Satire Comedy

On the day of Barack Obama’s inauguration, an enigmatic billionaire from foreign shores takes up residence in the architectural jewel of “the Gardens,” a cloistered community in New York’s Greenwich Village. The neighborhood is a bubble within a bubble, and the residents are immediately intrigued by the eccentric newcomer and his family.

Dr. Edith Vane, scholar of English literature, is contentedly ensconced at the University of Inivea. Her dissertation on pioneer housewife memoirist Beulah Crump-Withers is about to be published, and her job's finally safe, if she only can fill out her AAO properly. She's a little anxious, but a new floral blouse and her therapist's repeated assurance that she is the architect of her own life should fix that. All should be well, really. Except for her broken washing machine, her fickle new girlfriend, her missing friend Coral.

Octave Mirbeau donne la parole à Célestine, une chambrière, qui perçoit le monde par le trou de la serrure et ne laisse rien échapper des "bosses morales" de ses maîtres. Le lecteur pénètre au cœur de la réalité cachée de la société, dans les arrière-boutiques des nantis, dans les coulisses du théâtre du "beau" monde. Octave Mirbeau arrache le masque de respectabilité des puissants, fouille dans leur linge sale, débusque les crapuleries camouflées derrière les manières et les grimaces avantageuses.

Henry Farber, a well-meaning psychiatrist, is forced into hiding when the nation’s chief executive—a narcissistic autocrat in his disastrous second term—is found dead on the consulting room couch. From an isolated bungalow, Farber sets out to clear his name while offering an intimate view of a flawed populist leader.

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.

No good deed goes unpunished in a willfully blind, technocratic society. Gordon Gray, a retired librarian, only wishes to chain smoke, read twentieth-century novels by dead white men, and at the time of his choosing, shuffle off his mortal coil. Everyone from his thanatophobic doctor to his New Age neighbor has an opinion on what Gordon should want and how he should be treated.

The suburbs of Par Mars. Two shopping centers, rows of estates and thematically designed neighborhoods. Twenty-four-year-old Leen is going to open an ear-cleaning and massage studio in the Topic Heights Shopping Centre, taking her mother’s Chinese ritual to the West to bring people back to their bodies. But something is not quite right in Par Mars. Managers are being attacked, and when Leen befriends Jean Paul, a pharmacist who is obsessed with a cryptic online forum, she finds herself involved in a community that is intent on disrupting the routines of capitalism in troubling ways.

Our heroes are dressed in homemade uniforms and armed with prop phasers but soon find themselves defending their hotel and convention center against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Suddenly, all of their useless knowledge about particle physics and old Star Trek episodes has genuine real-world applications! And while hotel employees and regular civilians are dying left and right, our Trekkies summon strength and courage by emulating their favorite starship-voyaging characters

In an attempt to gain congressional approval for a top-secret weapons system, Washington lobbyist "Bird" McIntyre teams up with sexy, outspoken neocon Angel Templeton to pit the American public against the Chinese. When Bird fails to uncover an authentic reason to slander the nation, he and Angel put the Washington media machine to work, spreading a rumor that the Chinese secret service is working to assassinate the Dalai Lama.

Tobias Smollett, in his creation of the Scot Roderick Random, exposes the sheer incompetence and injustice of the Royal Navy, as well as the snobbery and hypocrisy prevalent in English middle-class society at the time. Set in the mid-18th century, this picaresque novel follows the life and adventures of Roderick, the eponymous hero who has been shunned by his gentleman father's family on the basis of the lowliness of his mother's family.

LOVE, DISHONOR, MARRY, DIE, CHERISH, PERISH leaps cities and decades as Rakoff sings the song of an America whose freedoms can be intoxicating, or brutal. The characters' lives are linked to each other by acts of generosity or cruelty.

Hailed in his lifetime as one of Latin America’s greatest writers, Machado de Assis (1839-1908) was a storyteller known for his wholly innovative narrative techniques and uncanny talent for unraveling the social and political milieu of nineteenth-century Brazil. These signature traits are on full display in Quincas Borba, a novel that sees Machado satirize a rapidly changing Rio de Janeiro. Originally published in 1891, the story begins with the death of its titular character, a mad philosopher infamous for spouting pessimistic theories of “Humanitism”.

In Modern Manners, cultural guru P. J. O'Rourke provides the essential accessory for the truly contemporary man or woman - a rulebook for living in a world without rules. Traditionally, good manners were a means of becoming as bland and invisible as everyone else, and thus of avoiding calling attention to one's own awkwardness and stupidity.

As Trafford Sewell struggles to work through the usual crowds of commuters, he is confronted by the intimidating figure of his Parish Confessor. Why has Trafford not been streaming his every moment of sexual intimacy onto the community website like everybody else? Does he think he's different or special in some way? Better than his fellow man and woman? Does he have something to hide? Imagine a world where everyone knows everything about everybody.

Tiller is an average American college student with a good heart but minimal aspirations. Pong Lou is a larger-than-life, wildly creative Chinese American entrepreneur who sees something intriguing in Tiller beyond his bored exterior and takes him under his wing. When Pong brings him along on a boisterous trip across Asia, Tiller is catapulted from ordinary young man to talented protégé, and pulled into a series of ever more extreme and eye-opening experiences that transform his view of the world, of Pong, and of himself.

Lamar Jimmerson is the leader of the Gnomon Society, the international fraternal order dedicated to preserving the arcane wisdom of the lost city of Atlantis. Stationed in France in 1917, Jimmerson comes across a little book crammed with Atlantean puzzles, Egyptian riddles, and extended alchemical metaphors. It's the Codex Pappus—the sacred Gnomon text. Soon he is basking in the lore of lost Atlantis, convinced that his mission on earth is to administer to and extend the ranks of the noble brotherhood.

We guarantee this is the only tool you need to survive the zombie apocalypse. Okay, that's not really true. But when the SHTF, you're going to want a survival guide that's not just geared toward day-to-day survival. You'll need one that addresses the essential skills for true nourishment of the human spirit.

I’m a cargo pilot. In the industry, I’m known as a “Freight Dog.” I fly canceled checks and other types of high-value cargo around the country, mostly at night, in airplanes that are older than I am. Flying freight - or “work” as we call it - in small, twin-engine aircraft is a lesser known side of the aviation world. Our day starts when banker’s hours end. Thousands of flights move millions of pounds of work from city to city every night while the rest of the country is asleep.

Are you lacking direction in how to whip up a swanky soiree for lumberjacks? A dinner party for white-collar workers? A festive gathering for the grieving? Don't despair. Take a cue from entertaining expert Amy Sedaris and host an unforgettable fete that will have your guests raving.

This famous satire of life on Main Street, Gopher Prairie, mirrors with devastating honesty life on Main Streets from Albany to San Diego.