Literary Humor

Written in 1923 and originally published in France, The Great American Novel examines the impossibility of writing such work in America. Williams not only writes the novel with poetic satire and pathos but allows us into his writing process, as he strives to define a young America at the end of a World War and the beginning of the “Roaring ‘20s”.

There's no one like Etgar Keret. His stories take place at the crossroads of the fantastical, searing, and hilarious. His characters grapple with parenthood and family, war and games, marijuana and cake, memory and love. These stories never go to the expected place, but always surprise, entertain, and move.... In "Arctic Lizard", a young boy narrates a post-apocalyptic version of the world where a youth army wages an unending war, rewarded by collecting prizes. A father tries to shield his son from the inevitable in "Fly Already".

It is 1940. France has fallen, and only a narrow strip of sea lies between Great Britain and invasion. The war could go either way, and everyone must do their bit. Young copywriter Catrin Cole is drafted into the Ministry of Information to help write women into propaganda films - something that the men aren't very good at. She is quickly seconded to the ministry's latest endeavor: a heartwarming tale of bravery and rescue at Dunkirk. It's all completely fabricated, of course, but what does that matter when the nation's morale is at stake?

In Killing Monica Bushnell spoofs and skewers her way through pop culture, celebrity worship, fame, and even the meaning of life itself when a famous writer must resort to faking her own death in order to get her life back from her most infamous creation - Monica. With her trademark wit and style, Killing Monica is Bushnell's sharpest, funniest book to date.

This wickedly fun debut is a stunning reinvention of the myth of Narcissus as a modern novel of manners, about two young, well-heeled couples whose parallel lives intertwine over the course of a summer, by a sharp new voice in fiction.

When aspiring novelist Christopher Flinders drops out of university to write his masterpiece (in between shifts as a fish delivery man and builder's mate), his family is sceptical. But when he is taken up by the London editor Owen Goddard and his charming wife, Diana, it seems success is just around the corner. Christopher's life has so far been rather short of charm - growing up in an unlovely suburb, with unambitious parents and a semi-vagrant brother - and he is captivated by his generous and cultured mentors.

Jane falls in love with Duncan easily. He is charming, good-natured, and handsome, but unfortunately, he has also slept with nearly every woman in Boyne City, Michigan. Jane sees Duncan's old girlfriends everywhere—at restaurants, at the grocery store, even three towns away. While Jane may be able to come to terms with dating the world's most prolific seducer of women, she wishes she did not have to share him quite so widely.

Now middle-aged, Meadows seeks out his former captors in their civilian lives to help him bury his son, a Marine killed in Iraq, in Arlington National Cemetery. When he learns that the authorities have told him a lie about the circumstances of his son's death, he decides, with the help of the two others, to transport him home to Portsmouth. And so begins the journey, centered around a solemn mission, but, as in the first book, a protest against injustice and celebration of life, too, at once irreverent, funny, profane, and deeply moving.

From mingling with tabloid millionaires to trading favours and fortunes with royalty, she will stop at nothing to reach the top of the career ladder at the Mercury newspaper. Landing scoop after scoop, Becky ruthlessly carves a place for herself in a society determined to ignore her. These are the biggest stories and scandals of the decade, and she has something to do with every one of them. But Becky may have more in common with the people she writes about than she thinks – what takes a lifetime to build takes only a moment to destroy...

Mr. Palomar, whose name purposely evokes that of the famous telescope, is a seeker after knowledge, a visionary in a world sublime and ridiculous. Whether contemplating a cheese, a woman's breasts, or a gorilla's behavior, he brings us a vision of a world familiar by consensus, fragmented by the burden of individual perception.

In You Will Never Be Forgotten, Mary South explores how technology can both collapse our relationships from within and provide opportunities for genuine connection. Formally inventive, darkly absurdist, savagely critical of the increasingly fraught cultural climates we inhabit, these 10 stories also find hope in fleeting interactions and moments of tenderness. They reveal our grotesque selfishness and our intense need for love and acceptance, and the psychic pain that either shuts us off or allows us to discover our deepest reaches of empathy.

Off the coast of Maine, Ruth Thomas is born into a feud fought for generations by two groups of local lobstermen over fishing rights for the waters that lie between their respective islands. At 18, she has returned from boarding school - smart as a whip, feisty, and irredeemably unromantic - determined to throw over her education and join the "stern men" working the lobster boats.

From the double Man Booker Prize-winner, a savagely funny tale that revisits the characters from the much-loved Every Day is Mother’s Day. Muriel Axon is about to re-enter the lives of Colin Sidney and Isabel Field. It is ten years since her last tangle with them, but for Muriel this is not time enough. There are still scores to be settled, truths to be faced and vengeance to be wreaked.

"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.

Therapist Victoria Vick is contacted by a cryptic, unlikable man who insists his situation is unique and unfathomable. Vick becomes convinced that he suffers from a complex set of delusions: Y__, as she refers to him, claims to be a scientist who has stolen cloaking technology from an aborted government project in order to render himself nearly invisible. Unsure of his motives or honesty, Vick becomes obsessed with her patient....

It is an April day in the year 2000 and an era is about to end, those booming times of market optimism when the culture boiled with money and corporations seemed more vital and influential than governments.

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....

Severely lacking in sleep from a recent bout of marathon investigative work, all Flynn wants is a proper night's rest. Unfortunately, at the early morning summons of his frantic daughter, he's off to the cemetery to rescue her young friend who's in quite a peculiar bind. And as the day progresses, a curious collection of puzzling cases fall into Flynn's lap, each one stranger and more urgent than the last. Buried secrets and dark motives come to light as he races to solve each crime and bring these seemingly disconnected matters to a full and complete case closed.

When the university merged his Department of Linguistics with English, Professor Desmond Bates took early retirement, but he is not enjoying it. But his daily discontent is nothing compared to the affliction of hearing loss, which is a constant source of domestic friction and social embarrassment. In the popular imagination, he observes, deafness is comic, as blindness is tragic, but for the deaf person himself it is no joke.

April Epner teaches high school Latin, wears flannel jumpers, and is used to having her evenings free. Bernice Graverman brandishes designer labels, favors toad-sized earrings, and hosts her own tacky TV talk show: Bernice G! But behind the glitz and glam, Bernice has followed the life of the daughter she gave up for adoption 36 years ago. Now that she's got her act together, she's aiming to be a mom like she always knew she could. And she's hurtling straight for April's quiet little life....