Satire Comedy

Zach Post is an editor for It magazine with an impressive history: his father is a famous architect, his mother a socialite, and he has attended Colgate, Berkley, and Liverpool University. Or, at least that's what everyone thinks. When obnoxious new editor Mark Larkin is quickly promoted, Zach's secrets are threatened, and his future no longer seems bright. But he knows what to do-Mark Larkin must be eliminated.

Twenty-nine-year-old PhD student Ingrid Yang is desperate to finish her dissertation on the late canonical poet Xiao-Wen Chou and never read about “Chinese-y” things again. But after years of grueling research, all she has to show for her efforts are a junk food addiction and stomach pain. When she accidentally stumbles upon a curious note in the Chou archives one afternoon, it looks like her ticket out of academic hell.

Contemptuous of their parents, who pass their days in a stupor of liquor, drugs, and sex, the children feel neglected and suffocated at the same time. When a destructive storm descends on the summer estate, the group's ringleaders - including Eve, who narrates the story - decide to run away, leading the younger ones on a dangerous foray into the apocalyptic chaos outside.

The corporations promised it could never happen. Of course they would say that. Their products were everywhere. They had turned everything from scarecrows to coffee makers into robots, and there wasn't a home on Earth that wasn't filled with their machines.

The continuing adventures of the starship A.S.F. Willful Child. Its mission: to seek out strange new worlds on which to plant the Terran flag, to subjugate and if necessary obliterate new life-forms, to boldly blow the... And so we join the not-terribly-bright but exceedingly cock-sure Captain Hadrian Sawback and his motley crew on board the Starship Willful Child for a series of devil-may-care, near-calamitous and downright chaotic adventures through "the infinite vastness of interstellar space."

Without bothering to get approval from the President, the State Department, or even the FTC, Dave Barry's publishers sent him to Tokyo. You'd think they would have known better. Now the word is Barry has set back our diplomatic relations with the whole Pacific Rim by a couple of decades. Japanese culture, dining, sport, and industry all come under Barry's relentless scrutiny.

Following a cancer diagnosis, 40-year old Prin vows to become a better man and a better Catholic. He’s going to spend more time with his kids and his wife, care for his recently divorced and aging parents, and also expand his cutting-edge research into the symbolism of the seahorse in Canadian literature. But when his historic college in downtown Toronto faces a shutdown and he meets with the condominium developers ready to take it over - including a foul-mouthed young Chinese entrepreneur and Wende, his ex-girlfriend from graduate school - Prin hears the voice of God.

June 1957. One hot afternoon in the backwaters of the Deep South, a young black farmer named Tucker Caliban salts his fields, shoots his horse, burns his house, and heads north with his wife and child. His departure sets off an exodus of the state’s entire black population, throwing the established order into brilliant disarray. Told from the points of view of the white residents who remained, A Different Drummer stands, decades after its first publication in 1962, as an extraordinary and prescient triumph of satire and spirit.

Reclusive literary legend M. M. "Mimi" Banning has been holed up in her Bel Air mansion for years. But after falling prey to a Bernie Madoff-style Ponzi scheme, she's flat broke. Now Mimi must write a new book for the first time in decades, and to ensure the timely delivery of her manuscript, her New York publisher sends an assistant to monitor her progress. The prickly Mimi reluctantly complies - with a few stipulations: no Ivy Leaguers or English majors. Must drive, cook, tidy. Computer whiz. Good with kids.

In the great tradition of the American almanac, The Areas of My Expertise is a brilliant and hilarious compendium of handy reference tables, fascinating trivia, and sage wisdom on all topics large and small. Although best sellers such as Poor Richard's Almanack and The Book of Lists were certainly valuable, they also were largely true.

On Battersea Reach, a mixed bag of the temporarily lost and the patently eccentric live on houseboats, rising and falling with the tide of the Thames. There is good-natured Maurice, by occupation a male prostitute, by chance a receiver of stolen goods. And Richard, an ex-navy man whose boat, much like its owner, dominates the Reach.

Inez Victor knows that the major casualty of the political life is memory. But the people around Inez have made careers out of losing track. Her senator husband wants to forget the failure of his last bid for the presidency. Her husband's handler would like the press to forget that Inez's father is a murderer. And, in 1975, the year in which much of this bitterly funny novel is set, America is doing its best to lose track of its one-time client, the lethally hemorrhaging republic of South Vietnam.

Despite the odds, Princess Arabella of Avonia and rugged outdoorsman Will Banks fell in love while filming a reality show in the jungle. But that's another story. While she's making room in the royal closet for his hiking boots and backpacks - right next to the crown jewels - the show's producers are editing together film footage that could turn their romance into nothing more than a showmance. Private moments caught on tape and aired for the world's viewing pleasure are about to turn their world upside down.

Fresh from a four-month stint in rehab for her "alleged" shopping addiction, Babe Walker returns home to Bel Air 10 pounds lighter (thanks to a stomach virus), having made amends (she told a counselor with bad skin she was smart) and confronted her past (after meeting her birth mother for the first time - a fashion model turned farmer lesbian). Although delighted to be home and determined to maintain her hard-won inner peace, Babe now faces a host of outside forces seemingly intent on derailing her path to positive change.

Joy Randall's Top-five tips for vampire hunters: Location, location, location. Vampires won't be caught dead (ha!) in places like discos, 10-minute lube shops, or Switzerland. Remember, if you wouldn't be there, neither would a bloodsucker. Trust your eyes. You know the handsome, annoyingly arrogant, self-assured man in the shadows with long hair and a cleft in his chin? He's your vampire. No matter how tempting it might be, do not "accidentally" acquire a paper cut on your finger and suggest your vampire kiss it to make it better....

After a decade spent in isolation in the Ugandan jungles thinking about stuff, David Cross has written his first book. Known for roles on the small screen such as "never-nude" Tobias Funke on Arrested Development and the role of "David" in Mr. Show with Bob and David, as well as a hugely successful stand-up routine full of sharp-tongued rants and rages, Cross has carved out his place in American comedy.

Right Ho, Jeeves sees Bertie Wooster blithely attempting to assume the role of Jeeves himself as a matters-of-the-heart adviser. Very unwise: from Gussie Fink-Nottle's romance with Madeline Bassett, to Tuppy Glossop and his stop/go engagement to Angela Travers, the young master succeeds only in making a bally mess of everyone's love-lives.

Seventh Seltzer has done everything he can to break from the past, but in his overbearing, narcissistic mother's last moments he is drawn back into the life he left behind. At her deathbed, she whispers in his ear the two words he always knew she would: "Eat me." This is not unusual, as the Seltzers are Cannibal-Americans, a once proud and thriving ethnic group, but for Seventh, it raises some serious questions, both practical and emotional.

Valentine disparue... Qui la cherche vraiment ? Entre satire sociale, polar contemporain et romance lesbienne, le nouveau roman de Virginie Despentes est un road-book qui promène l'auditeur entre Paris et Barcelone, sur les traces de tous ceux qui ont connu Valentine, l'adolescente égarée... Les différents personnages se croisent sans forcément se rencontrer, et finissent par composer, sur un ton tendre et puissant, le portrait d'une époque.

One part parody, one part fashion fun, and one part personal experience, Grace's latest guide to life as a woman in America today is more H&M than Chanel. So tighten your Banana Republic belt a few notches, and learn how to pretend and convince everyone around you that you've got style and grace!