Satire Comedy

An underpaid, overworked certified flight instructor cheats death while attempting to teach a cast of incompetent student pilots to fly at a skeezy South Florida flight school; all in the quest to build flight time so he can get a “real job” at an airline. The planes break, the regs break, metal gets bent, students are lost at sea, and a Top Gun wannabe student, who has 400 hours of flight instruction, still hasn’t made his first solo flight.

In a profoundly strange country called Inner Horner, large enough for only one resident at a time, citizens waiting to enter the country fall under the rule of the power-hungry and tyrannical Phil, setting off a chain of injustice and mass hysteria. An Animal Farm for the 21st century, this is an incendiary political satire of unprecedented imagination, spiky humor, and cautionary appreciation for the hysteric in everyone.

Surrealist writer and painter Leonora Carrington was a master of the macabre, of gorgeous tableaus, biting satire, roguish comedy, and brilliant, effortless flights of the imagination. Nowhere are these qualities more ingeniously brought together than in the works of short fiction she wrote throughout her life.

George Hall is an unobtrusive man. A little distant, perhaps, a little cautious, not quite at ease with the emotional demands of fatherhood or of manly bonhomie. “The secret of contentment, George felt, lay in ignoring many things completely.” Some things in life can’t be ignored, however: his tempestuous daughter Katie’s deeply inappropriate boyfriend Ray, for instance, or the sudden appearance of a red circular rash on his hip.

Once a hotshot investigative reporter, Jack Tagger now bangs out obituaries for a South Florida daily, “plotting to resurrect my newspaper career by yoking my byline to some famous stiff.” Jimmy Stoma, the infamous front man of Jimmy and the Slut Puppies, dead in a fishy-smelling scuba “accident,” might be the stiff of Jack’s dreams - if only he can figure out what happened. Standing in the way are (among others) his ambitious young editor, who hasn’t yet fired anyone but plans to “break her cherry” on Jack....

Set in Rhode Island, Winner of the National Book Award tells the story of twins who could not be more different. Abigail Mather is a woman of passionate sensual and sexual appetites, while her sister, the book-loving local librarian Dorcas, lives a quiet life of the mind. But when the sisters are sought out by the predatory and famous poet, Guy DeVilbiss, who introduces them to Hollywood hack writer and possible psychopath Conrad Lowe, they rapidly become pawns in a game that leads to betrayal, shame and ultimately, murder.

What do you get if you put a comedian, a scientist and an internet expert in a room together? The answer is Great Unanswered Questions, a panel game in which resident funnyman Colin Murphy teams up with brainiac Dr David Booth and computer geek Matthew Collins to tackle ludicrous questions and provide the correct (or at least the funniest) answers.

Ludwig Kalisch war Gründer der Sonntagszeitung „Der Demokrat“ und der Karnevalszeitschrift „Narrhalla“, in welchen er Feudalismus und Zensur bekämpfte, was Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts ein höchst gefährliches Unterfangen war. Nachdem er zum Tode verurteilt wurde, lebte und arbeitete er als Journalist in London und Paris. Seine Satiren spiegeln sehr aufschlussreich und humorvoll die autoritären Macht- und Gesellschaftsstrukturen einer Zeit dar, in welcher die freiheitliche Knospe der Demokratie in Europa begann zu versuchen sich langsam zu entfalten.

The location: London. The date: Very, very soon. Beset by multiple crises and buried under a growing mountain of debt, the leaders of the G7 have taken the only logical decision. They've sold the planet. When Toby, a penniless student, and his two new flatmates find out one morning on TV, they're surprised to find the Earth's new alien owners are staggeringly cute and bring the promise of a debt-free future. They're just getting ready to celebrate along with the rest of the world, when a chance encounter with a mysterious professor reveals the truth.

