Showing results by publisher "----RM Alexander" in Dark Humour

It's always awkward when 5,000 kronor goes missing. When it happens at a certain grotty hotel in South Stockholm, it's particularly awkward because the money belongs to the hitman currently staying in room seven. Per Persson, the hotel receptionist, just wants to mind his own business and, preferably, not get murdered. Johanna Kjellander, temporarily resident in room eight, is a priest without a vocation and, as of last week, without a parish. But right now she has two things at her disposal: an envelope containing 5,000 kronor and an excellent idea....

Paddy Buckley is a grieving widower who has worked for years for Gallagher's, a long-established - some say the best - funeral home in Dublin. One night, while driving home after an unexpected encounter with a client, Paddy hits a pedestrian crossing the street. He pulls over and gets out of his car, intending to do the right thing. As he bends over to help the man, he recognizes him. It's Donal Cullen, brother of one of the most notorious mobsters in Dublin. And he's dead.

Single mum Jules lives next to a tennis club, but has no plans to play. Especially when her old school crush, handsome doctor Sam Delaney, returns from the USA thirty years after leaving and is now displaying a killer forehand in direct view of her bedroom window. Despite what she tells her personal trainer fiancé, Jules finds exercise as tedious in her 40s as she did as a teenager. But when she's hit by perimenopause and her 19-year-old daughter's solo trip around the world - she's in urgent need of a distraction and rashly agrees to join an amateur women's tennis team.

Joe Orton was among the towering geniuses of 1960s theatre. His life was tragically cut short in 1967, but he left behind him a handful of shocking and scabrous black comedies that will live on in the public imagination for years to come. Featured here are two of his lesser-known works, The Erpingham Camp and The Ruffian on the Stair, collected together as a double bill.

Sasha North has gone missing. Everyone says she's run away, but I know better. We've been best friends since we were teenagers, since Sasha swept into the neighbourhood and brought colour to my life. Until a brutal attack changed both our lives forever. I know what happened that night. I know who wants revenge. And if Sasha has been taken. I know I'm next.

On 15th June 1994, Travis Green - husband, father, upstanding citizen - walked through the streets of Hartstead and killed eleven of his neighbours. The last victim was little Cassie Colman's father. As the twenty-fifth anniversary approaches, Cassie tries to forget the past - even as her mother struggles to remember it at all. Then, something hidden in her mother's belongings suggests the murders were not as random as everyone believes. Cassie can't stop herself digging up the past. But someone will do anything to keep it buried.

The Midhurst Amateur Dramatic Society are putting on a production of Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit, and Tessa has agreed to play a part. But when she suffers a psychotic episode, Ros, a C-list celebrity and new to the community, takes her place. In this darkly comic tale of psychosis in the Home Counties, the stage is set for a blistering examination of mental illness, how we treat it and why we don’t.

There are angels, and they are not beneficent or loving. But they do watch over us. They watch our lives unfold, analyzing us for repeating patterns and redundancies. When they find them, the angels simplify those patterns and remove the redundancies, and the problem that is "you" gets solved.

Der Rudi zieht um - und zwar ins Münchner Schlachthofviertel. Vom Balkon aus beobachtet er die Krähen, die über den Fabrikdächern kreisen. Dahinter schönstes Alpenpanorama. Doch mit der Ruhe ist's schon wieder vorbei, als ihm eine der Krähen einen abgetrennten Frauenfinger zu Füßen legt. Wie sich herausstellt, gehörte der Finger einer Prostituierten, die mit einer mysteriösen Waffe erstochen wurde. Und so ermitteln Rudi und Franz im Münchner Rotlichtviertel - aber erst Franzls Liebschaft mit einer Ex-Prostituierten bringt sie auf die richtige Spur.

