Showing results by publisher "Brilliance Audio" in Comedy & Humour

When a scandal cost him his high-paying job on Madison Avenue, ad man Jack Schiavone thought he could start over as a mattress discounter in beachfront Brooklyn. But his dream of a nice, quiet new life running a mattress store is about to get whacked. There’s a mob war brewing, and 'Mr. Mattress' quickly finds himself in the middle of it.

What happens when a thirty-something, newly divorced man discovers courage and adventure, thanks to a karaoke contest? In Adventures of the Karaoke King, Harold Taw introduces us to Guy Watanabe, a man marginally aware of his Asian background and decidedly unaware of how poorly he has planned for his future. In this riotous, often thoughtful, and always entertaining novel, readers are taken on a memorable journey that crosses America, Asia, and back, with the last leg spent in a shipping container.

Swim against the Current is one of those books that the power elites don't like seeing in stores, much less in your hands - not merely because it challenges their established order, but especially because our book reveals paths that folks like you can use to escape rigid, hierarchical structures and discover a bit more satisfaction in life.

With no job and no girl, Brown pushes on to California, where a fruitless job hunt lands him on his old buddy Fillmore’s doorstep. Fillmore is an accomplished clinical psychologist (and part-time bartender) whose own sanity is questionable at best. So it is only fitting when Fillmore suggests the solution to Brown’s financial woes is for him to become a psychologist as well - albeit, not a licensed one. “Dr. Brown” agrees. His first patient is a beautiful but unhappy woman who suspects her wealthy financier husband is plotting to kill her.

Okano, a convenience store employee with a troubled past, is but one of the many unforgettable characters found in this collection of four stories. Among the others are three boys facing a frightening lesson in mortality, a woman using garbage to fill a hole in her heart, and a nurse struggling to cope with the oft-brutal cycle of birth, life, and death. Remaining constant even as it fades in and out of view is the great Mount Fuji, one of Japan’s Three Holy Mountains. It serves as the anchor for these characters’ lives, and for Randy Taguchi’s Fujisan, an exploration of redemption, discovery, loss, and remembrance.

The town of Lake Woebegotton, MN is a small town, filled with ordinary (yet above average) people, leading ordinary lives. Ordinary, that is, until the dead start coming back to life, with the intent to feast upon the living! Now this small town of above average citizens must overcome their petty rivalries and hidden secrets in order to survive an onslaught of the dead.

Mindy Solomon absolutely has to leave Miami. Florida is bad for her head and her hair. She dreams of a dancing career on Broadway and moves to New York, but after a string of failures and mishaps, she realizes that she needs to rethink her grand plan. Finding herself spending way too much time in the comedy club where her future ex-boyfriend works, she nervously goes up onstage one night. People laugh. Not in the places where Mindy thought they would laugh, but hey, it's a start.

To Pom Trager, humanity’s entire history is one big joke - and he delivers the punchlines, broadcasting hilarious exploits back to his home planet to boost the ratings of his reality show, The Prankster. But when a system malfunction strands Trager in modern-day Santa Fe, his only hope rests in a nebbish assistant he recently fired, a headstrong human woman, and his ability to outrun a relentless sheriff hot on his trail. Now Trager must hightail it to the pickup point in San Francisco, all the while dealing with car thieves, time loops, all-American truck stop food - and a rapidly closing rescue window.

Charley Hunter unearthed the life and career of the greatest player who never lived, and then spent years successfully attempting to bring Beau Stedman's story to light. His actions did not go unnoticed. Now, it is time for Charley to put the whole experience behind him . . . pass the bar, learn the ropes at the new firm, and settle into a promising legal career. But he's been receiving these intriguing notes attached to clipped obituaries that have caught hold of his curiousity.

>Born into the violence of South Bronx ghetto life, the comic pioneer of TV’s Good Times fame offers a hilarious and politically charged review of his career as one of television’s first hugely successful Black stars. From opening for the Black Panthers and getting his first Tonight Show spot to becoming the first “Black” TV sitcom star, having comedians David Letterman and Jay Leno writing jokes for him, recording number-one comedy albums, and opening for rock n’ roll bands in 50,000 seat stadiums, Walker’s career hit all the highs.

