can hardly believe his eyes when President François Mitterrand sits down to eat at the table next to him. After the presidential party has gone, Daniel discovers that Mitterrand’s black felt hat has been left behind. After a few moments’ soul-searching, Daniel decides to keep the hat as a souvenir of an extraordinary evening. It’s a perfect fit, and as he leaves the restaurant Daniel begins to feel somehow...different.

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR The New York Times Book Review Publishers Weekly CrimeReads Book Riot A LibraryReads Pick The lives of two librarians become dangerously intertwined in this razor-sharp exploration of human nature and the lure of artistic obsession. No one knows Margo’s real...

Elynn est assez jeune pour avoir la vie devant elle. Pourtant, elle a souvent le sentiment que ses rêves sont de plus en plus loin derrière. Entre son couple qui végète et la réalité quotidienne de son métier d'infirmière, la jeune femme a l'impression de faire du sur-place dans un horizon sans intérêt. Comment en est-elle arrivée là ? Qu'est devenue l'enfant pleine d'envies qu'elle était ? Cherchant à bousculer sa routine, Elynn s'inscrit dans un club de sport.

“John Updike is the great genial sorcerer of American letters [and] The Witches of Eastwick [is one of his] most ambitious works. . . . [A] comedy of the blackest sort.”—The New York Times Book Review Toward the end of the Vietnam era, in a snug little Rhode Island seacoast town, wonderful...

Strange things are happening at Belpher Castle. For starters, the Earl's sister is intent on pairing off her stepson, Reggie, and niece, Lady Patricia (known as Maud). Maud, however, is in hot pursuit of Geoffrey Raymond, and she is also being pursued by the unacceptable composer, George Bevan.