Satire Comedy

As national spokesman for the Motel 6 chain, as a commentator on National Public Radio's All Things Considered, and as creator of the nationally syndicated radio program The End of the Road, Tom Bodett has a voice familiar to millions. Now you can listen, at your pleasure, to his stories about likable, genuine, slightly wacky people who live in the little Alaska town at the end of the road.

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.

Comic book artist Mike Mason arrives at San Diego Comic-Con seeking sanctuary with other fans and creators - and maybe to reunite with his ex - but when his rival is found murdered, he becomes the prime suspect. To clear his name, Mike will have to navigate every corner of the con, from zombie obstacle courses and cosplay flash mobs to intrusive fans and obsessive collectors, in the process unraveling a dark secret behind one of the industry's most legendary creators.

A producer. A novelist. An actress. It's summer 1968 - a time of war and assassinations, protests and riots. While the world is reeling, our trio is involved in making a disaster-plagued, Swingin' Sixties British movie in sunny Brighton. All are leading secret lives. As the movie shoot zigs and zags, these layers of secrets become increasingly more untenable. Pressures build inexorably. The FBI and CIA get involved.

The irreverent author of the cult classic Syrup hits his target in this satire on the wages of big capital. In Max Barry's hilarious vision of the near future, the world is run by giant American corporations, and employees take the last names of the companies they work for; The Police and The NRA are publicly traded security firms, and the U.S. government may only investigate crimes if they can bill a citizen directly.

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.

Helen is one of the best minds of her generation. A graduate student on a path to solve high-temperature superconductivity and thereby save the planet, Helen finds herself torn when her advisor's sex scandal is exposed. Should she give up on her work and her brilliant advisor? Or should she accompany him to a controversial university off the Connecticut coast, founded by a provocateur billionaire, that hosts the academics that other schools have thrown out? At the Institute, the disgraced and deplorable operate at the top of their fields with impunity and, indeed, every comfort.

Welcome to the paperless (or "audiobook") edition of More Information Than You Require, a further compendium of COMPLETE WORLD KNOWLEDGE assembled and illumined by John Hodgman, a Famous Minor Television Personality. It contains all of the half-truths, fake trivia, amazing made-up facts, and molemanic lore as the paper edition, narrated here by Resident Expert John Hodgman, occasionally interrupted by this veritable extravaganza of illustrious and sometimes presumptuous guests.

More preoccupied with drinking, sleeping, and writing, an unnamed student neglects his studies and invents three separate openings for a novel. The first introduces the Pooka MacPhellimey, "a member of the devil class", the second involves Mr. John Furriskey, a character belonging to another of the student's creations (writer Dermot Trellis), while the final opening features legendary Irish heroes Finn Mac Cool and Mad King Sweeny. Soon, Trellis' creations rebel against him, doing as they like while he sleeps, and the characters begin wandering in and out of each other's tales.

Years after the events of The House of God, the Fat Man has been given leadership over a new Future of Medicine Clinic at what is now only Man's 4th Best Hospital, and has persuaded Dr. Roy Basch and some of his intern cohorts to join him to teach a new generation of interns and residents. In a medical landscape dominated by computer screens and corrupted by money, they have one goal: to make medicine humane again.

Meet Vanessa Salomon, a privileged and misanthropic French-American translator hailing from a wealthy Parisian family. Her twin sister is a famous movie star, which Vanessa resents deeply and daily. The only man Vanessa ever loved recently killed himself by jumping off the roof of her building. It’s a full life. Vanessa has just started working on an English translation of a titillating, experimental thriller by a dead author when she’s offered a more prominent gig: translating the latest book by an Extremely Famous French Writer who is not in any way based on Michel Houellebecq.

Anatomie d'un mariage et d'une famille - les Berglund -, ce livre analyse les illusions, les déceptions et les compromis d'une génération de baby-boomers qui avaient rêvé un jour de changer le monde. Mais c'est aussi un acte d'accusation implacable à l'égard d'une nation qui a cessé depuis longtemps d'incarner ses propres valeurs. Qu'avons-nous fait de notre liberté ?, se demandent les personnages de Jonathan Franzen.

Michael Beard is a Nobel prize-winning physicist whose best work is behind him. Trading on his reputation, he speaks for enormous fees, lends his name to the letterheads of renowned scientific institutions and half-heartedly heads a government-backed initiative tackling global warming. A compulsive womaniser, Beard finds his fifth marriage floundering. But this time it is different: she is having the affair, and he is still in love with her.

Audio is a unique medium. It invites listeners to become a part of the process, to interpret what they hear, however they'd like; whereas motion pictures leave no such room for input. With the completion of this book, it dawned on me that, as an actor by trade, I could play the part; and I'm knee-deep in actor pals - why not record the book like a radio play? So that's exactly what happened. I rounded up an excellent troupe of thespians, from both Los Angeles and my home state of Oregon, and we recorded what was to become this epic listen for you to hear!

Everyone - even Augustus the cat - has cause to be obliged to Jeeves when he manages to retrieve the infamous Book - the book which lays bare the private lives of three-quarters of the upper classes. And which could prove to be political dynamite at the Market Snodsbury by-election.

This is the story of twenty-four hours in the life of Natwest, and his small-town odyssey in pursuit of the missing package. And yet it's also the story of a middle-aged dentist who dreams of being a respected artist—but the only thing he can seem to paint is the human mouth. And it's the story of a tortured imam involved in a quasi-romantic entanglement with the local vicar; and an octogenerian mourning the death of her secretive husband; and a troubled teenager whose nudes have leaked on the internet.

Set in a garden in Tehran in the early 1940s, where three families live under the tyranny of a paranoid patriarch, My Uncle Napoleon is a rich, comic and brilliantly on-target send-up of Iranian society. The novel is, at its core, a love story. But the young narrator's delicate and pure love for his cousin Layli is constantly jeopardized by an unforgettable cast of family members and the hilarious mayhem of their intrigues and machinations. It is also a social satire, a lampooning of the widespread Iranian belief that foreigners are responsible for events that occurs in Iran.

Motl is middle-aged, poor, nerdy, Jewish, and in desperate need of a shave. Since having his balls shot cleanly off as a youth in WWI, he's lived a quiet life at home in Vilnius with his shrewd and shrewish mom, Gitl, losing himself in the masculine fantasy world of cowboy novels by writers like Karl May - novels equally loved by Hitler, whose troops have just invaded Lithuania and are out to exterminate people like Motl. As friends and neighbors are killed around them, Motl and Gitl escape from Vilnius, saving their own skins.

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.

According to Kurt Vonnegut's alter ego, the old science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, a global timequake will occur on February 13, 2001, at 2:27 p.m. It will be the moment when the universe suffers a crisis of conscience: Should it go on expanding indefinitely or collapse and make another great big BANG? For its own cosmic reasons, it decides to back up a decade to 1991, giving the world a 10-year case of deja vu, making everybody and everything do exactly what they'd done during the past decade.