Showing titles in Dark Humour

Swords. Sorcery. Dick Jokes. Truly do the gods smile upon you, dear listener, for the first four books in the hilarious Caverns and Creatures series are now available in one audiobook set. Join Tim, Dave, Julian, and Cooper as they are thrown into a hostile fantasy world filled with magic and monsters, and ruled over by a cruel and sadistic game master who taunts and harasses them while he sits back and eats their fried chicken.

Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect Victorian governess. She’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But the longer Winifred spends within the estate’s dreary confines and the more she learns of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family, the more trouble she has sticking to her plan.

Allergic to group activities of any kind, all her life Serenata has run, swum and cycled on her lonesome. But now that she's hit 60, all that physical activity has destroyed her knees. As she contemplates surgery with dread, her previously sedentary husband, Remington, recently and ignominiously redundant, chooses this precise moment to discover exercise. Which should be good for his health, right? Yet as he joins the cult of fitness that seems increasingly to consume the whole of the Western world, her once-modest husband burgeons into an unbearable narcissist.

Michael Beard is a Nobel prize-winning physicist whose best work is behind him. Trading on his reputation, he speaks for enormous fees, lends his name to the letterheads of renowned scientific institutions and half-heartedly heads a government-backed initiative tackling global warming. A compulsive womaniser, Beard finds his fifth marriage floundering. But this time it is different: she is having the affair, and he is still in love with her.

Mark Renton is finally a success. An international jet-setter, he now makes significant money managing DJs, but the constant travel, airport lounges, soulless hotel rooms and broken relationships have left him dissatisfied with his life. He's then rocked by a chance encounter with Frank Begbie, from whom he'd been hiding for years after a terrible betrayal and the resulting debt. But the psychotic Begbie appears to have reinvented himself as a celebrated artist and - much to Mark's astonishment - doesn't seem interested in revenge.

One wealth-obsessed man – who is also dead. One status-obsessed woman – who is the perfect accessory. Their four inheritance-obsessed children – each with a killer instinct. And a murder-obsessed outsider looking to expose them all. But there’s one thing money can’t buy… and that’s the truth.

Sorrow and Bliss meets Normal People in this utterly compelling, darkly humorous millennial coming-of-age novel about a 27-year-old single Jewish woman in Melbourne who must learn to reconcile family expectations, cultural constraints and inter-generational trauma with her own desires. A coruscating new voice.

It’s the height of the Palm Beach charity ball season: for every disease or cause, there’s a reason for the local luminaries to eat (minimally), drink (maximally) and be seen. But when a prominent high-society dowager suddenly vanishes during a swanky gala and is later found dead in a concrete grave, panic and chaos erupt. Kiki Pew was notable not just for her wealth and her jewels - she was an ardent fan of the winter White House resident just down the road and a founding member of the Potussies, a group of women dedicated to supporting their president.

In The Benefactors we meet Frankie, Miriam and Bronagh—very different women but all mothers to 18-year-old boys. Glamorous Frankie, now married to a wealthy, older man, grew up in care. Miriam has recently lost her beloved husband Kahlil in ambiguous circumstances. Bronagh, the CEO of a children's services charity, loves the celebrity and prestige this brings her. They do not know each other yet, but when their sons are accused of sexually assaulting Misty Johnston, whose family lacks the wealth and social-standing of their own, they'll leverage all the power of their position.

What to do if Matthew, your secret lover, finally decides to leave his wife, Sophie, and daughters and move into your flat, just when you're thinking that you might not want him anymore. Plan A: Stop shaving your armpits. And your bikini line. Tell him you have a moustache that you wax every six weeks. Plan B: Accidentally on purpose bump into his wife, Sophie. Give yourself a fake name and identity. Befriend Sophie. Actually begin to really like Sophie. Snog Matthew's son (who's the same age as you by the way - you're not a paedophile). Buy a cat and give it a fake name and identity.

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.

