Literary Humor

Topper is a hilarious, ribald comedy about a mild-mannered bank manager and two capricious ghosts, George and Marion Kerby, who make it their mission to rescue Topper from the drab "summer of suburban Sundays" that is his life.

Set at the fag-end of the 60s at the moment when Swinging London is starting to take on a darker hue in the wake of Charles Manson's murders, and framed as a novel within a novel published by a seedy Piccadilly-based publisher of pulp fiction, Man-Eating Typewriter is a homage to the great oulipo experiments in fiction. It is the story of a psychopath called Raymond Novak and his untimely demise told entirely in 'polari' - a language developed and used mainly amongst the metropolitan homosexual community in the time when being gay was still a criminal offence.

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".

Edward St. Aubyn's Patrick Melrose novels were some of the most celebrated works of fiction of the past decade. Ecstatic praise came from a wide range of admirers, from literary superstars such as Zadie Smith, Francine Prose, Jeffrey Eugenides, and Michael Chabon to pop-culture icons such as Anthony Bourdain and January Jones. Now St. Aubyn returns with a hilariously smart send-up of a certain major British literary award in this witty audiobook.

A bag of money drops out of the sky, literally, into the path of a cash-starved citizen named Graveyard. He carries it home to his wife, Ambience, and they embark on the adventure of their lives, finally able to have everything they've always thought they deserved: cars, guns, games, jewels, clothes - and of course sex, travel, and time with friends and family. There is no limit except their imagination and the hours in the day, and even those seem to be subject to their control. Of course, the owner of the bag is searching for it, and will do whatever is necessary to get it back.

When headhunter Fabrice Valantine faces a smoking ban at work, he decides to undertake a course of hypnotherapy to rid himself of the habit. At first the treatment works, but his stress levels begin to rise when he is passed over for an important promotion and he finds himself lighting up again - but with none of his previous enjoyment. Then he discovers something terrible: he accidentally causes a man's death, and needing a cigarette to calm his nerves, he enjoys it more than any other previous smoke.

It’s the end of summer 2003. George W. Bush has recently declared the mission in Iraq accomplished, the unemployment rate is at its highest in years, and Martha Stewart has just been indicted for insider trading. Meanwhile, somewhere in the Midwest, Troy Augustus Loudermilk (fair-haired, statuesque, charismatic) and his companion Harry Rego (definitely none of those things) arrive at America’s most prestigious creative-writing program, to which Loudermilk has recently been accepted for his excellence in poetry. Loudermilk, however, has never written a poem in his life.

Abraham Koyfman is a widower of nine months. He works from home selling subliminal self-help tapes for a questionable doctor he found in an ad in the back of a magazine. His meager retirement is enough now that he's alone and Abraham is ready to quit his job - a task proving to be difficult due to the company's tactics. The combination of grief and the lack of empathy from his adult children have him ready to quit life, also.

Dr. Frederick Eichner, world-renowned dermatologist, is visited by the entrancingly irritating Felix Treevly who comes to him as a patient and stays as an obsession. Prosaic incidents blossom into bizarre developments with the sharpened reality of dreams as the spectral Mr. Treevly leads the doctor into a series of increasingly weird situations. With the assistance of a drunken private detective, a mad judge, a car crash, a game show called What’s My Disease, and a hashish party, Treevly drives Eichner to madness and mayhem.

Aaron thinks genre fiction is an affront to the fiction-writing craft. He often quotes the essayist Arthur Krystal, who says literary fiction "melts the frozen sea inside of us". Ironically Aaron doesn't seem to realize that he's emotionally frozen. The vivacious Laurie, lover of flamingo-patterned attire and all things hot pink, is the one person who might be capable of melting him.

Después de Condenada, Chuck Palahniuk nos trae de vuelta a Madison Spencer, la adolescente muerta más vivaracha y mordaz del inframundo, en una aventura que la llevará a luchar contra el mismísimo diablo. Me llamo Madison Desert Flower Rosa Parks Coyote Trickster Spencer, y soy un fantasma. En otras palabras: ¡Bu! Tengo trece años y un poco de sobrepeso. En otras palabras: estoy muerta y encima gorda.

After years of exploitation, neglect, and despair, the animals of Manor Farm revolt. They drive owner Mr. Jones off the land and rechristen the property Animal Farm, a utopia of equality and mutual support. But Napoleon, a young boar who assumes command after the rebellion, is hungry for power. And as the pigs consolidate control, all the good intentions of Animal Farm are crushed by a new and inevitable tyranny.

With this sharp and witty debut collection, author Kate Doyle captures precisely that time of life when so many young women are caught in between, pre-occupied by nostalgia for past relationships—with friends, roommates, siblings—while trying to move forward into an uncertain future.

Miles Platting is pulled from the ruins of a shipwreck into a world in which no one will speak to him. The founder of Lingua Franca - a naming-rights agency committed to renaming every UK town after a corporate sponsor - Miles recounts the story of his quest for linguistic supremacy to anyone who'll listen. Confined to his hospital bed in a deathly quiet ward, Miles seeks to find his colleagues and reunite with his true love. But in doing so, Miles must confront his deepest held convictions and consider what's in a name in a world where the spoken word has been replaced with silence.

AVA : 22 ans, mal dans sa peau, récemment installée à Hong Kong. Enseigne la grammaire anglaise à de riches écoliers pour un salaire de misère, a un fort accent irlandais et déteste ses colocataires. JULIAN : Banquier. Anglais. Cynique. Aime plutôt bien Ava, la couvre de cadeaux et lui propose très vite de s'installer dans la chambre d'amis de son luxueux appartement de fonction. EDITH : Ambitieuse et brillante. Avocate. Rencontre Ava alors que Julian est à l'étranger. Et c'est là que tout devient plus excitant.

Sous le coup d'une déception amoureuse, Sofia a quitté Paris pour son petit village natal de la côte amalfitaine. Là, la jeune traductrice respire enfin. Attablée à sa place habituelle, sur la terrasse du Mamma Maria, le bonheur est simple comme un espresso au soleil ou une chanson d'Adriano Celentano... Ce caffè, c'est le cœur du village, le rendez-vous des jeunes, des vieux, dans le généreux giron de la patronne, Maria, leur mère à tous.

Make friends,” the A.I. said. Gemini Fowler did. Now, the stakes have been raised, and Gemini is irate. Stripped of his gear and returned to the village where it all started, he must follow a long road filled with peril and quests to level up and recover the companion he lost. Soon, he’ll see Enora is much more than a dark forest, and his adventure has hardly begun. Can he reach Roshan before the mysterious governor’s men arrive at the tyrant’s stronghold and she is lost to him forever?

Brightness Falls isn't just the name of the TV show that womanizing man-child Andrew Ware has been painstakingly creating for the last couple years, it's also his hometown. A town that he loves as much as he hates. By request of no one, Andrew returns home to help his sister separate from her husband, only to become sidetracked by a beautiful woman. A few drinks and few compliments later the woman is dead, killed in a tragic oral sex accident. In which Andrew would have lost his own life if it weren’t for the dapperly dressed, antler-headed, human skeleton named Doug.

When Nolan Grey receives news that his father, a once-prominent biologist, has drowned off Leap's Island, he calls on Elsa, his estranged, older half-sister, to help pick up the pieces. This, despite the fact that it was he and Elsa who broke the family in the first place. The Greys have been avoiding each other for a dozen years. Elsa and Nolan travel to their father's field station, a wild and isolated spot off the Gulf Coast.