Satire Comedy

A genderless alien from Ellipsia, a planet whose inhabitants have no concept of individuality, comes to Earth on an intergalactic exchange program to learn how to become human. To live here, the traveler must study and understand our inclinations for seeing people as distinct beings - the nature of gender, and at the heart of identity, the word I. At once funny and serious, Journal from Ellipsia offers a starkly objective view on our own humanity.

A soldier in the First World War who never actually sees any combat, Josef Svejk is the awkward protagonist - and none of the other characters can quite decide whether his bumbling efforts to get to the front are genuine or not. Often portrayed as one of the first anti-war novels, Hasek's classic satire is a tour-de-force of modernist writing, influencing later writers such as Hemingway, Faulkner and Joseph Heller.

New York Times best-selling author Bruce Wagner is also a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and a notable contributor to the New Yorker and Vanity Fair. With Dead Stars, Wagner delivers uproarious and sharply critical views on the sex- and money-obsessed world of Hollywood through the story of Telma, a 13-year-old girl who’s also the world’s youngest breast cancer survivor. A regular at pink-tie charity events and private lunches, Telma has come to enjoy her fame—so she’s not pleased to learn another young girl is about to break her record.

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.

Now is the fall of his discontent, as Jason Fitger, newly appointed chair of the English Department of Payne University, takes arms against a sea of troubles, personal and institutional. His ex-wife is sleeping with the dean who must approve whatever modest initiatives he undertakes. The fearsome department secretary Fran clearly runs the show (when not taking in rescue parrots and dogs) and holds plenty of secrets she's not sharing. The lavishly funded Econ Department keeps siphoning off English's meager resources and has taken aim at its remaining office space.

He can be any legally authorized fictional character or dead celebrity he wants for six to eight hours, simply by injecting a DNA-laced cocktail into his brainstem. It's called Big Egos and it's the ultimate role-playing fantasy from Engineering Genetics Organization and Systems (a.k.a. EGOS). And, as one of the quality controllers for EGOS, he's the ultimate ego-tripper, taking on more artificial identities than advisable - and having a hell of a time doing it. Problem is, he's starting to lose the ability to separate fact from fiction.

"All I want is to be a success.That's all I ask." Joe fails to sell a single set of the Encyclopedia Britannica in six months. Then he fails to sell a single Electrolux and must eat hundreds of pieces of homemade pie, served up by his would-be customers who feel so sorry for him. Holed up in his trailer, Joe finds an outlet his for frustrations in a series of ingenious sexual fantasies, and at last strikes gold. His brain storm, Lightning Rods, Inc., will take Joe to the very top - and to the very heart of corporate insanity.

When a journalist at a singularly uncontroversial magazine allows his literary aspirations to run riot, circulation goes up, but so does the danger level...

Ava Simon designs storage boxes for STÄDA, a slick Brooklyn-based furniture company. She’s hard-working, obsessive, and heartbroken from a tragedy that killed her girlfriend and upended her life. It’s been years since she’s let anyone in. But when Ava’s new boss—the young and magnetic Mat Putnam—offers Ava a ride home one afternoon, an unlikely relationship blossoms. Ava remembers how rewarding it can be to open up—and, despite her instincts, she becomes enamored. But Mat isn’t who he claims to be, and the romance takes a sharp turn.

When Scat comes up with an idea for the hottest new soda ever, he's sure he'll retire as the next savvy marketing success story. But in the treacherous waters of corporate America, there are no sure things. Suddenly Scat finds himself scrambling to save not only his idea, but his yet-to-be-realized career. With the help of a scarily beautiful and brainy girl called 6, he sets out on a mission to reclaim the fame and fortune that, time and again, elude him.

Getting our hands on this source material was dangerous, legally questionable, and career-threatening, but I felt it was worth the risk–these aren’t just Hollywood outtakes, folks, these are far-out-takes. Did Duke and JFK have a reckoning in the Oval Office? Did Yoda have anger issues? Did Sean Connery struggle with crappy dentures? The answers to these–and many more unanswered questions–lay within the treasure trove of The Lost Recordings, Vol. 1: Hollywood.

