Literary Humor

Amid the cactus wilds some two hundred miles from Hollywood lies a privileged oasis called Desert D'Or. It is a place for starlets and would-be starlets, directors, studio execs, and the well-groomed lowlifes who cater to them. And, as imagined by Norman Mailer in this blistering classic of 1950s Hollywood, Desert D'Or is a moral proving ground, where men and women discover what they really want - and how far they are willing to go to get it.

Grammy Nominee for Best Spoken Word Album
Mirabelle, the "shopgirl" behind the glove counter at Neiman Marcus, is slightly lost, off-kilter, and shy. But there's something about Mirabelle. Steve Martin reads this charming novella. Hear an interview with the author and browse more Martin.

Harry Christmas is unable to cope with the death of his wife and has been bouncing from one bad decision to the next. After a terrifying assault by the son of a woman he has conned, he makes up his mind to leave the country. Now Harry Christmas is on the run.

Morris Duckworth teaches English to the pampered rich of Verona, and Morris is not pleased. Living a meager existence in a squalid apartment, he regards his privileged students with envy and disdain, first wreaking revenge by petty theft and then, like all good criminals, graduating to grander larceny. When one of those students, a beautiful but vapid heiress named Massimina, falls in love with him, Morris can almost smell upward mobility.

Morris Duckworth can't get over Massimina, or Mimi, as he likes to refer to her. But then, he should have thought of that before he kidnapped and killed her. Only now, living in Verona and married to Mimi's sister, does he appreciate how much he misses her and how blindly he has stumbled into a trap of fate. Struggling to adjust to his good fortune, with a lavish house and cushy job, our unsavory hero finds that his new success is rife with tribulation: not least his pushy bride's staggering sexual appetite.

An old house, a new lover, a fresh life for Dominick - or will the faith-driven doom it all? The past just won't go away. Dominick likes to idle there in history's comfortable remove, but when his mother dies and he meets the half sister he never knew he had, the past becomes more personal - and the present more dangerous. Dominick's perpetual peregrinations are interrupted by a visit to his newfound sibling's historic Hudson Valley estate, which is also home to a Wiccan coven.

Tiller is an average American college student with a good heart but minimal aspirations. Pong Lou is a larger-than-life, wildly creative Chinese American entrepreneur who sees something intriguing in Tiller beyond his bored exterior and takes him under his wing. When Pong brings him along on a boisterous trip across Asia, Tiller is catapulted from ordinary young man to talented protégé, and pulled into a series of ever more extreme and eye-opening experiences that transform his view of the world, of Pong, and of himself.

Best-selling author Gary Shteyngart’s exquisite fiction is met with a level of critical acclaim reserved for the very best in the field. In this startlingly provocative work, Russian immigrant Vladimir Girshkin searches for love and self-identity while interacting with a quirky set of acquaintances.

Everyone wants a comfortable place to die, and Kingsley Amis’s characters have found it in Tuppeny-happeny Cottage, where assorted septuagenarians have come together to see one another out the door of life. Ending Up is a grimly hilarious dance of death, full of bickering, bitching, backstabbing, drinking (of course), and idiocy of all sorts. It is a book about dying people and about a dying England, clinging to its memories of greatness as it succumbs to terminal decay.

Samuel Pickwick, founder and chairman of the Pickwick Club, engages three fellow members to accompany him on a journey. By coach they’ll travel to the outreaches of London to explore, observe, and report back on the quaint wonders of the English countryside. What transpires is a picaresque romp of misadventures, hair-raising challenges, and romantic follies entangling the fates of a riot of colorful characters - a passel of villains, spinsters, poets, and sportsmen - and the unworldly Pickwick himself, who has much to learn about life outside his gentleman’s club.

This is the tale of the happy but ill-fated Candide and his progressive disillusionment with the idea that we live in the best of all possible worlds. His tutor, Dr. Pangloss, embodies this philosophy of good cheer, even in the face of ever more absurd misfortunes. Luckily, Candide's other companions provide an over-supply of good sense.