In an Indian village in the 1950s, a precocious child is born into a family of Dalit coconut farmers. King Rao will grow up to be the most accomplished tech CEO in the world and, eventually, the leader of a global, corporate-led government. In a future in which the world is run by the Board of Corporations, King’s daughter, Athena, reckons with his legacy—literally, for he has given her access to his memories, among other questionable gifts.

The smartest decision Daniel Long ever made was to take a hit out on his own life. Too scared to kill himself but also too scared to live, he is a sad, pathetic man; a miserable martyr of depression...But when one of his few friends kills herself Daniel realizes the error of his ways. He tries to cancel the hit but in the process he offends his contracted killer. Now his impending death is personal and his life is about to get more exciting than he ever could have imagined.

The year is 2023, and things are bad—bad, but still not as bad as they could be. Hestia Harris is forty-two, abandoned by her husband (he left to fight for the Union cause), and estranged from her parents (they’re leaving for the Confederacy). Yes, the United States has collapsed into a second civil war and again it’s Unionists against Confederates, children against parents, friends against friends.

In a country torn between left and right, two politicians are about to make history. How? By working together! In a nutshell, that’s the premise of this book. House Divided is a political satire, but it’s really a political fantasy, because it takes two opposing candidates, who wouldn’t normally be caught dead together, and challenges them to spend a weekend in the remote Oregon desert - hiking together, camping together, even getting wasted together!

In 2006, Julia Lerner is living in Moscow, a recent university graduate in computer science, when she’s recruited by Russia’s largest intelligence agency. By 2018, she’s in Silicon Valley as COO of Tangerine, one of America’s most famous technology companies. In between her executive management, self promotion, and work in gender equality, she funnels intelligence back to the motherland. But now Russia's asking for more, and Julia’s getting nervous.

everything. An author sweats and toils to birth a tome with such colossal cultural impact, it has the power to retune the entire world to a whole new frequency. This is absolutely not one of those books. Not even close. And actually, that all sounds a bit much really, doesn't it? Rhys Nicholson is a multi-award winning comedian, writer and busy mum with an anxiety disorder, a complicated relationship with food and a book deal. In Dish, a debut whack at writing an entire book, Nicholson is reaching out to get some stuff straight in their head.

A young boy comes of age within the confines of post-civil-war Beirut, with conflict and comedy lurking round every corner. Adam dreams of becoming an astronaut, but who has ever heard of an Arab on the moon? He battles with his father, a book-hoarding journalist with a penchant for writing eulogies, his closest friend, Basil, a Druze who is said to worship goats and believe in reincarnation, and a host of other misfits and miscreants in a city attempting recover from years of political and military violence.

The patients of the Sacred Heart Hospital need a miracle. Alice Bhatti may be just what they're looking for. She's just been released from the Borstal Jail. She's the daughter of a part-time healer, and it seems she has inherited his gift. With a bit of begrudging but inspired improvisation, Alice begins to bring succor to the patients. But all is not miraculous. Alice is a Christian in an Islamic world, ensnared in the red tape of hospital bureaucracy, torn between her duty to her patients, her father, and her husband.

With biting wit, Aurora Stewart de Peña satirizes the creative industry she’s spent years in. From the people who brought you the invention of advertising comes Julius Julius, a rambling architectural wonder, outpost of the very first ad man of ancient Pompeii, built on the backs of generations of creative survivors who just want to lie on the floor of a conference room and cry about the lumber account without being sexually harassed.

Saddle up for a wildly absurd ride in The Horsemaid, Reid Mockery’s laugh-out-loud parody of Frieda McFadden’s The Housemaid. This uproarious tale of mystery and muck plunges listeners into a world of high-stakes secrets, low-stakes chores, and the questionable ethics of hooved companionship.

Says Charles Pooter, "I fail to see - because I do not happen to be a 'somebody' - why my diary should not be interesting." Surprisingly, Mr. Pooter's life is fascinating! The fascination is two-fold: firstly, his astounding arrogance that we should care about his domestic trivia and narcissistic scribblings. Secondly, we can all sympathize with (and wince at!) this ridiculous slave to convention.