Strand's perpetually unlucky character Andrew Mayhem sets off on a simple mission at the request of his wife: Get some spaghetti sauce. On his way to the store he meets Konrath's obnoxious private eye Harry McGlade, co-star of the Lt. Jack Daniels thrillers. Horrific violence, bad jokes, and lots of name calling soon ensues. Some sex, too, but not between the main characters.

Russell Wiley is in deep trouble. A media executive for the failing Daily Business Chronicle, his career is teetering on the brink of collapse, and his sexless marriage is fast approaching its expiration date. With his professional and personal lives floundering, it’s no wonder Russell is distracted, unhappy, and losing faith in himself. Making matters worse are his scheming boss, a hotshot new consultant, and the beguiling colleague whose mere presence has a disconcerting effect on Russell’s starved libido.

Giannina Braschi explores the cultural and political journey of nearly 50 million Hispanic Americans living in the United States in this explosive new work of fiction, her first written originally in English. United States of Banana takes place at the Statue of Liberty in post-9/11 New York City, where Hamlet, Zarathustra, and Giannina are on a quest to free the Puerto Rican prisoner Segismundo. Segismundo has been imprisoned for more than one hundred years, hidden away by his father, the king of the United States of Banana, for the crime of having been born.

When Matthew, a forty-something media executive, finds his Manhattan job, health, and Connecticut marriage crumbling, he goes native: Drinks in his car. Gives drug-dealing a shot. Looks for direction in light-rock lyrics, takes a free crafting class at the community center, and gets in a fistfight with a meditation instructor. He also tries jogging. Soon he’s on a stumbling, sideways vision quest that takes him from strip malls to national parks to a Bali medical clinic, from an unlikely romance with a Hollywood agent specializing in hot young vampire roles to extreme RVing with a disgraced Wall Street trader.

When the world gets more frightening, what do you do? Do you hide in your basement, watching 24-hour rolling news about the latest crimes? And what happens when it comes knocking on your door? Do you double-check those locks? Or do what Hamlet did, taking arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them? Pub-doorman-turned-recluse Royston Blake has never heard of Hamlet, but when headless corpses start turning up all over Mangel, he decides to do just that. And what better way to fight evil than by becoming a cop? Who cares if they all say you’re the worst kind of copper a town needs? What matters is results, right?

Chauvinism. Cutthroat competition. It’s all in a day’s work for Alexa Ross, vice president of comedy development at Hawkeye Broadcasting System. After years of fighting her way through the Hollywood boys’ club, Alexa thinks she’s finally free of Jerry Kellner, her sleazy ex-boss - until she learns that Jerry is her newest employee. Now it’s all-out war at HBS, and Jerry is determined to destroy Alexa. Good thing Alexa has her charming boyfriend, Gordon, and her best girlfriends for emotional support. But the pressure in her life forces her to a breaking point, and she finds herself wondering what matters most....

Sasha King dreams of being a serious novelist and living the good life with her surfer boyfriend, Brock. But her day job as assistant producer of Project Icon, a once-mighty ratings juggernaut that’s recently taken a hit in viewership, keeps her working nonstop. She’s got her hands full with Icon’s two new celebrity judges, entrepreneur-actress-singer Bibi Vasquez ("Crew to be forbidden to make eye contact with Artist AT ALL TIMES," reads her contract) and Joey Lovecraft, a horny but spiritual rock legend who doesn’t even own a TV (it goes against the teachings of his guru, Tibetan high lama Yutog Gonpo).

Did you ever wish that you really understood money? Well, Dave Barry wishes that he did, too. But that hasn't stopped him from writing a book about how to understand money. In it, Dave explores (as only he can) such topics as: How the U.S. economy works, including the often-overlooked role of Adam Sandler, Why it is not a good idea to use squirrels for money, Strategies that will give you the confidence you need to try for a good job, even though you are, let's be honest, a no-talent loser.

Kate and Michael, twenty-something housemates working at the same Trader Joe’s supermarket, are thoroughly screwed when people start turning into zombies at their house party in the Oakland hills. The zombie plague is a sexually transmitted disease, turning its victims into shambling, horny, voracious killers.

Understanding the urgent need for a deeply thoughtful, balanced book to explain our national political process, Dave Barry has not even come close. Though he himself has covered many campaigns, run for president several times, and run for cover at the rainy inauguration of George W. Bush (the man will spare nothing for his art), Barry has instead outdone himself.