Bob Honey, the disillusioned divorcee with a penchant for murder by mallet, weaves his way toward Washington DC, for the ultimate showdown with a certain nefarious "landlord", but nothing is as it seems, and Bob will have more than just the government working against him. Part comedy and part thriller, Bob Honey Sings Jimmy Crack Corn establishes Sean Penn as a fixture of the literary landscape for years to come.

With dark humor, Chris L. Terry's Black Card is an uncompromising examination of American identity. In an effort to be "black enough", a mixed-race punk rock musician indulges his own stereotypical views of African American life by doing what his white bandmates call "black stuff". After remaining silent during a racist incident, the unnamed narrator has his Black Card revoked by Lucius, his guide through Richmond, Virginia, where Confederate flags and memorials are a part of everyday life.

A great foreword is more than just a few pages of self-indulgent frippery that comes before a book. A great foreword adds zest. It sets the stage for the page-turner you're about to open and perhaps even puts you in the locked room where a mystery happens or in the high-button shoes of a year gone by. A great foreword - sometimes - is even better than the book it precedes. So why not skip the boring actual-book part? Moving Foreword is a collection of introductions to imaginary books, written by real celebrities, comedians, musicians, and other writers with something to say.

Daniel O'Dwyer, ex-hospital pharmacist, accidental detective is back. Content to be unemployed and spend his days in the sun and sand of his Oak Island paradise, Daniel is once again drawn back to the local hospital and the mysteries that surround it. Construction on the hospital grounds unearths human remains, which are quickly dismissed as being part of a Native American burial ground. A young, clumsy medical resident who runs into Daniel, thinks otherwise. Meanwhile, Daniel's socially imbalanced sidekick, Willie, has a problem of his own.

Recently suspended for a so-called outburst, high school English teacher Anna Crawford is stewing over the injustice at home when she is shocked to see herself named on television as a suspect in a shooting at the school where she works. Though she is quickly exonerated, and the actual teenage murderer identified, her life is nevertheless held up for relentless scrutiny and judgment as this quiet town descends into media mania. Gun sales skyrocket, victims are transformed into martyrs, and the rules of public mourning are ruthlessly enforced.

In modern-day America, Dez is a former lawyer and teacher - an ephebophile with a proclivity for teenage girls hiding out in a trailer park with his latest conquest, Chloe.

Having been in and out of courtrooms (and therapists' offices) for a number of years, Dez is adrift, at odds with a society that persecutes him over his desires. From his couch one afternoon, Dez watches an interview with Jasper Ulrickson, a doting father and loving husband whose heartrending memoir, Lessons from My Daughter, has become a national best seller.

It’s impossible to go a full day without using snark, so why fight it? Snark is everywhere, from television to movies to everyday life. This lively collection provides hours of entertainment - better than an Etch A Sketch, and more fun than Silly Putty! At the heart of it, being in a state of snark can be one of the most useful tools at one’s disposal and hence (yes, I used “hence”), a powerful way to get what you want. With snark, you can catch people completely off-guard, and royally piss them off.

Morgan Beale is a pop icon - and hates every second of it. He begins adapting the latest best seller, The Chihuahua in the Blue Prada Bag, into a blockbuster movie just before his celebutante wife starts remodeling their Hollywood home, driving Beale to a hotel. Dodging the paparazzi one morning on his way to Starbucks, he spots his writing partner, Luke, who has been dead for over a decade, and who is staring into a mysterious hole in the ground....

Candide, is a French satire written in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. One of the finest satires ever written, this lively tale follows the absurdly melodramatic adventures of the youthful Candide, who is forced into the army, flogged, shipwrecked, betrayed, robbed, separated from his beloved Cunégonde, and tortured by the Inquisition. As Candide witnesses calamity upon calamity, he becomes disillusioned and discovers that all is not always for the best....