Showing results by publisher "Macmillan Digital Audio" in Comedy & Humour

One Thursday lunchtime the Earth gets unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. For Arthur Dent, who has only just had his house demolished that morning, this seems already to be more than he can cope with.

Meet Samuel: stalled writer, bored teacher at a local college, obsessive player of online video games. He hasn't seen his mother, Faye, in decades, not since she abandoned her family when he was a boy. Now she has suddenly reappeared, having committed an absurd politically motivated crime that electrifies the nightly news, beguiles the Internet, and inflames a divided America. The media paints Faye as a radical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mother was an ordinary girl who married her high school sweetheart.

If you’ve done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe? Which is exactly what the crew of the Heart of Gold plan to do. There’s just the small matter of escaping the Vogons, avoiding being taken to the most totally evil world in the Galaxy and teaching a space ship how to make a proper cup of tea. And did anyone actually make a reservation?

Robin by Dave Itzkoff shows how Robin Williams struggled mightily with addiction and depression - topics he discussed openly while performing and during interviews - and with a debilitating condition at the end of his life that affected him in ways his fans never knew. Drawing on more than a hundred original interviews with family, friends and colleagues, as well as extensive archival research, Robin is a fresh and original look at a man whose work touched so many lives.

Arthur Dent hadn't had a day as bad as this since the Earth had been blown up. Depressed and alone, Arthur finally settles on the small planet Lamuella and becomes a sandwich maker. Looking forward to a quiet life, his plans are thrown awry by the unexpected arrival of his daughter. There’s nothing worse than a frustrated teenager with a copy of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in their hands. When she runs away, Arthur goes after her determined to save her from the horrors of the universe. After all - he’s encountered most of them before.… Volume Five in the Trilogy of Five.

There is a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. It’s not an easy thing to do and Arthur Dent thinks he’s the only human who’s been able to master this nifty little trick - until he meets Fenchurch, the girl of his dreams. Fenchurch knows how the world could be made a good and happy place. Unfortunately she’s forgotten. Convinced that the secret lies within God’s Final Message to His Creation they go in search of it. And in a dramatic break with tradition - actually find it....

Jack Gladney is the creator and chairman of Hitler studies at the College-on-the-Hill. This is the story of his absurd life - a life that is going well enough until a chemical spill from a rail car releases an Airborne Toxic Event, and Jack is forced to confront his biggest fear: his own mortality. White Noise is an effortless combination of social satire and metaphysical dilemma in which Don DeLillo exposes our rampant consumerism, media saturation and novelty intellectualism.

In the summer of 1983, 23-year-old Nick Guest moves into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the wealthy Feddens: Gerald, an ambitious Tory MP, his wife, Rachel, and their children, Toby and Catherine. Innocent of politics and money, Nick is swept up into the Feddens' world and an era of endless possibility, all the while pursuing his own private obsession with beauty.

Brian Blessed has a lifelong love of animals and over the years has rescued cats and dogs, horses and ponies, and even a very ungrateful fighting cock. All were characters in their own right, such as Jessie, a dog left languishing for a year at the local RSPCA, who ruled the entire household with a rod of iron, when she wasn't out harassing the local vicar.

Now a major Sky TV series starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Moving from Provence to New York to Gloucestershire, from the savageries of a childhood with a cruel father and an alcoholic mother to an adulthood fraught with addiction, Patrick Melrose is on a mission to escape himself. But the drugs don’t make him forget his past, and the glittering parties offer him no redemption....

Now a major Sky TV series starring Benedict Cumberbatch. The once illustrious, once wealthy Melroses are in peril, and Patrick Melrose, now a husband and father, is trying to gather together the pieces of his life. Caught up in the turmoil of broken promises, assisted suicide, adultery and - most tender and terrifying of all - fatherhood, Patrick is still a long way from salvation, but even as the family struggles against the pull of its dark past, a new generation promises new light, new hope and - perhaps - the promise of a brighter future.

Why does paying for things often feel like it causes physical pain? Why does it cost you money to act as your own real estate agent? Why are we comfortable overpaying for something now just because we've overpaid for it before? In Small Change, world renowned economist Dan Ariely answers these intriguing questions and many more as he explains how our irrational behaviour often interferes with our best intentions when it comes to managing our finances.

Marianne Power was stuck in a rut. Then one day she wondered: could self-help books help her find the elusive perfect life? What begins as a clever experiment becomes an achingly poignant story. Because self-help can change your life - but not necessarily for the better...Help Me! is an irresistibly funny and incredibly moving book about a wild and ultimately redemptive journey that will resonate with anyone who’s ever dreamed of finding happiness.

From Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg, the author of the smash hit The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules, comes the third hilarious title in this much-loved series: The Little Old Lady Behaving Badly. Nothing can stop The League of Pensioners, a wily gang of blue-rinsed rebels. They have a plan, and to realize it they are going to need money - lots of money.

With an introduction by the Man Booker Prize-winning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James. Oreo has been raised by her maternal grandparents in Philadelphia. Her black mother tours with a theatrical troupe, and her Jewish deadbeat dad disappeared when she was an infant, leaving behind a mysterious note. Oreo’s quest is to find her father and discover the secret of her birth. What ensues in Fran Ross' opus is a playful, modernised parody of the classical odyssey of Theseus with a feminist twist, immersed in '70s pop culture and mixing standard English, black vernacular and Yiddish with wisecracking aplomb.

Stunning, charismatic Lexy O’Brien is the reigning queen of British reality TV. Her life in front of the camera is planned and manipulated as successfully as any military assault. But success breeds jealousy. When you’re on top, the only way is down, and there’s always someone standing by to give you a shove....

It’s no surprise to anyone that Jeffrey Sachs, billionaire CEO of his own hotel chain, has a drop-dead gorgeous Estonian mistress. But stepping down to spend his retirement years with her? No one saw that coming - least of all his wife! So now the prize of becoming Sachs CEO is up for grabs - and Jeffrey’s four children have until the day of his wedding to compete for the job. In a game where the ultimate prize is power beyond your wildest dreams, you should never underestimate your competitors, even if they are family.... And, it turns out, twins can be the most dangerous rivals of all.... 

Elvira Carr is 27 and neuro-atypical. Her father - whom she suspects was in the secret service - has passed away and, after several Unfortunate Incidents growing up, she now spends most of her time at home with her overbearing mother. But when her mother has a stroke, Elvira is suddenly forced to look after herself or risk ending up in sheltered accommodation. Armed with her Seven Rules, which she puts together after online research, Elvira hopes to learn how to navigate a world that's full of people she doesn't understand.

After 68 -year-old David Granger crashes his BMW, medical tests reveal a brain tumor that he readily attributes to his wartime Agent Orange exposure. He wakes up from surgery repeating a name no one in his civilian life has ever heard - that of a Native American soldier whom he was once ordered to discipline. David decides to return something precious he long ago stole from the man he now calls Clayton Fire Bear. It might be the only way to find closure in a world increasingly at odds with the one he served to protect.

Life is weird. Nothing gives you a sense of perspective like finding out just how weird. I'm an extremely curious chap and with this book I wanted to share the content of my noggin, because I think these are the 147 things that have helped me through this thing we call life. Sometimes because it shows how lucky we are to be here at all, but often because I'm a moron and learned whatever lesson it taught me the hard way, and I'd like to save you the pain of making the same mistakes (I refer here to the waxing of my pubic hair).