Satire Comedy

As he did in the award-winning One Part Woman, in his newest novel, The Story of a Goat, Perumal Murugan explores a side of India that is rarely considered in the West: the rural lives of the country’s farming community. He paints a bucolic yet sometimes menacing portrait, showing movingly how danger and deception can threaten the lives of the weakest through the story of a helpless young animal lost in a world it naively misunderstands.

In "Center of the Universe", God struggles to balance the demands of his career with the needs of his long-term girlfriend. In "Magical Mr. Goat", a young girl's imaginary friend yearns to become more than friends. In "Unprotected", an unused prophylactic recalls his years spent trapped inside a teen boy's wallet. The stories in Simon Rich's new audiobook are bizarre, funny, and yet...relatable. Rich explores love's many complications--losing it, finding it, breaking it, and making it--and turns the ordinary into the absurd.

Hard Times is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book surveys English society and satirizes the social and economic conditions of the era. Hard Times is unusual in several ways. It is by far the shortest of Dickens's novels, barely a quarter of the length of those written immediately before and after it. Moreover, it is his only novel not to have scenes set in London. Instead, the story is set in the fictitious Victorian industrial Coketown, a generic Northern English mill-town.

What begins as an idyllic new society built for the freedom and equality of all who walk on four legs quickly becomes a nightmare. The cleverest animals take on more and more control while the hard working common animals are manipulated into doing all the work. Best intentions are twisted by the lure of power, and no animal is immune to the terrible consequences of its corrupting influence.

This is the story of Corey Fah, a writer who has hit the literary jackpot: their novel has just won the prize for the Fictionalization of Social Evils. But the actual trophy, and with it the funds, hovers peskily out of reach. Neon-beige, with UFO-like qualities, the elusive trophy leads Corey, with their partner Drew and eight-legged companion Bambi Pavok, on a spectacular quest through their childhood in the Forest and an unlikely stint on reality TV. Navigating those twin horrors, along with wormholes and time loops, Corey learns—the hard way—the difference between a prize and a gift.

In 1920s America, a plague is spreading fast. From New Orleans to Chicago to New York, the "Jes Grew" epidemic makes people desperate to dance, overturning social norms in the process. Anyone is vulnerable and when they catch it, they'll bump and grind into a frenzy. Working to combat the Jes Grew infection are the puritanical Atonists, a group bent on cultivating a "Talking Android", an African American who will infiltrate the unruly black communities and help crush the outbreak.

Nestled among Seattle's skyscrapers, The Zephyr Holdings Building is a bleak rectangle topped by an orange-and-black logo that gives no hint of Zephyr's business. Lack of clarity, it turns out, is Zephyr's defining characteristic. The floors are numbered in reverse. No one has ever seen the CEO or glimpsed his office on the first (i.e., top) floor. Yet every day people clip on their ID tags, file into the building, sit at their desks, and hope that they're not about to be outsourced.

Conversations with the Devil, Expansion is a thought-provoking collection of vignettes that delve deep into the complexities of the Human Condition. It is a powerful exploration of the human psyche, capturing the inner turmoil and conflicts we all face as human beings. As in this collections predecessor, the Devil is a central figure in each story, while the Main Characters vary. The Evil One herein is more like the Native American deity Old Man Coyote than the Satan from the Bible. Plus, he continues to be on Vacation, Paid Time Off, or doing Hellish Community Outreach.

It's been years since Swenson, a professor in a New England creative-writing program, has published a novel. It's been even longer since any of his students have shown promise. Enter Angela Argo, a pierced, tattooed student with a rare talent for writing. Angela is just the thing Swenson needs. Better yet, she wants his help. But, as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions....

The Drones club's in peril. Gussie's in love. Spode's on the warpath. Oh, and His Majesty's Government needs a favour. From the mean streets of Mayfair to the scheming spires of Cambridge we encounter a joyous cast of characters: chiselling painters and criminal bookies, eccentric philosophers and dodgy clairvoyants, appalling poets and pocket dictators, vexatious aunts and their vicious hounds. Replete with a Times crossword and classic Schottian endnotes, you have access to the most blissfully entertaining means to while away an idle hour.

Entries A-J. The Devil's Dictionary was begun in a weekly paper in 1881 and was continued in a desultory way at long intervals until 1906. The author hopes to be held guiltless by those to whom the work is addressed: enlightened souls who prefer dry wines to sweet, sense to sentiment, wit to humor, and clean English to slang.

For the past 13 years, as England became an increasingly unhappy and fearful place, Prince Charles has been living quietly on a bleak council estate with his wife and love of his life, Camilla. He enjoys gardening and poultry keeping while Camilla spends her days doing as little as possible. But life is about to change.

This is the story of the Bible told like you've very likely never heard it told before. The Bible is one the most highly regarded literary works of all time. A number one best seller before there even was such a thing, the Bible has long been the most purchased book in history. The problem is, however, that most people haven't actually read the book, and those who have don't really understand a very fundamental fact about the Bible. That fact being that the Bible is in all honesty, simply a very bad work of fiction.

Look, maybe you're a nice girl, but we're guessing you're more like us or you probably wouldn't have downloaded this audiobook. But being nice is just not the way to get what you want. And this audiobook is about getting what you want. Not in a finding happiness, giving back to the world, being grateful for what you have sort of way. But in a ruling your world, being the most desired, powerful badass in the room way, so you can come out on top of any situation: guys, career, friends, enemies, whatever.

Guy Grand, an eccentric billionaire prankster, is rich enough to do whatever he likes. And what he likes is to carefully execute projects where he can cauterize by ridicule what the rest of the world ignores: Complacency, greed, corruption, and idiocy. Determined to "make it hot for people," Grand spends his billions staging a series of hilarious, sometimes bewildering stunts, lampooning along the way the American holy cows of money, status, power, beauty, media, and stardom.

An early 20th Century tale about a booster & businessman who followed the standard program, deviated, and wished his son well in going his own way.

The novel begins in the decade of 1990s. The world had changed overnight. The wall of Berlin had vanished, and the great and mighty Soviet Union was vanishing. But in India, the report of the Mandal Commission was creating new frontiers. Meanwhile Advani started his rathyatra.

In the wake of her parents’ death, Aretha, a habitually single Black lawyer, has had only one obsession in life—success—until she falls for Aaron, a coffee entrepreneur. Moving into his Brooklyn brownstone to live along with his Hurricane Sandy-traumatized, illegal-gun-stockpiling, optimized-soy-protein-eating, bunker-building roommates, Aretha finds that her dreams of making partner are slipping away, replaced by an underground world, one of selling guns and training for a doomsday that’s maybe just around the corner.

Lionel Asbo, a terrifying yet weirdly loyal thug (self-named after England's notorious "Anti-Social Behaviour Order"), has always looked out for his ward and nephew, the orphaned Desmond Pepperdine. He provides him with fatherly career advice (always carry a knife, for example) and is determined they should share the joys of pit bulls (fed with lots of Tabasco sauce), Internet porn, and all manner of more serious criminality. Des, on the other hand, desires nothing more than books to read and a girl to love .

Hear Dickens' gift for social commentary in this classic story of the poor orphan, Oliver. In this time-tested classic, Dickens aimed to expose the filth of the London underworld as well as attack the inhumanity of the New Poor Law of 1834. This audiobook is a stunning performance by the award-winning Miriam Margolyes, who is considered one of the most knowledgeable and brilliant actors and interpreters of Dickens.