Showing results by publisher "--Tyson Hanks" in Absurdist

After decades of loyal service, Ma Daode, a corrupt and lecherous party official, has been appointed director of the China Dream Bureau, charged with promoting President Xi Jinping’s China Dream of national rejuvenation. But just as he is about to present his plan for a microchip that will be implanted into the brain of every citizen to replace all painful recollections with a collective dream of national supremacy, his sanity begins to unravel.

A collection of twenty short stories inspired by and featuring medieval engravings. Although the pictures are all medieval, some stories occur in the present or future. Aside from other things, I had Mörk Borg, CY_BORG, and Death in Space on my mind. Let yourself be abducted into a world of terraformed androids, organ-based dialogs, unclean revivals, psilocybin-induced travels into the demonlands, and much more.

In the soul-crushing beige of an Idaho IRS office, where fluorescent lights hum endless and the radio loops forgotten hits, Elliot toils over tax forms, auditing losses that mirror his own. Trapped in a purgatory of mildew-stained carpets and petty office wars, he’s haunted by dreams he never chased, a life unlived. Amid the droning despair of coworkers reduced to shadows, each clinging to their rituals of donuts, weather reports, and futile team-building, a spark of chaos ignites, threatening to unravel the fragile order.

Deep in the woods of western Finland, a bear hunter has raised his seven daughters to live off the land and steer clear of the trappings of life in town, like cell phones and a social life outside their family. When on his youngest Elga’s twelfth birthday the hunter is killed by his prey, and their mother dies soon thereafter, the sisters are left with unpaid bills and a leaky house.

Una legione di spiriti diabolici, malvagi, virtuosi, paranoici e sexy contro il conformismo del Megaconcerto di Beneficenza e la violenza dei signori della guerra. Non si sa chi vincerà, ma come dice Stan Hakaleimekalahani "ci sarà gran piagnanza e gran ridanza".

On the outskirts of Buenos Aires in 1907, Doctor Quintana pines for head nurse Menéndez while he and his colleagues embark on a grisly series of experiments to investigate the line between life and death. One hundred years later, a celebrated artist goes to extremes in search of aesthetic transformation, turning himself into an art object. How far are we willing to go, Larraquy asks, in pursuit of transcendence?

Esta gran obra de Franz Fafka narra la pavorosa transformación del comerciante Gregorio Samsa en horrendo insecto, algo que impide trabajar y lleva a la ruina financiera a su familia.

Andrej is a postman in complete denial of his existence. He yearns for respect and fame but commits petty crimes for reasons he doesn’t fully comprehend. Josip is an increasingly irrelevant cable car operator and unfaithfully married. Life was so much simpler when neither one knew the other’s secrets. Now that they do - discovered quite by accident - each man has resorted to blackmailing the other. As their anonymous misdeeds escalate, a farce of mutual dependency begins. So does the unlikeliest of friendships when Andrej and Josip finally meet face-to-face.

Billy Boustany uncovers a mystery that transforms his sleepy midwestern city into a vibrant metropolis of iridescent skyscrapers, wild parties, and eccentric characters. He has the adventure of a lifetime, but it comes with a perilous secret. When Billy shares his discovery with his college student daughter, they explore together until they reach a magnificent city of Native Americans at an ancient site. However, they also encounter a formidable foe—the Knights, a secret society bent on keeping outsiders away.

What I wanted more than anything was to be standing beside Schmidt, in concert with Schmidt, at the foot of Saint Sebastian’s Abyss along with Schmidt, hands cupped to the sides of our faces, debating art, transcendence, and the glory of the apocalypse.” Former best friends who built their careers writing about a single work of art meet after a decades-long falling-out. One of them, called to the other’s deathbed for unknown reasons by a “relatively short” nine-page email, spends his flight to Berlin reflecting on Dutch Renaissance painter Count Hugo Beckenbauer.

