Literary Humor

Mona is 26 and cleans houses for a living in Taos, New Mexico. She moved there mostly because of a bad boyfriend - a junkie named Mr. Disgusting, long story - and her efforts to restart her life since haven’t exactly gone as planned. For one thing, she’s got another bad boyfriend. This one she calls Dark, and he happens to be married to one of Mona’s clients. He also might be a little unstable. Dark and his wife aren’t the only complicated clients on Mona’s roster, either.

LOVE, DISHONOR, MARRY, DIE, CHERISH, PERISH leaps cities and decades as Rakoff sings the song of an America whose freedoms can be intoxicating, or brutal. The characters' lives are linked to each other by acts of generosity or cruelty.

Uncle Fred, or to give him his full title: Fredrick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, fifth Earl of Ickenham, is considered by some as a "splendid gentleman, a sportsman to his fingertips". Mr Twistleton, nephew to Earl, and otherwise known as "Pongo" to his friends, has a differing view. He simply describes his uncle as "being loopy to the tonsils".

When Elizabeth Gilbert's story collection Pilgrims first appeared in 1997, it immediately announced her compelling voice, her comic touch, and her amazing ear for dialogue. Brave and unforgettable, the heroes of Pilgrims are sure to strike a chord with fans old and new.

“Begins here first account of operative me, agent number 67 on arrival Midwestern American airport greater _____ area. Flight _____. Date _____. Priority mission top success to complete. Code name: Operation Havoc.” Thus speaks Pygmy, one of a handful of young adults from a totalitarian state sent to the United States, disguised as exchange students, to live with typical American families and blend in, all the while planning an unspecified act of massive terrorism.

For Arthur Less, life is going surprisingly well: he is a moderately accomplished novelist in a steady relationship with his partner, Freddy Pelu. But nothing lasts: the death of an old lover and a sudden financial crisis has Less running away from his problems yet again as he accepts a series of literary gigs that send him on a zigzagging adventure across the US. We cannot, however, escape ourselves—even across deserts, bayous, and coastlines. From his strained relationship with Freddy to confronting his privilege, Arthur Less must eventually face his personal demons.

Jeeves and Wooster never disappoint on audio and these unabridged stories are of course no exception. Wodehouse/Jarvis deliver another excellent audio collection featuring all your favourite characters, not forgetting our intrepid duo of course! Full Story Listings: 1. Jeeves and the Impending Doom, 2. The Inferiority Complex of Old Sippy, 3. Jeeves and the Yule-Tide Spirit, 4. Jeeves and the Song of Songs, 5. Episode of the Dog McIntosh, and 6. The Spot of Art

Today’s most revered, feared, and controversial Chinese novelist offers a tour de force in which the real, the absurd, the comical, and the tragic are blended into a fascinating narrative. The hero—or antihero—of Mo Yan’s new novel is Ximen Nao, a landowner known for his benevolence to his peasants. His story is a deliriously unique journey and absolutely riveting tale that reveals the author’s love of a homeland beset by ills inevitable, political, and traditional.

New York Times best-selling author Mark Kurlansky has turned the seemingly ordinary (salt, the year 1968, the humble cod fish) into some of the most enthralling nonfiction ever written. Now this gifted writer delivers an engrossing and long-awaited first novel.

David Foster Wallace made an art of taking readers into places no other writer even gets near. In his exuberantly acclaimed collection, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, he combines hilarity and an escalating disquiet in stories that astonish, entertain, and expand our ideas of the pleasures that fiction can afford.

Meet Rose Feller. She's 30 years old and a high-powered attorney with a secret passion for romance novels. She dreams of a man who will slide off her glasses, gaze into her eyes, and tell her that she's beautiful. She also dreams of getting her fantastically screwed-up little sister to get her life. together. Meet Rose's sister, Maggie. Twenty-eight years old, drop-dead gorgeous and only occasionally employed. Although her dreams of big-screen stardom haven't progressed, Maggie dreams of fame and fortune - and of getting her dowdy big sister to stick to a skin-care regime.

It's New Year's Eve, the holiday of forced fellowship, mandatory fun, and paper hats. While dining out with her husband and their friends, Kirshenbaum's protagonist - an acerbic, mordantly witty, and clinically depressed writer - fully unravels. Propelled by stand-up comic timing and rife with pinpoint insights, Kirshenbaum examines what it means to be unloved and loved, to succeed and fail, to be at once impervious and raw. Rabbits for Food shows how art can lead us out of - or into - the depths of disconsolate loneliness and piercing grief.

Set in Ireland just after World War II, The Ginger Man is J. P. Donleavy's wildly funny, picaresque classic novel of the misadventures of Sebastian Dangerfield, a young American ne'er-do-well studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Dangerfield's appetite for women, liquor, and general roguishness is insatiable - and he satisfies it with endless charm.

Alan Blair, the hero of Wake Up, Sir!, is a young, loony writer with numerous problems of the mental, emotional, sexual, spiritual, and physical variety. He's very good at problems. But luckily for Alan, he has a personal valet named Jeeves, who does his best to sort things out for his troubled master. And Alan does find trouble wherever he goes.

Georgie Sinclair’s husband has walked out and work is getting her down. So when she spots Mrs Shapiro, an eccentric old neighbour, rummaging through her skip in the middle of the night, it’s just the distraction she needs. And although they mistrust each other at first a firm friendship is formed. Then Mrs Shapiro is admitted to hospital and, to Georgie’s surprise, she is named as her next of kin.

Actor Matthew McConaughey descends into a surreal desert of the soul, an admirer of Miley Cyrus performs a 3,000-word sentence in defense of his passion, an aging porn star dons a dinosaur costume to film the sex scene of a lifetime, and Leonard Cohen shills for Subway: these mercurial and wildly varied stories explode the conventions of short fiction.

When Graham Cavanaugh divorced his first wife, it was to marry his girlfriend, Audra, a woman as irrepressible as she is spontaneous and fun. But, Graham learns, life with Audra can also be exhausting, constantly interrupted by chatty phone calls, picky-eater houseguests, and invitations to weddings of people he's never met. Audra firmly believes that through the sheer force of her personality, she can overcome the most socially challenging interactions.

The little old lady is back! This time, Martha Andersson and her friends - the League of Pensioners - have left behind their dreary care home in Stockholm and are enjoying the bright lights of Las Vegas. This is their opportunity for a new lease of life and they plan to make the most of it. But before long, they are up to their old tricks and with ingenious tactics, a pair of false teeth and a wheelchair each, they plot to outwit the security system at one of the casinos.

The Waiter takes place entirely in a restaurant where everything from the menu to the cutlery is carefully thought out. Our narrator is a middle-aged waiter who takes pride in the classic and unchangeable aspects of his job....

Anatomie d'un mariage et d'une famille - les Berglund -, ce livre analyse les illusions, les déceptions et les compromis d'une génération de baby-boomers qui avaient rêvé un jour de changer le monde. Mais c'est aussi un acte d'accusation implacable à l'égard d'une nation qui a cessé depuis longtemps d'incarner ses propres valeurs. Qu'avons-nous fait de notre liberté ?, se demandent les personnages de Jonathan Franzen.