Satire Comedy

It is the summer of 1914. As the world teeters on the brink of the Great War, a callow American painter, Francis Wyndham, arrives at a renowned European insane asylum, where he begins offering art therapy under the auspices of Alessandro Caligari - sinister psychiatrist, maniacal artist, alleged sorcerer. And determined to turn the impending cataclysm to his financial advantage, Dr. Caligari will - for a price - allow governments to parade their troops past his masterpiece: a painting so mesmerizing it can incite entire regiments to rush headlong into battle.

While filming on location in Belfast, Northern Ireland, John Doe, the universally adored host of the culinary travel show Last Call, is found dead in a hotel room in an apparent suicide. As the news of his untimely demise breaks stateside, a group of friends, fixers, hustlers, and opportunists vie to seize control of the narrative: Doe’s chess-master of an agent Nia, ready to call in every favor she is owed to preserve his legacy; down-on-her-luck journalist Katie, who fabricates a story about Doe to save her job at a failing website.

A one-in-ten-billion natural disaster devastates Chicago. A Jewish comedian, his most devoted fan, and the city’s mayor must struggle to move forward while the world—quite literally—caves beneath their feet. With this polyphonic tale of Chicago-style politics and political correctness, stand-up comedy and Jewish identity, celebrity, drugs, and animal psychology, Levin has constructed a monument to laughter, love, art, and resilience in an age of spectacular loss.

Oscar Hopkins is a high-strung preacher's kid with hydrophobia and noisy knees. Lucinda Leplastrier is a frizzy-haired heiress who impulsively buys a glass factory with the inheritance forced on her by a well-intentioned adviser. In the early parts of this lushly written audiobook, author Peter Carey renders the seminal turning points in his protagonists' childhoods as exquisite 19th-century set pieces.

In midcentury America, one man is determined to take over the airwaves with a program as audacious as it is entertaining. Bald, bombastic, and irresistible, Golk is his name and You're on Camera is his show. To "golk" someone is to trick her, on camera, into betraying her true nature.

Mumbai is a city that thrives on extravagant spectacles and larger-than-life characters. But as Chopra is about to discover, even in the city of dreams, there is no guarantee of a happy ending.

In this astonishing debut, the venerable but gossipy New York literary scene is twisted into a claustrophobic fun house of paranoia, horror, and wickedly dark humor. George March’s latest novel is a smash. No one is prouder than Mrs. March, his doting wife. But one morning, the shopkeeper of her favorite patisserie suggests that his protagonist is based on Mrs. March herself. Clutching her ostrich-leather pocketbook, she flees, that one casual remark destroying her belief that she knew everything about her husband - as well as herself.

Expelled from Oxford for indecent behaviour, Paul Pennyfeather is oddly unsurprised to find himself qualifying for the position of schoolmaster at Llanabba Castle. His colleagues are an assortment of misfits, including Prendy (plagued by doubts) and Captain Grimes, who is always in the soup (or just plain drunk). Then Sports Day arrives, and with it the delectable Margot Beste-Chetwynde, floating on a scented breeze. As the farce unfolds and the young run riot, no one is safe, least of all Paul.

In "Center of the Universe", God struggles to balance the demands of his career with the needs of his long-term girlfriend. In "Magical Mr. Goat", a young girl's imaginary friend yearns to become more than friends. In "Unprotected", an unused prophylactic recalls his years spent trapped inside a teen boy's wallet. The stories in Simon Rich's new audiobook are bizarre, funny, and yet...relatable. Rich explores love's many complications--losing it, finding it, breaking it, and making it--and turns the ordinary into the absurd.

What do we believe? And in God's name why? Lewis Black has the answers. Or at least his answers. He survived Hebrew school and a bar mitzvah (barely), was a 60's college student who saw the parallels between religious rapture and drug-induced visions (even if none of his friends did), explored the self-actualization movement of the 70's (and the self-indulgence it engendered), and turned a cynical eye toward politicians who don the cloak of religious rectitude to cover up their own hypocrisy.

Boy Genius is a powerful identity satire, the picaresque odyssey of a child seeking to avenge the wrongs perpetrated on his parents. Park's genius, born into the turmoil of post-war Korea, is used as a puppet by the South Korean government - before being banished to America. From a remote New York city ghetto, the boy wages a clandestine guerilla war against all symbols of authority.

Alison Hart, a medium by trade, tours the dormitory towns of London's orbital ring road with her flint-hearted sidekick, Colette, passing on messages from beloved dead ancestors. But behind her plump, smiling persona hides a desperate woman: she knows the terrors the next life holds but must conceal them from her wide-eyed clients. At the same time she is plagued by spirits from her own past, who infiltrate her body and home, becoming stronger and nastier the more she resists....

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....

From the highly acclaimed author of Edisto and The Interrogative Mood, Padgett Powell's new collection of stories, Cries for Help, Various Stories, follows his mentor Donald Barthelme's advice that "wacky mode must "break their hearts". The surrealistic and comical terrain of most of the 44 stories here is grounded by a real preoccupation with longing, fear, work, loneliness, and cultural nostalgia. These universal concerns are given exhilarating life by way of Powell's "wit, his...dazzling turns of phrase" (Scott Spencer).

Over the course of his long and distinguished career, God has literally seen it all. And not just seen. In fact, the multi-talented deity has played a pivotal role in many major events, including the Creation of the universe, the entirety of world history, the life of every human being who has ever lived, and the successful transitioning of American Idol into the post-Simon Cowell era. Now, as the earth he has godded so magnificently draws to a Mayan-induced close, God breaks his 1,400-year literary silence with his final masterpiece, The Last Testament.

For the better part of the 1970's, entrepreneur Ben Flesh could expand his business kingdom with the snap of his fingers. His fast food restaurants and electronics stores were all a part of his rapidly growing domain, remaking America one enterprise at a time. But when a series of personal and professional catastrophes strike unexpectedly, Ben finds himself on the verge of losing it all.

Middle-aged, married, but living on his own, Prin has lost his way. Desperate for money and purpose, he moves to small-town Indiana to work for an evangelical millionaire who’s building a theme park inspired by Dante’s Inferno. He quickly becomes involved in the difficult lives of his co-workers and in the wider struggles of their opioid-ravaged community while trying to reconcile with his distant wife and distant God. Both projects spin out of control, and when a Black teenager is killed, creationists, politicians and protesters alike descend.

Jane Dorner has two modes: PR Jane, twenty-five, chummy, and eager to sell you a feminist vibrator or a self-care/bereavement subscription box; and Actual Jane, twenty-nine, drifting through mediocre workdays and lackluster dates while paralyzed by her crushing mountain of overdue medical bills. When her job performance is called into question, Jane’s last-ditch effort to preserve her livelihood and pay off her debt is to land a white whale of a client. Enter Cass and Tom—proprietors of a “wellness retreat” based out of a ramshackle country house that may or may not be giving off cult vibes.

Baker has written a novel that remaps the territory of sex--solitary and telephonic, lyrical and profane, comfortable and dangerous. Written in the form of a phone conversation between two strangers, Vox is an erotic classic that places the author in the first rank of America's major writers.

When Palmer Stoat notices the black pickup truck following him on the highway, he fears his precious Range Rover is about to be carjacked. But Twilly Spree, the man tailing Stoat, has vengeance, not sport-utility vehicles, on his mind. Idealistic, independently wealthy, and pathologically short-tempered, Twilly has dedicated himself to saving Florida's wilderness from runaway destruction. He favors unambiguous political statements - such as torching Jet-Skis or blowing up banks - that leave his human targets shaken but re-educated.