'He left you some money.' Mickey felt her mouth drop open. The first half of that sentence had rung clear and true. The second half had not. Her father was one to take, not give. After he left them for his new family, Mickey resolved never to think of her father again. She's fine without him; yes, she drinks, but only sometimes and, really, she can’t not. But with only $181 to her name, she’s not above attending some mandated therapy to access her inheritance. She’ll kneel at the Kleenex alter and soon be bingei

Alison Hart, a medium by trade, tours the dormitory towns of London's orbital ring road with her flint-hearted sidekick, Colette, passing on messages from beloved dead ancestors. But behind her plump, smiling persona hides a desperate woman: she knows the terrors the next life holds but must conceal them from her wide-eyed clients. At the same time she is plagued by spirits from her own past, who infiltrate her body and home, becoming stronger and nastier the more she resists....

Korede is bitter. How could she not be? Her sister, Ayoola, is many things: the favorite child, the beautiful one, possibly sociopathic. And now Ayoola's third boyfriend in a row is dead. Korede's practicality is the sisters' saving grace. She knows the best solutions for cleaning blood, the trunk of her car is big enough for a body, and she keeps Ayoola from posting pictures of her dinner to Instagram when she should be mourning her 'missing' boyfriend. Not that she gets any credit.

It's late one night at the Spanish port of Algeciras, and two fading Irish gangsters are waiting on the boat from Tangier. A lover has been lost, a daughter has gone missing, their world has come asunder - can it be put together again? Night Boat to Tangier is a novel drenched in sex and death and narcotics, in sudden violence and old magic, but it is obsessed, above all, with the mysteries of love. A tragicomic masterwork from a multi-award-winning writer, Night Boat to Tangier is both mordant and hilarious, lyrical yet laden with menace.

Christina is a single mother living in the Melbourne suburbs, but to her online clients she is the esteemed Dr Ruth Carlisle, an 'executive coach and mindset expert, specialising in high-performing individuals'. Dr Ruth gains her clients' trust through her online coaching business, finds out their secrets and deepest fears, and uses this information to extort them, using the money to save for the ultimate unobtainable Australian dream: a home deposit. But when she uncovers a secret that could set her up with much more than a 2-bedroom apartment in Clifton Hill, suddenly everything is at stake.

Bud Stanley is an obituary writer who is afraid to live. Yes, his wife recently left him for a “far more interesting” man. Yes, he goes on a particularly awful blind date with a woman who brings her ex. And yes, he has too many glasses of Scotch one night and proceeds to pen and publish his own obituary. The newspaper wants to fire him. But now the company’s system has him listed as dead. And the company can’t fire a dead person. The ensuing fallout forces him to realize that life may be actually worth living.

Molly Gray has risen through the ranks to become Head Maid at the esteemed Regency Grand Hotel. She owes her penchant for polishing to her beloved Gran – a maid who passed on every cleaning tip she knew. But there’s more to Gran’s story than Molly once thought. In the pages of a diary, kept under lock and key, Molly discovers a past blotted with secrets. Why does it feel like something’s hidden in the family history? What happened to make Gran cut ties? Why didn’t Molly have a clue?

Tracy Turnblad, a spunky, full-figured Baltimore teen, wants nothing more than to be a featured dancer on The Corny Collins Show. So when she gets chosen to be on the air, it seems like all her dreams are about to come true. But when she and some of the Black cast of the show try to integrate the segregated dancing, things take on a life of their own. A sweet, hopeful parable about the dangers of conformity and segregation, Hairspray is perhaps the one optimistic entry in John Waters’ shocking and delightfully deranged oeuvre.

It all goes to hell when Baltimore bad girl Dawn Davenport doesn’t get the cha-cha heels she’s been demanding for Christmas. In this hilarious, irreverent, pyrotechnic melee of high-trash hijinks, Dawn ruins Christmas, skips town, and embarks on a wild ride that involves hitchhiking, robbery, murder, pregnancy—and, of course, modeling and glamour, too. The second installment of John Waters’ classic Trash Trilogy, Female Trouble explodes conventional norms of good behavior (and art) and is all the proof you’ll ever need that sometimes being bad can feel so, so very good.