New York Times best-selling author Bruce Wagner is also a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and a notable contributor to the New Yorker and Vanity Fair. With Dead Stars, Wagner delivers uproarious and sharply critical views on the sex- and money-obsessed world of Hollywood through the story of Telma, a 13-year-old girl who’s also the world’s youngest breast cancer survivor. A regular at pink-tie charity events and private lunches, Telma has come to enjoy her fame—so she’s not pleased to learn another young girl is about to break her record.

Reclusive literary legend M. M. "Mimi" Banning has been holed up in her Bel Air mansion for years. But after falling prey to a Bernie Madoff-style Ponzi scheme, she's flat broke. Now Mimi must write a new book for the first time in decades, and to ensure the timely delivery of her manuscript, her New York publisher sends an assistant to monitor her progress. The prickly Mimi reluctantly complies - with a few stipulations: no Ivy Leaguers or English majors. Must drive, cook, tidy. Computer whiz. Good with kids.

Twenty-four-year-old Megan may have her whole life ahead of her, but it already feels like a dead end, thanks to her dreadful job as a gastroenterologist's receptionist and her heart-clogging resentment of the success and happiness of everyone around her. But no one stokes Megan's bitterness quite like her coworker, Jillian, a grotesquely optimistic, 35-year-old single mother whose chirpy positivity obscures her mounting struggles.

In her best-selling debut, Commencement, J. Courtney Sullivan explored the complicated and contradictory landscape of female friendship. Now, in her highly anticipated second novel, Sullivan takes us into even richer territory. For the Kellehers, Maine is a place where children run in packs, showers are taken outdoors, and old Irish songs are sung around a piano. By turns wickedly funny and achingly sad, Maine unveils the sibling rivalry, alcoholism, social climbing, and Catholic guilt at the center of one family, along with the abiding, often irrational love that keeps them coming back....

Twelve-year-old Elvis Babbitt has a head for the facts: she knows science proves yellow is the happiest color, she knows a healthy male giraffe weighs about 3,000 pounds, and she knows that the naked mole rat is the longest living rodent. She knows she should plan to grieve her mother, who has recently drowned while sleepwalking, for exactly 18 months. But there are things Elvis doesn't yet know—like how to keep her sister Lizzie from poisoning herself while sleep-eating or why her father has started wearing her mother's silk bathrobe around the house.

These 14 stories, which have appeared in The New Yorker, GQ, Harper's, McSweeney's, and Playboy, display Boyle's imaginative muscle, emotional sensitivity, and astonishing range. Here you will find the whimsical tales for which Boyle is famous, including "The Kind Assassin", about a radio shock jock who sets the world record for most continuous hours without sleep.

Literary agent Barbara Ragg has agreed to represent a man writing a book about his experiences hanging out with the Abominable Snowman. Terence Moongrove’s residence has become the target of New Age cosmologists. And pint-sized terrier Freddie de la Hay is being recruited by MI6 to infiltrate a Russian spy ring.

It seems the universe itself is conspiring against the residents of Corduroy Mansions, as they all find themselves struggling with their nearest and dearest. Oedipus Snark’s mother, Berthea, is still at work on her scathing biography of her son—the only loathsome Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament; literary agents Rupert Porter and Barbara Ragg are still battling each other for first crack at the manuscript of Autobiography of a Yeti; and fine arts graduate Caroline Jarvis is busy exploring the blurry line between friendship and romance....

The description of his ancestral seat as an earthly Paradise would, at present, have struck its proprietor as ironical, full as it was with unwanted and troublesome inhabitants. What Lord Elmsworth needed above all was a rugged ally at his side to remove from Blandings its superfluous guests, leaving him in peace to tend to his beloved pig, Empress of Blandings. However, when Lord Ickenham is on a sweetness-and-light-spreading expedition, there's always apt to be trouble.