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

One of the 21st century's most celebrated authors, Hilary Mantel won the Booker Prize twice: for 2009's Wolf Hall, the first in her phenomenally successful Thomas Cromwell trilogy, and its 2012 sequel Bring Up the Bodies. The third novel in the series, 2020's The Mirror and the Light, won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. This collection includes three of her best works of contemporary fiction, ranging from the Gothic to the blackly comic.

Lauren, Saskia, Dominica, Farah and Tansy have been friends since nursery. They wonder if that was the last time they all actually liked each other. Reunited as bridesmaids at Tansy's spiritual hen party in the woods, it doesn't take long before old grudges begin to surface. Not to mention the secret they've been hiding for twenty years. But what starts as a weekend of macramé and penis straws ends in murder when Tansy chokes to death on a poisoned cacao. And as the body count keeps climbing, the friends realise that one of their group must be the killer - and they need to watch their backs.

Los Angeles burglar Junior Bender has a rule about never taking a job that pays too well: In the criminal underworld, if you’re offered more money than a job is worth, someone is going to end up dead. But he’s bending his rule this one time because he and his girlfriend, Ronnie, are in desperate need of cash to hire a kidnapper to snatch Ronnie’s two-year-old son back from her ex. The whole thing is pretty complicated and has Junior on edge.

Written in reaction to what Bentley perceived as the sterility and artificiality of the detective fiction of his day, Trent's Last Case features Philip Trent, an all-too-human detective who not only falls in love with the chief suspect but reaches a brilliant conclusion that is totally wrong. Trent's Last Case begins when millionaire American financier Sigsbee Manderson is murdered while on holiday in England. A London newspaper sends Trent to investigate, and he is soon matching wits with Scotland Yard's Inspector Murth.

A woman wakes up, frightened and alone - with no idea where she is. She's in a room but it's shaking and jumping like it’s alive. Stumbling through a door, she realises she is in a train carriage. A carriage full of the dead. This is the Night Train. A bizarre ride on a terrifying locomotive, heading somewhere into the endless night. How did the woman get here? Who is she? And who are the dead?

In the tradition of Colson Whitehead's Zone One, a visionary debut novel about shelter, escape, family, violence, and dumpster diving. It's the story of a restless group of young squatters. They've run away from their families and their pasts, questing after knowledge of their most wild selves, roaming the half-empty suburbs of America, occupying the homes of the foreclosed or vacationing, never staying in one place long enough to attract attention while shoplifting beer at the local Speedy Stop.

When hordes of people descend on the picturesque village of Nasely for the annual celebration of its most famous resident, murder mystery writer Agnes Crabbe, events take a dark turn as the festival opens with a shocking death. Each year the residents are outnumbered by crowds dressed as Crabbe’s lady detective, Millicent Cutter. The weekend is never a mild-mannered affair as fan club rivalries bubble below the surface, but tensions reach new heights when a second Crabbe devotee is found murdered. Though the police are quick to arrive on the scene, the facts are tricky to ascertain as the witnesses, suspects and victim are all dressed as Miss Cutter.

The good folk of Perpetuity Valley, Wyoming, have a secret. These modern-day citizens aren't just descended from the original settlers—they actually are the original settlers. They trekked here by wagon train in 1846, and for some mysterious reason, none of them has aged a day since. Of course, if word ever gets out about a miracle like this, the valley might get a wee bit crowded. So about a hundred years ago the townsfolk agreed to keep the secret to themselves and never allow any property to change hands.

Fat girl, thin girl. Red hair, brown hair. Polish aristocrat, radical husband. Joan Foster has dozens of different identities, and she's utterly confused by them all. After a life spent running away from difficult situations, she decides to escape to a hill town in Italy to take stock of her life. But first she must carefully arrange her own death.

In this fiendishly original novel, Mark Leyner is a leather-blazer-wearing, Piranha 793-driving, narcotic-guzzling monster who has potential rivals eliminated by his bionically enhanced bodyguards, has his internal organs tattooed, and eavesdrops on the erotic fantasies of Victoria's Secret models–fantasies that naturally revolve around him.

