Showing titles in Dark Humour

Orchid & the Wasp brings to life the charged, compulsive voice of Gael Foess - daughter of a self-interested investment banker and a once-formidable orchestral conductor, and sister to a vulnerable younger brother - as she strives to build a life raft in the midst of economic and familial collapse. Moving by wits alone, Gael cuts a swathe through the leather-lined, coke-dusted social clubs of London, the New York gallery scene and birth-throes of the Occupy movement.

A funny and heartwarming debut for fans of Celia Imrie and Dawn French. Evie Gallagher is regretting her hasty move into a care home. She may be 75 and recently widowed, but she’s absolutely not dead yet. And so, one morning, Evie walks out of Sheldon Lodge and sets off on a Great Adventure across Europe. But not everyone thinks Great Adventures are appropriate for women of Evie’s age, least of all her son, Brendan, and his wife, Maura, who follow a trail of puzzling text messages to bring her home.

Ron Currie’s gutsy, funny book is instantly gripping: If God takes human form and dies, what would become of life as we know it? Effortlessly combining outlandish humor with big questions about mortality, ethics, and human weakness, Ron Currie, Jr., holds a funhouse mirror to our present-day world.

Stuart Cuno has decided to become good. Not believing in God, he invents his own methods, which include celibacy, chastity, and the abandonment of a promising academic career. Interfering friends and relations question his sincerity, his sanity, and his motives.

When it comes to genes life's a lottery. As Abi knows - she's spent her life in the shadow of her beautiful, glamorous older sister Cleo. Headhunted as model when she was 16, Cleo has been all but lost to Abi for the last 20 years. So when Abi is invited to spend the summer in Cleo's large London home with her perfect family, she agrees despite serious misgivings. But maybe Cleo is finally as keen as Abi to regain the closeness they shared in their youth? Abi is in for a shock.

This is a collection of the eighth six short stories in the Caverns & Creatures series. It includes the following titles: This Poo Shall Pass, Hung Ogre, Fortune Favors the Kobold, Asses to Asses, Love on the Rocs, and The Winds of Cooper. If you've already purchased all of these books, there is nothing new for you here. If you haven't yet purchased any, you can save a few bucks by buying this collection. If you've only purchased some of these already, you'll have to do some math.

Panicked by his own mortality, despondent over his many failings as a writer and a man, Dunne leaves his wife and their three-year old child for the solitude of a crummy apartment off the Vegas Strip. There he plans to write an account of the city as he finds it; the book he ends up writing is "a fiction which recalls time both real and imagined."

In the early 1970s, Poe is living a nomadic life, hopping trains, sleeping rough, and juggling to feed himself. He eventually settles in Philadelphia and masters his street act before ever-growing crowds. When one of his fellow buskers presents him with an opportunity—a bank heist—he should have refused, an innocent bystander is killed, and he splits town a felon.

In the tradition of Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain, America Fantastica delivers a biting, witty, and entertaining story about the causes and costs of outlandish fantasy, while also marking the triumphant return of an essential voice in American letters. And at the heart of the novel, amid a teeming cast of characters, readers will delight in the tug-of-war between two memorable and iconic human beings—the exuberant savior-of-souls Angie Bing and the penitent but compulsive liar Boyd Halverson.

The cornerstone of private investigation—insurance fraud. Doing it, obviously. And then there’s the taxi job. Run someone to the airport while being chased by who knows what? Mix that in with drugs, party boats, and the Virgin Mary, and you’ve got a pretty standard day for one Mr. Cole. All for a lousy paycheck. Full of infanticide, evisceration, sadists, and snuff, Alex Cole is part private detective, part mercenary...all sick f--k. Cole Investigations is open—once more—for business.

