Satire Comedy

There are dozens of unforgettable characters, and scores of authentic scenes in Brandywine's War. From behind the headlines and the front-line dispatches has come this Rabelaisian novel. Chief Warrant Officer Vaughan completed Brandywine's War while serving his second of three tours of duty in Vietnam.

The Guild rules the kingdom through their puppet monarch, and Garran must race to save the last living heir to the throne before the powerful syndicate's assassins complete their extermination of anyone who could oppose them. Garran and Prince Adam Altena struggle to find allies in hopes of rescuing Adam's sister, who was forced to marry the usurper in order to prevent even the thought of rebellion, and raise an army capable of defeating The Guild.

From an acclaimed and original writer comes a new collection of stories bursting with absurdist plot twists and laced with trenchant wit. The title story delivers a cringingly biting dissection of racial attitudes in contemporary America, and Clarke also turns his eagle eye to subjects like PTSD, the fate of child actors, and, most especially, marital discord in stories like "Considering Lizzie Borden, Her Axe, My Wife" and "The Misunderstandings".

The author of the best-selling and award-winning Netherland now gives us his eagerly awaited, stunningly different new novel: a tale of alienation and heartbreak in Dubai. Distraught by a breakup with his long-term girlfriend, our unnamed hero leaves New York to take an unusual job in a strange desert metropolis. In Dubai at the height of its self-invention as a futuristic Shangri-la, he struggles with his new position as the "family officer" of the capricious and very rich Batros family.

Über Nacht vom erfolglosen Schauspieler zum Shootingstar, so ergeht es dem Helden in Ephraim Kishons neuem Roman. Der kometenhafte Aufstieg beschert ihm alles, wovon ein Mann nur träumen kann: Ruhm, Geld, Frauen. Doch wie alle bemitleidenswerten Glückspilze der heutigen Gesellschaft erlebt er nicht nur seine unaufhaltsame Selbstzerstörung, sondern auch die heitere Höllenfahrt eines immer chaotischer werdenden Privatlebens...

Holly Banks is on a desperate mission to have it all, but nothing in life goes according to plan. She’s quickly learning that keeping up with the Joneses is a full-time job, especially when the women of Primm, her new neighborhood, seem to have it together all the time. With her husband’s job in flux, her daughter’s difficulty with learning to read, and her mother’s new zest for dating, Holly’s life is already anything but picture perfect. Then her dog digs up an old artifact in the village center, and the mishap draws the attention of local media.

David’s up for a giggle when wild-card therapy client Bennett ropes him into running therapy sessions at a comedy conference. It should be a hoot, but nobody’s laughing when a conference attendee turns up dead, and veiled threats waft David’s way. Treading a fine line between self-preservation and sleuthing, David calls in his growing posse for backup and some questionable group improv.

It’s Belfast in 2019 and despite more than 20 years of peace, scores of so-called peace walls continue to separate Catholic and Protestant neighbourhoods. Jean Beattie’s grief turns to anger when police refuse to open the peace gate at the end of her street to allow her best friend’s funeral procession through to her church on the other side of the peace wall. The gate remains closed because local youths are recreational rioting. Comforted by her friends from the cross-community pensioners’ club, Jean vows the gate will be opened.

Shanahan's Stone is a tale about greed, vengeance, redemption, and love. So much history and mythology has become misinterpreted and altered over the years. Although modern day depictions describe leprechauns as little men dressed in green who hoard pots of gold, ancient Irish folklore depicted them quite differently. Shanahan's Stone breaks from these cliches and many other contemporary Irish stereotypes. It weaves an imaginative and unique story steeped in colorful Irish folklore.

Bryan LeBlanc worked his way up into a plum position on Wall Street as the boy genius of the foreign exchange desk. Surrounded by "the few, the proud, the completely full of themselves", he decides to give Wall Street a taste of its own medicine and hatches an intricate plan to disappear permanently with just enough misappropriated money - and sailing classes - to spend his golden years cruising the Caribbean. Bryan quickly learns that being a criminal, even a really smart one, is more complicated than he thought. He finds himself on the run in the Cayman Islands, wanted for murder.

We all know how Darth Vader shared his big secret with Luke Skywalker, but what if he had delivered the news in a handwritten note instead? And what if someone found that letter, as well as all of the drafts that landed in the Dark Lord’s trash can? In the riotously funny collection Dear Luke, We Need to Talk. Darth, John Moe finally reveals these lost notes alongside all the imagined letters, e-mails, text messages, and other correspondences your favorite pop culture icons never meant for you to see.

