Showing results by publisher "Audible Studios" in Comedy & Humour

David Mitchell’s 2014 best seller Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse must really have made people think - because everything’s got worse. We’ve gone from UKIP surge to Brexit shambles, from horsemeat in lasagne to Donald Trump in the White House, from Woolworths going under to all the other shops going under. It’s probably socially irresponsible even to try to cheer up.

Master storyteller and satirist Kurt Vonnegut was one of the most in-demand commencement speakers of his time. For each occasion, Vonnegut’s words were unfailingly unique, insightful, and witty, and they stayed with audience members long after graduation. As edited by Dan Wakefield, this book reads like a narrative in the unique voice that made Vonnegut a hero to readers and listeners of all ages. At times hilarious, razor-sharp, freewheeling, and deeply serious, these reflections are ideal for anyone undergoing what Vonnegut would call their "long-delayed puberty ceremony".

The moon beamed down genially on the turrets and battlements of Blandings Castle. Sleep, however, eluded Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth. To be compelled to play host to his younger son, Freddie, was enough; add his sister Veronica and a chap called Tipton Plimsoll and you have a situation at which the doughtiest earl might quail...

Jeeves, not only a tireless servant to the feckless Bertie Wooster, is the saviour of a good many other individuals as well. The list is long: Bingo Little has cause to be grateful to Jeeves in the affair of the marooned cabinet minister; Sippy Sipperley, when he is persecuted by his former headmaster; Tuppy Glossop, in his foolhardy pursuit of Cora Bellinger the opera singer; not to mention Miss Dalgeish the dog-girl; Bertie's fat Uncle George when he brushes with the lower classes; even the dog McIntosh is returned to the dreaded Aunt Agatha through Jeeves' good offices.

Despite the title, Dickens's portrayal of early industrial society is less relentlessly grim than that in novels by contemporaries such as Elizabeth Gaskell or Charles Kingsley. Hard Times weaves the tale of Thomas Gradgrind, a hard-headed politician who raises his children Louisa and Tom without love and to have no empathy, their lives completely devoid of beauty, culture, or imagination. Only after a series of crises does their father realise that the manner in which he raised his children has ruined their lives.

A sharp, witty, and hugely entertaining debut novel, The Devil Wears Prada is The Nanny Diaries set in the world of high fashion. Welcome to the dollhouse, baby! When Andrea first sets foot in the plush Manhattan offices of Runway she knows nothing. She's never heard of the world's most fashionable magazine, or its feared and fawned-over editor, Miranda Priestly.

At 24, Clarinda James has lived a traumatic life. One of the last images she saw before losing her sight was that of her parents' death. The nightmares of that time still haunt her every night. Taken in at 19 by her sister, Clary didn't know there was going to be a price to pay, a price far greater than her blindness. It's not until Blue walks into her life, she realizes it's possible to experience the joy of warmth. In her darkness, Blue will become her beacon, her guide.

A fun and funny guide to dating from the New York Times best-selling authors of It's Called a Breakup Because It's Broken and He's Just Not That Into You. Why does dating have to be so hard? It doesn’t! Stop trying to out-game the system and relax. It's Just a Fucking Date presents the tools, not the rules, for bringing back the art of the date. The ordeals of 21st-century dating, from online dating and hooking up to pulling the plug when it isn’t working, will soon be easy to navigate.

How fortunate that Stilton Cheesewright drew Bertie Wooster, the red-hot favourite, in the Drones Club annual darts tournament. Had he not he would surely have beaten Bertie to a pulp and buttered the lawn with him. Stilton does not like men trifling with his fiancée Florence Craye's affections. In the event Florence would seem to prefer Percy Gorringe, stepson of L.G. Trotter.

On doctor's orders, Bertie Wooster retires to sample the bucolic delights of Maiden Eggesford. But his idyll is rudely shattered by Aunt Dahlia who wants him to nobble a racehorse. Similar blots on Bertie's horizon come in the shape of Major Plank, the African explorer, Vanessa Cook, proud beauty and 'moulder of men', and Orlo Porter, who seems to have nothing else to do but to think of sundering Bertie's head from his body.

Leonard and Hungry Paul is the story of two friends who ordinarily would remain uncelebrated. It finds a value and specialness in them that is not immediately apparent and prompts the idea that maybe we could learn from the people that we overlook in life.  

God Is Disappointed in You is for people who would like to read the Bible...if it would just cut to the chase. Stripped of its arcane language and interminable passages, every book of the Bible is condensed down to its core message, in no more than a few pages each. Written by Mark Russell with cartoons by New Yorker cartoonist Shannon Wheeler, God Is Disappointed in You is a frequently hilarious, often shocking, but always accurate retelling of the Bible, including the parts selectively left out by Sunday School teachers.

Breakfast of Champions (1973) provides frantic, scattershot satire and a collage of Vonnegut's obsessions. His recurring cast of characters and American landscape was perhaps the most controversial of his canon; it was felt by many at the time to be a disappointing successor to Slaughterhouse-Five, which had made Vonnegut's literary reputation.

The art of love is never a science.: Meet Don Tillman, a brilliant yet socially inept professor of genetics, who’s decided it’s time he found a wife. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which Don approaches all things, he designs The Wife Project to find his perfect partner: a 16-page, scientifically valid survey to filter out the drinkers, the smokers, the late arrivers. Yet, Rosie Jarman possesses all these qualities and. Don easily disqualifies her as a suitable candidate (even if she is "quite intelligent for a barmaid").

Trapped in rural Steeple Bumpleigh, a man less stalwart than Bertie Wooster would probably have given way at the knees. For among those present were Florence Craye, to who Bertie had once been engaged...and her new fiance 'Stilton' Cheesewright, who regarded Bertie as a snake in the grass...also Zenobia Hopwood and her guardian Lord Worplesdon, whose violent antipathy to 'Boko' Fittleworth amounted to obsession...and that biggest blot on the landscape, Edwin the Boy Scout.

Don Tillman and Rosie Jarman are back in Australia after a decade in New York, and they’re about to face their most important challenge. Their son, Hudson, is struggling at school: he’s socially awkward and not fitting in. Don’s spent a lifetime trying to fit in - so who better to teach Hudson the skills he needs? The Hudson Project will require the help of friends old and new, force Don to decide how much to guide Hudson and how much to let him be himself, and raise some significant questions about his own identity.

A chance meeting on a train brought together Lord Ickenham and Bill Oakshott, although being told that the love of his life, Hermione, was engaged to none other than Pongo, Lord Ickenham's nephew, did not make Bill feel like he'd been struck behind the ear. And what with the usual amount of stirring goings-on at Ashendon Manor that include biffings and black eyes and duckings in duck ponds, is there any chance that it will ever work out for poor Bill?

A sex and relationship columnist bares it all in a series of essays—part memoir, part manifesto—that explore the author’s coming of age and coming out as a bisexual man and move toward embracing and celebrating sex unencumbered by shame.

The Rosie Effect is the charming and hilarious sequel to Graeme Simsion's bestselling debut novel The Rosie Project. With the Wife Project complete, Don settles into a new job and married life in New York. But it's not long before certain events are taken out of his control and it's time to embark on a new project . . .As Don tries to get to grips with the requirements of starting a family, his unusual research style gets him into trouble.

Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).