Satire Comedy

Violet Parry is living the quintessential life of luxury in the Hollywood Hills with David, her rock-and-roll manager husband, and her darling toddler, Dot. She has the perfect life - except that she's deeply unhappy. David expects the world of Violet but gives little of himself in return. When she meets Teddy, a roguish small-time bass player, Violet comes alive, and soon she's risking everything for the chance to find herself again.

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.

Un alto ejecutivo se queda en paro y decide rehacer su vida al margen de todo lo que le rodea, contando con su imaginación como única aliada. A partir de ahí, y desde el mayor de los sarcasmos, vivirá como una aventura fantástica cualquier hecho cotidiano. El protagonista crea un mundo propio,unas veces siendo él mismo, otras haciéndose pasar por otro. Otro que actúa con la insolencia y el respaldo de la locura más cuerda.

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.

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.

With The Blazing World, internationally best­selling author Siri Hustvedt returns to the New York art world in her most masterful and urgent novel since What I Loved. Hustvedt, who has long been celebrated for her “beguiling, lyrical prose” ( The Sunday Times Books, London), tells the provocative story of the artist Harriet Burden. After years of watching her work ignored or dismissed by critics, Burden conducts an experiment she calls Maskings: She presents her own art behind three male masks, concealing her female identity.

When the Little Nugget, alias thirteen-year-old Ogden Ford, "bulgy, rude, chain-smoking son of an American millionaire," arrives at Sanstead House School, the fun begins. Mr Peter Burns, a none-too-dedicated schoolmaster, engaged by snobbish Mr. Abney to educate his handpicked pupils, soon finds himself and his enraptured class at the mercy of an American gunman...and at the beginning of a series of truly mind-boggling adventures in a delicious Wodehouse tale of suspense, excitement, and romance.

Fox 8 has always been known as the daydreamer in his pack, the one his fellow foxes regarded with a knowing snort and a roll of the eyes. That is, until Fox 8 develops a unique skill: He teaches himself to speak Yuman by hiding in the bushes outside a house and listening to children’s bedtime stories. The power of language fuels his abundant curiosity about people - even after danjer arrives in the form of a new shopping mall that cuts off his food supply, sending Fox 8 on a harrowing quest to help save his pack.

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.

Travel with Steve, doomed for eternity to serve as hell’s Mr. Fixit, on a wild ride through the circles of hell in this best-selling, humorous fantasy series.

Samuel Pickwick, founder and chairman of the Pickwick Club, engages three fellow members to accompany him on a journey. By coach they’ll travel to the outreaches of London to explore, observe, and report back on the quaint wonders of the English countryside. What transpires is a picaresque romp of misadventures, hair-raising challenges, and romantic follies entangling the fates of a riot of colorful characters - a passel of villains, spinsters, poets, and sportsmen - and the unworldly Pickwick himself, who has much to learn about life outside his gentleman’s club.

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.

The title behind the new ABC TV Show Suburgatory excoriates - through satirical local news "stories" - the mostly upper-middle-class American pieties and parenting obsessions that surround raising the perfect child amid the anxiety of an America in decline.

Today's political pundits express shock and disappointment when candidates resort to negative campaigning. But history reveals that smear campaigns are as American as apple pie. Anything for a Vote is a look at 200-plus years of dirty tricks and bad behavior in presidential elections, from George Washington to Barack Obama and John McCain. Let the name-calling begin!

When Bonnie Grayduck relocates from sunny Santa Cruz California to the small town of Lake Woebegotten, Minnesota, to live with her estranged father, chief of the local two-man police department, she thinks she's leaving her troubles behind. But she soon becomes fascinated by another student - the brooding, beautiful Edwin Scullen, whose reclusive family hides a terrible secret. (Psst: they're actually vampires. But they're the kind who don't eat people, so it's okay.)

Aaron thinks genre fiction is an affront to the fiction-writing craft. He often quotes the essayist Arthur Krystal, who says literary fiction "melts the frozen sea inside of us". Ironically Aaron doesn't seem to realize that he's emotionally frozen. The vivacious Laurie, lover of flamingo-patterned attire and all things hot pink, is the one person who might be capable of melting him.

First published in 1873, The Gilded Age is both a biting satire and a revealing portrait of post-Civil War America - an age of corruption when crooked land speculators, ruthless bankers, and dishonest politicians voraciously took advantage of the nation's peacetime optimism. With his characteristic wit and perception, Mark Twain and his collaborator, Charles Dudley Warner, attack the greed, lust, and naiveté of their own time in a work that endures as a valuable social document and one of America's most important satirical novels.

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.

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.

Black Mischief, Waugh's third novel, helped to establish his reputation as a master satirist. Set on the fictional African island of Azania, the novel chronicles the efforts of Emperor Seth, assisted by the Englishman Basil Seal, to modernize his kingdom. Profound hilarity ensues from the issuance of homemade currency, the staging of a "Birth Control Gala", the rightful ruler's demise at his own rather long and tiring coronation ceremonies and a good deal more mischief.