Peer ist Psychiater. Peer ist außerdem selbstverliebt, faul und unfähig noch dazu. Seine Patienten gehen ihm auf die Nerven, seine Kinder haben ihm längst jegliche Autorität abgesprochen und Kerstin, seine keifende Ehefrau, findet er zu fett. Peer ist ein Kotzbrocken dem es stets nur um das Eine geht, sein eigenes Wohlbefinden. Nachts steht er gern am Fenster des frisch bezogenen Reihenhauses.

How do terrible leaders become so incompetent? Have you ever had a boss that made you wonder how they ever got promoted when they are inept? Have you ever seen someone hired to lead an organization and they left it far worse than they found it? How did they become so poor with their leadership and management skills? In this hilarious and entertaining satire, we learn that terrible leaders and managers might have actually gone to school to learn how to be poor at leading employees and managing organizations.

Neulich sagte meine Frau zu mir: "Warum schreibst du nicht endlich mal was mit Niveau, ich würde gerne mal ein Panoptikum an Figuren, eine welthaltige, vielschichtige Romanhandlung, eine ausgebuffte Mischung aus Action und Reflexion, Gesellschaftskritik und psychologischer Tiefgang, vielleicht sogar auch eine raffiniert eingebaute Krimihandlung, meinetwegen gern auch mit ein bisschen geschmackvoll beschriebenem Sex gewürzt, von dir lesen, mach doch, du kannst das!" Und ich setzte mich an mein Notebook und schrieb: "Ich möchte Ihnen eine ziemlich unglaubliche Geschichte erzählen.

Spinning Karma is the story of Rinpoche Edward Schwartz, reluctant figurehead of Mind of Pure Enlightenment (MOPE), a once-popular New Age group whose current membership has sunk to an all-time low. In an ill-conceived effort to bring the group and its teachings back into the limelight, Schwartz heads to Taiwan to film a fake “religious oppression” video—starring a group of clueless language students who believe that they're taking part in an English conversation class.

Unceremoniously dumped by his fiancée, Mitch moves to London for what is to be an 18-month wild ride with bad decisions and extreme characters. While he's under siege by obnoxious bosses and maneuvering a barrage of advances from men and women of all ages, Mitch's intimate confessions and musings are simultaneously delightful and embarrassing. He may lack principles and have a complete disregard for consequences, and he's not easy to like - but he's entirely entertaining.

Professor Soren Pafko has made a life and career out of lying, conniving, manipulating, and abusing everyone in his path. So far, it’s working great: he’s Chair of his College’s Department of Comparative Literature; he’s leader of the local chapter of the Democratic Communists of America; and when he wants to cheat on his wife, he’s got his pick of women who think he’s the second coming of Che Guevara. But when he flunks local yokel Gus Dropo’s teenage son for a politically incorrect classroom comment, everything in Professor Pafko’s world begins to go hilariously wrong.

Eine uralte Prophezeiung, eine weltweite Verschwörung und ein ungleiches Ermittler-Duo im Wettlauf gegen skrupellose Bosse und irre Kleriker: "Mission Impossible" meets "Die nackte Kanone" - nur schlimmer! Weltweit verschwinden unter mysteriösen Umständen Frauen unter Sonnenbänken - was kaum jemand zur Kenntnis nimmt. Erst als der gefallene Investigativ-Journalist Michael Blohmquiz auf die Spur einer globalen Wirtschaftsverschwörung kommt, während zeitgleich der gefeierte Ornamentologe Richard Random den grausamen Mord an einem weltberühmten Physiker untersucht, kommen die Dinge ins Rollen.

Once upon a time in what was then reasonably Great Britain, there was a world in which the not too serious business of politics was practised without those people known today, nonsensically, as spin doctors, and without whispers against those who were supposed to be friends, but who were in fact blockages on the ladder of ambition. This audiobook is a wistful recollection of those days. None of it actually happened. But it would be nice to think that it might have.

Spreading democracy takes more than cutting-edge military hardware. Winning the hearts and minds of a troubled nation is a special mission we give to bewildered young soldiers who can't speak the native language, don't know the customs, can't tell friends from enemies, and, in this wonderfully outrageous Iraq-era novel about Vietnam, wonder why they have to risk their lives spraying peanut plants, inoculating pigs, and hauling miracle rice seed for Ho Chi Minh.