Schwere Zeiten für den Eberhofer Franz: Seine Cholesterinwerte sind so hoch wie seine Laune im Keller ist. Statt Schlemmerorgien bei der Oma gibt's nur noch Kaninchenfutter auf dem Teller. Obendrein stresst die Susi mit knallhart durchorganisierten Besuchszeiten für Franz Junior. Und als wäre das alles noch nicht genug, steht der Franz ausgerechnet jetzt vor dem schwierigsten Fall seiner Ermittlerkarriere: ein Toter im Fremdenzimmer bei der Mooshammer Liesl, mit Brandpaste beschmiert und bis zur Unkenntlichkeit verstümmelt. Alles deutet darauf hin, dass der Mörder aus Niederkaltenkirchen stammt.

This is the story of the infamous 19th-century Scottish grave robbers who weren't Scottish and didn't rob graves. They were actually Irish, and as robbing graves to supply the needs of Edinburgh's anatomists proved to be rather hard work, they just took to murdering people - usually their neighbors - for profit. In collaboration with their common-law wives, they set about supplying corpses for Dr. John Knox, an eminent Scottish surgeon, with considerable enthusiasm and gusto.

This is a collection of the second six short stories in the Caverns and Creatures series.

Inside every hospital exists a world no outsider is allowed to see: a storm of malpractice, corruption, sex, drink and drop-dead exhaustion. But for first day junior doctors, their initiation into this world - the 'Killing Season' - is about to begin. A whistle-blowing despatch from the frontlines of hospital life, Jed Mercurio's Bodies takes us on a nerve-jangling journey through one junior doctor's loss of innocence and his desperate, dangerous attempts to right his - and his colleagues' - wrongs.

April hates men. Her dating life is a disaster and she carries the damage of her last relationship with her every day. She's trying so hard to put herself out there, but every time it seems like she's found something real it falls apart. If only April could be more like Gretel. Gretel knows how to behave perfectly in relationships - she's a 'Regular Everyday Manic Pixie Dream Girl Next Door With No Problems'. Gretel is exactly what all men want. The problem is, Gretel isn't real.

The characters in this extraordinary book are often - on the surface - depraved, vicious, cowardly and manipulative, but their essential humanity is never undermined. Two professors of philosophy turn pugilists; Leith removal men become the objects of desire for Hollywood goddesses; God turns Boab Coyle into a house-fly; and in the novella, 'A Smart Cunt', the drug-addled young hero spins off on a collision course with his past.

Kieran's love life didn't get off to a good start. He threw up after his first kiss; he was beaten up by the first girl to have a crush on him; and after a mix-up with his first love letter, he could only sit back and watch as the entire school mistook him for a brutal murderer. By the time the hormones kicked in, Kieran had all but given up on love, but the worst was yet to come.

Humiliated by a man who held her career in his hands, Dana Diaz’s life and reputation are in tatters. Drowning her sorrows one night in a bar, she gets speaking to a stranger, Amanda - and finds that she, too, has a story to tell. Over a drink, Amanda proposes a plan. The women should take revenge on each other’s behalf. Stalking and tormenting the people that wronged them carries a thrill – and one act of revenge soon leads to another. But while this may be an addictive game for two, only one can survive. Who will be the last woman standing?

When their mother died, she had only one request: that her daughters take a pilgrimage across India to carry out her final rites. Suddenly, the three are packing their bags and heading to the airport, together for the first time in years. The sisters seem to have nothing in common, but they need each other now more than ever. And as the miles rack up on their family road-trip, each of them will make unexpected discoveries about themselves and each other. After all, there are no secrets between sisters....

Unhappy with his programmed job of dentistry and inspired by a love of classic movies, Jared sets out on a bold mission: to use the power of his burgeoning feelings to forever change the world for him and all his kind. Unfortunately, Jared intends to do this by writing his own movie and things do not proceed according to plan....

Horror author Nick Steen is having visions... A sinister Black Steeple; eerie lights in the sky that look like a Catherine wheel but are not remotely a Catherine wheel... Plus a giant skeleton with a moustache. Are they omens? Auguries? Portenderings of things to come? (Spoiler - yes, they are.) For Nick Steen's imagination is bursting out of his brain and threatening to burst in turn the entirety of Stalkford. Can Nick stop the aforesaid bursting? Or have things already slightly burst regardless?