Showing titles in Satire

Javier Perez is a hustler from a family of hustlers. He learns from an early age how to play the game to his own advantage, how his background—murdered drug dealer dad, single cash-strapped mom, best friend serving time for gang activity—can be a key to doors he didn’t even know existed. This kind of story, molded in the right way, is just what college admissions committees are looking for, and a full academic scholarship to a prestigious university brings Javi one step closer to his dream of becoming a famous writer.

What begins as an idyllic new society built for the freedom and equality of all who walk on four legs quickly becomes a nightmare. The cleverest animals take on more and more control while the hard working common animals are manipulated into doing all the work. Best intentions are twisted by the lure of power, and no animal is immune to the terrible consequences of its corrupting influence.

Rose Well Holiday Park needs a hero. This once shining icon of the Great British Holiday Camp is dying and the last residents are more interested in preparing for a zombie apocalypse or fighting off imaginary UFOs than playing crazy golf or bingo. In addition, a foreign bottled water company is attempting to force a sale so they can seize the last asset of Rose Well Park, the Rose Well Spring. What Rose Well Park could probably do without is a hero whose belief in a better tomorrow far outweighs any of his past achievements. But William Fox is all they have.

Modern technology is terrifying. The average smartphone carries out 3.36 billion instructions per second. The average person can carry out only one instruction in that time. Stop and think about that for a second. Sorry, that's two instructions; you won't be able to do that. But what if modern technology was... literally terrifying? What if there really was a ghost in the machine? Prepare to travel through the bad gateway as acclaimed actor, writer and comedian Tom Neenan (The Mash Report) finds out what horrors may be lurking in our apps and gadgets.

Eight unsuspecting people receive an invitation to participate in a mysterious new reality show called Break Room. But what starts as an opportunity to find fame is quickly revealed to be something far more unsettling when they learn how they were chosen - they were voted in by their own co-workers as the people they'd least like to share a break room with. But there's another twist. Among them is an imposter - a mole planted by the show's producers and the only way to win the prize money is to uncover the saboteur before time runs out.

The diet revolution is here. And it’s armed. Plum Kettle does her best not to be noticed, because when you’re fat, to be noticed is to be judged. Or mocked. Or worse. She works answering fan mail for a popular teen magazine and is biding her time until her weight loss surgery. Only then can her 'true life' as a thin person finally begin.

Since the man I thought I would be walking down the aisle with broke up with me, I’ve been focused on my business. As the designer of Emma Belle Bridal Gowns, headlining the Blushing Bride Convention in Las Vegas has been the highlight of my year. And the legendary editor of The Dress magazine wants to feature me in their upcoming issue?

Sam Bennett is the last of a dying breed, a former Mad Man, now made redundant after 30 years at the same advertising agency. Left with his awards and a case of Bulgarian whiskey (which he still can’t remember buying), Sam retreats to his home, awaits the summer arrival of his daughter and crazy son-in-law, Muller, is plagued by panic attacks and has an incident involving a pressed ham on a liquor store window with a young security guard named Max. .

Since its publication in 1996, George Saunders’ debut collection has grown in esteem from a cherished cult classic to a masterpiece of the form, inspiring an entire generation of writers along the way. In six stories and a novella, Saunders hatches an unforgettable cast of characters, each struggling to survive in an increasingly haywire world.

From Roald Dahl, the master of the sting in the tail, a newly collected audiobook of his darkest stories, read by Will Self, Adrian Scarborough, Stephanie Beacham, Andrew Scott, Richard E Grant, Tamsin Greig, Mark Heap, Juliet Stevenson and Jessica Hynes. Even when we mean to be kind we can sometimes be cruel. We all have streaks of nastiness inside us. In these ten tales of cruelty, master storyteller Roald Dahl explores how and why it is we make others suffer.

Anatole France (1844-1924) was a French poet, journalist, and novelist who wrote several best sellers. The Revolt of the Angels is a mischievous take on the theology of modern society; it chronicles the thoughts of Arcade, a lowly guardian angel, as he discovers the ugly truths of his divine master in the library of his human charge As Maurice, the young man abandoned by Arcade, struggles to get his guardian back, one gets a view of a wide variety of the author’s artistic personalities, most of whom are fallen angels.

When Bonnie Grayduck relocates from sunny Santa Cruz California to the small town of Lake Woebegotten, Minnesota, to live with her estranged father, chief of the local two-man police department, she thinks she's leaving her troubles behind. But she soon becomes fascinated by another student - the brooding, beautiful Edwin Scullen, whose reclusive family hides a terrible secret. (Psst: they're actually vampires. But they're the kind who don't eat people, so it's okay.)

Ben Jewell has hit a breaking point. His 10-year-old son, Jonah, has severe autism, and Ben and his wife, Emma, are struggling to cope. When Ben and Emma fake a separation - a strategic decision to further Jonah's case in an upcoming tribunal - Ben and Jonah move in with Georg, Ben's elderly father. In a small house in North London, three generations of men - one who can't talk, two who won't - are thrown together.

Ricky chats with comedians Kerry Godliman, Sean McLoughlin, Diane Morgan, Robin Ince, Sara Pascoe and Shappi Khorsandi.

Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and the micro-aggressions, she’s thrilled when Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They’ve only just started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of uncomfortable events cause Nella to become Public Enemy Number One and Hazel, the Office Darling. Then the notes begin to appear on Nella’s desk: Leave Wagner. Now.

A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public, commonly referred to as A Modest Proposal, is a Juvenalian satirical essay written and published anonymously by Jonathan Swift in 1729. Swift suggests in his essay that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling children as food. By doing this he mocks the authority of the British officials.

Audio is a unique medium. It invites listeners to become a part of the process, to interpret what they hear, however they'd like; whereas motion pictures leave no such room for input. With the completion of this book, it dawned on me that, as an actor by trade, I could play the part; and I'm knee-deep in actor pals - why not record the book like a radio play? So that's exactly what happened. I rounded up an excellent troupe of thespians, from both Los Angeles and my home state of Oregon, and we recorded what was to become this epic listen for you to hear!

Well the title looks familiar . . . and Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence may have been the trigger for Christopher Marsh's brilliant debut novel - but there the similarities end. Rather than a middle class Brit travelling all the way to the South of France to patronize the locals, Southern Europe gets its own back courtesy of Jesus Sanchez Ventura - the funniest fictional creation in many a year.

Aging Rock God Jim Sullivan is heading for the quiet life on his tiny newly acquired island, off the coast of Cornwall. That is until he sends a letter to the King of England, announcing his intent to declare independence from the UK and appointing himself king. Determined not to cede one inch of British territory, the UK government dispatches low-level Foreign Office researcher John Cabot to put a stop to Sullivan's ambitions. What they didn't anticipate was Cabot's tenacity for unearthing information they'd rather he didn't, or Sullivan's relentless optimism in his own ideas.

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