Kernphysiker Möbius, Entdecker einer furchtbaren und gefährlichen Formel, flüchtet, seine Familie preisgebend, ins Irrenhaus. Er spielt Irrsinn, er fingiert die Heimsuchung durch den Geist Salomos, um das, was er entdeckte, als Produkt des Irrsinns zu diffamieren. Doch zwei Geheimagenten, ebenfalls als Wahnsinnige getarnt, sind ihm auf der Spur.

As it is often said in fairy tales and historical analyses, Maša's childhood years were a time when empires were falling—the time of the war in Croatia, 1991. Underground Barbie is set in that era, but also in the sounds of her childhood, the music, and the atmosphere that accompanied Barbie's move from plastic, yet safe, dollhouses to air-raid shelters.

Was wäre, wenn du plötzlich eine Banknote im Wert von einer Million Pfund in der Tasche hättest – und sie nicht ausgeben dürftest? Doch statt Reichtum folgt eine schräge Achterbahnfahrt durch Gesellschaft, Gier und den Irrsinn des Anscheins. In bester Twain-Manier entfaltet sich eine humorvolle, clevere und zeitlose Satire, die zeigt, dass Geld nicht immer das ist, was es scheint.

Do Trees Know When They Fall? is a short fiction collection by Damon Stone. These "psi-fi" stories explore the strange, horrific, beautiful, and often ridiculous nature of consciousness — how it can warp and twist in ways that seem unimaginable when it isn't warping or twisting. The collection asks us to question the nature of "the human condition" by viewing it through strange lenses, in the hopes of uncovering whatever insights our "normal" lenses are unable to capture.

One dark, windy supermoon night in the near future, a woman's ill-timed tarot question rips open a portal between dimensions, unleashing cosmic chaos. Step right up to Venice Peach, a flamboyantly freakish circus on the gritty Venice Beach boardwalk, where bizarre talents and mind-bending spectacles are just the beginning. Get lost in a funhouse maze of reality-shattering events and untamed, sex-fueled showdowns.

Robot Justice is a sweeping bittersweet parable about injustice and how man’s instinct for self-preservation fuels his cruel treatment of everything and everyone, even if it results in his own species’ self-eliminating extinction. Framed as a series of offbeat, fractured legal cases by the world’s first artificial intelligence judge, the stories draw upon cultural philosophy, neuroscience, literary criticism, evolutionary biology, panpsychism, political and social theory, linguistics, legal arrogance, speculative fiction and popular psychology to expose the underbelly of humanity.

Dr. Eden Draco lives in “The Cone” shaped sanctuary in the middle of Derinkegel. Only young and healthy people roam the Cone. She doesn’t have to pay for food and drinks, education, housing, medical care or anything having to do with her upkeep. With assigned partners, the government made sure all the workers have nothing to want for. She lives in total bliss and happiness but feels like something is missing.

Enter the wonderfully weird, always uncomfortable, side-splittingly funny world of The Terrifying Realm of the Possible, where your worst fears of who you are or might become are always just around the corner. In these masterful short stories from the singular mind of the actor and comedian Brett Gelman, you’ll meet five individuals, each navigating a uniquely strange stage of life.

"Si un invité meurt inopinément chez vous, ne prévenez surtout pas la police. Appelez un taxi et dites-lui de vous conduire à l'hôpital avec cet ami qui a un malaise. Le décès sera constaté en arrivant aux urgences et vous pourrez assurer, témoin à l'appui, que l'individu a trépassé en chemin. Moyennant quoi, on vous fichera la paix..."

Der neue Roman nach dem Bestseller "Die Ladenhüterin" Der neue Roman von Japans Erfolgsautorin Sayaka Murata erzählt die Geschichte zweier Außenseiter, Natsuki und ihr Cousin Yu, die sich jung verlieben und gemeinsam gegen eine Welt verbünden, die ihnen beileibe nicht nur Gutes will. Im alten Farmhaus der Familie, in dem früher die Seidenraupen ihren Dienst verrichteten, sind sie glücklich, denn sie sind beieinander. 20 Jahre später geht Natsuki an diesen Ort zurück.