Twenty-two years old and in the grip of a massive addiction, Patrick Melrose is forced to fly to New York to collect his father's ashes. Over the course of a weekend, Patrick’s remorseless search for drugs on the avenues of Manhattan, haunted by old acquaintances and insistent inner voices, sends him into a nightmarish spiral. Alone in his room at the Pierre Hotel, he pushes body and mind to the very edge - desperate always to stay one step ahead of his rapidly encroaching past.

As lykbesorger het Seb al talle lyke gebalsem, organe teruggepak in lyfholtes, beendere aanmekaargelas en doodsbleek gesigte gegrimeer vir roubeklaers om te besigtig. Wat help dit om te wens vir 'n ingryping wat hom sal losruk uit sy saai bestaan? Maar toe die sterwende seuntjie Gawie en sy ma by die begrafnisondernemers instap, kry Seb tog rede om in wense te glo.... En kom voor ’n dilemma te staan: Waarvoor wens jy as jy één wens het wat waar gaan word?

The adventure continues. Tim and the C and C gang face their most difficult challenges yet. Horses die. Eyeballs are eaten. People are urinated on. A god is born.

It's December 23rd and Clara Dunphy is running around Oxford Street like a blue-arsed fly trying to buy presents. She wants to make Christmas perfect: it's a lifelong ambition. And a challenging one at the best of times, even without taking her sixteen guests - sorry, "loved ones" - and their varying degrees of social dysfunction into account. Meanwhile, something weird has happened to her marriage, and the ho, ho, ho is thin on the ground. Why does Christmas have such an emotional hold over us? Why does family stuff hit the peak of its madness on December the 25th?

When up-and-coming chef Tommy Pagana settles for a less than glamorous stint at his uncle's restaurant in Manhattan's Little Italy, he unwittingly finds himself a partner in big-time crime. And when the mob decides to use the kitchen for a murder, nothing Tommy learned in cooking school has prepared him for what happens next. With the FBI on one side and his eccentric wise guy superiors on the other, Tommy has to struggle to do right by his conscience and avoid getting killed in the meantime....

Bobby Gold is a lovable criminal. After nearly 10 years in prison, he's no sooner out than he's back to work breaking bones for tough guys. His turf: the club scene and restaurant business. It's not that he enjoys the job - Bobby has real heart - but he's good at it, and a guy has to make a living. Things change when he meets Nikki, the cook at a club most definitely not in his territory. Smitten, he can't stay away. Bobby Gold has known trouble before, but with Nikki the sauté bitch in his life, things take a turn for life or death.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions...tequila, guns and cocaine. Inspired by the author's time with Hunter S. Thompson, Gonzo Girl is a smart, rollicking ride told with heart, a loving fictional portrait of a larger-than-life literary icon, and soon to be a major film. Alley Russo is a recent college grad desperately trying to make it in the gruelling world of New York publishing, but like so many who have come before her, she has no connections and has settled for an unpaid magazine internship...

Ivy Edwards is 31 years old, funny, shameless and a bit of a romantic. She's also currently trying not to cry in the office toilet. Partly because she's just run out of money for fags. A bit because her mum continues to annoy her. Definitely not because she's just been dumped by her fiancé. With her London life in shambles and her family miles away in the Welsh valleys, Ivy doesn't actually feel like she belongs anywhere.

'The best new writer of fiction in America. The best.' - John Irving Nathan Hill's brilliant debut, The Nix, journeys from the rural Midwest of the 1960s, to New York City during Occupy Wall Street; from Chicago in 1968, to wartime Norway: home of the mysterious Nix. Meet Samuel: stalled writer...

Jenny Green is dreading her Class of 2007 reunion. While her friends are killing it, Jenny's promising career as an artisanal baker went up in flames (literally) and her deadbeat, commitment-phobe boyfriend is cheating on her with their swishy-ponytailed neighbour. She feels like she didn't get the memo... As it turns out, she didn't. Begrudgingly back at university, she receives a text from an unlisted number: Jenny Green - please collect your memo. Hidden on her old campus is a secret female-led organisation providing memos to select students; blueprints for success.