Junior Bender, Los Angeles burglar and off-the-books detective to the felonious, is reminded that rock and roll will never die (no matter how fervently he wishes some of it would) when Hollywood’s most dangerous geriatric mobster, Irwin Dressler, retains Junior’s investigative services to solve a rather unharmonious problem. Junior has one weekend to figure out who’s to blame—a weekend that begins with his tires being slashed, threatening notes left on his car, and a theatrical backdrop falling on a drummer during the truly terrible first set of the first concert.

The legendary Lone Star Cafe, a little corner of Texas right in the heart of New York City. At one time or another, everyone from the Rolling Stones to Willie Nelson has jammed there. But this night, Thanksgiving eve, there's a different type of jam at the Lone Star. Larry Barkin, half of the headlining Barkin Brothers, is found dead in his dressing room, his head bashed in with his own guitar and a two dollar bill stuffed in his shirt pocket. It's Kinky they call for help, but the fast-talking, cigar-smoking country singer turned amateur detective has other plans.

Knotshead is a school catering for the children of the rich, famous, liberal - and deluded. With its progressive curriculum, complacent staff and beautiful grounds, it looks like paradise. But the clever, the odd and the bookish are relentlessly persecuted as pupils make their own rules in a bubble of privilege and prejudice.

Each of the judges of the Elysian Prize for literature has a reason for accepting the job. For the chairman, MP Malcolm Craig, it is backbench boredom, media personality Jo Cross is on the hunt for a 'relevant' novel, and Oxbridge academic Vanessa Shaw is determined to discover good writing. But for Penny Feathers of the Foreign Office, it's all just getting in the way of writing her own thriller.

It's crass gun porn filled with fanboy pandering action movie references. Do you like action movies? Do you like dark, edgy, hard-boiled heroes? Do you like fully automatic weapons blasting guys' heads off? How about product endorsements that are awkwardly placed between depictions of intense violence? Yeah? Then this book is for you!

A Mosca, in un afoso pomeriggio di primavera, due letterati stanno elencando le prove dell'inesistenza di Dio. Lo straniero che si intromette nella discussione è di tutt'altro parere. Non solo, ma è stato presente al processo di Gesù. Si tratta infatti del Diavolo, nei panni del mago Woland, e la sua spettacolare comparsa getterà nel caos il burocratismo sovietico e l'élite letteraria del tempo. Satira devastante e fantastica, il romanzo, in parte ambientato nella capitale sovietica e in parte nell'antica Gerusalemme, è uno dei massimi capolavori della letteratura.

Remi Finch has spent the better part of her adult life avoiding family—especially her sisters. They just don’t click. Besides, her unconventional upbringing and major anxiety have convinced Remi that she can’t build a relationship with anyone. Period. When her parents plan a family reunion camping trip to celebrate their anniversary, Remi’s willing to reconnect, if only because she doesn’t have a choice. But then a dead body turns up at their campsite, and their sisterly bonding kicks into high gear.

Meet the daughters of Iris Parker. Dee, sensitive and big-hearted; Rose, uptight and controlled; and Fleur, the reckless free spirit. At the reading of their mother's will, the three estranged women are aghast to discover that their inheritance comes with very tricky strings attached. If they are to inherit her wealth, they must spend a series of weekends together over the course of a year and carry out their mother's bucket list.

At midnight on New Year’s Eve, Trowbridge Vermont EMT Brighid Doran delivers the region’s ambulance to a three-alarm house fire. Afterward, she sits in a warm truck with her girlfriend Sam, a US Army officer fresh from the battlefields of Iraq, as they watch a local volunteer firefighter battle the blast in subzero weather.

Luigino, novantenne di Mestre che vive in compagnia delle sue galline, una mattina sparisce senza lasciare traccia. Un riluttante commissario siciliano, che odia il Veneto e sogna il trasferimento, sarà costretto a farsi carico delle indagini, ma la vera investigatrice - caparbia e inarrestabile come la sua mentore Jessica Fletcher - sarà Alice: una ragazza che si autoproclama "l'influencer di Mestre" e che non smette di ficcare il naso al bar, alle poste, al gingerino pomeridiano delle amiche della zia e, soprattutto, all'interno della stessa casa di Luigino.