Showing titles in Satire

Candide, is a French satire written in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. One of the finest satires ever written, this lively tale follows the absurdly melodramatic adventures of the youthful Candide, who is forced into the army, flogged, shipwrecked, betrayed, robbed, separated from his beloved Cunégonde, and tortured by the Inquisition. As Candide witnesses calamity upon calamity, he becomes disillusioned and discovers that all is not always for the best....

In Why We Suck, Dr. Denis Leary uses his common sense, and his biting and hilarious take on the world, to attack the politically correct, the hypocritical, the obese, the thin - basically everyone who takes themselves too seriously. He does so with the extra oomph of a doctorate bestowed upon him by his alma mater Emerson College. "Sure it's just a celebrity type of thing - they only gave it to me because I'm famous." Leary explains.

My secret double-life was finally catching up with me. Sorcha wanted a divorce. I was facing jail time for taking my orse out in a pub in Cork. And there was a very good chance that my sister-in-law's surrogate baby was actually mine? One by one, all of the goys turned their backs on me. Then came an unexpected plot twist. From beyond the grave, Fr Fehily - the M and the Q to our Leinster Schools Senior Cup-winning team - sent us all on one final mission... To walk the Camino - or die trying!

Candide, the illegitimate nephew of a German baron and student of eternal optimist Pangloss, is living a simple and sheltered life in "the best of all possible worlds." But when Candide falls in love with the wrong woman, his uncle's young daughter, he is exiled from the baron's castle and suffers great tragedy and catastrophe, which leaves him disillusioned and questioning the goodness of the universe.

How much would you pay for a painting with nothing on it? Would it be art? Marc's best friend Serge has just bought a very expensive - and very white - painting. To Marc, the painting is a joke, and as battle lines are drawn, old friends use it to settle scores.

With friendships hanging in the balance, the question becomes: how much is a painting worth?

Amy and Joel’s honeymoon in the Maldives was the perfect week of love, sun, sex and a free minibar...but unfortunately, it was also the high point of a marriage that quickly descended into an absolute disaster zone. Eight years on, they’re back in paradise, trying to recreate the magic with new partners. What a crying shame they’ve picked the same week to do it. Trapped together on an island small enough to spit across with the wind behind you, Amy and Joel pick up right where they left off: at total loggerheads.

Leinster House had been burned to the ground. All that was left was a smouldering ruin and the blackened remains of an Irish flag. The old man was trying to pin the blame on Brussels, but I knew the actual truth? Unfortunately, Sorcha was too angry with me for having sex with our daughter's Irish teacher to listen. But I had, like, other irons in the—pardon the pun—fire. I'd just become Head Coach of the Ireland rugby team—albeit, women. The country might well have been focked. But very soon, we had everyone believing in fairy tales again.

Ryan Fleming is a young agnostic reeling from his brother’s death. Though he is deeply angry with God, he makes good on a promise he made to his brother in the final moments of his life: to visit a church at least once. But shortly after his arrival, the slick megachurch’s shoddily installed video projector falls on his head—sending Ryan through a wormhole into another world. To make it back to his own universe, he must partner with a woman named Faith to awaken a long-sleeping King—the World-Maker who can make all things new.

Ambitious and hardworking Tracy Flick feels underappreciated and stuck. Her job as a high school assistant principal isn’t the political career she dreamed of as an over-achieving teen, so when the longtime principal abruptly announces his retirement, offering a rare chance of promotion, Tracy is filled with zeal at the prospect of success. But nothing ever comes easily to Tracy Flick, no matter how diligent or qualified she happens to be.

Denis Stone, a self-conscious young poet, is invited to the English town home of Crome, renowned for its gatherings of intellectuals. Hosted by Henry and Priscilla Wimbush, the house party has much to offer the naive Denis. The guests include the self-contained Anne, whom Denis adores; the handsome artist Gombauld, his rival for Anne's affections; and the cynical Mr. Scogan. All have their stories and ideas to unfold but, as Denis comes to realize, ideas cannot compensate for reality.

Nobody blows smoke like Nick Naylor. He’s a spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies - in other words, a flack for cigarette companies, paid to promote their product on talk and news shows. The problem? He’s so good at his job, so effortlessly unethical, that he’s become a target for both anti-tobacco terrorists and for the FBI. In a country where half the people want to outlaw pleasure and the other want to sell you a disease, what will become of Nick Naylor?

I was a rugby player with a great future behind me. A 35-year-old father of five with an expanding waistline who was trying to survive the bloody battlefield we call life. My son was locked in a violent turf war with a rival Love/Hate tour operator, my daughter was in love with a boy who looked like Justin Bieber and my old dear was about to walk up the aisle with a 92-year-old billionaire who thought it was still 1936.

In a renovated Gothic church on Long Island lives Jonathan Hemlock, an art professor and a world-renowned mountain climber who finances his black-market art collection by working as a freelance assassin. Now, Hemlock is being tricked into a hazardous assignment that involves an attempt to scale one of the most treacherous mountain peaks in the Swiss Alps: the Eiger. His target is one of his three fellow climbers. The problem is that the CII can't tell him which one.

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.

It is the 1980s, and the Winshaw family are getting richer and crueller by the year: newspaper-columnist Hilary gets thousands for telling it like it isn't; Henry's turning hospitals into car parks; Roddy's selling art in return for sex; down on the farm Dorothy's squeezing every last pound from her livestock; and Thomas is making a killing on the stock exchange. But once their hapless biographer, Michael Owen, starts investigating the family's trail of greed, corruption and immoral doings, the time is growing ripe for the Winshaws to receive their comeuppance....

From the number one New York Times best-selling author of the Man Booker Prize-winning novel Lincoln in the Bardo and the story collection Tenth of December, a 2013 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction. Talking candy bars, baby geniuses, disappointed mothers, castrated dogs, interned teenagers, and moral fables - all in this hilarious and heartbreaking collection from an author hailed as the heir to Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon.

From my humble beginning as a market trader's daughter to a fashion stylist in Paris, I have carved out a career that most people could only dream of. Over the years, thousands of people have asked me for the secrets of my “Sue-cess” and it's only now that I feel the world is ready to understand. Charity Shop Sue's Tools for Management and Success is a guide that will illuminate your path to becoming a better manager and a better human person.

Walter Reddie is a washed-up former astronaut who takes it upon himself to build a rocket ship to rescue his cousin, who is stuck on the International Space Station after a mission gone wrong. If America won’t rescue its astronauts, Walter will do it himself. Violating numerous laws, common sense, logic, and reason, Walter Reddie becomes a lightning rod for people who aren’t ready to lay down and die just yet.

Evangellyfish is a ruthless, grimly amused, and above all, honest look at one of the darkest corners in the western world. Douglas Wilson, a pastor of more than 30 years, paints a vivid and painful picture of evangelical boomchurch leadership...in bed. Chad Lester's kingdom is found in the Midwest. When Lester is (falsely) accused of molesting a young male counselee, his universe begins to crumble. He is a sexual predator, yes. But strictly straight. Detectives, reporters, assistant pastors, and old lovers and pay-offs all come out to play.

Steve Minion, Heaven’s Emissary to Hell, reunites with his pal Orson Welles to catch a supernatural thief in this comedic “catch me if you can” tale. Go with them on a wild ride through the Circles of Hell, outer space, inner space, even the lower dimensions. Can the guys measure up? For that matter, can they measure anything, when nothing seems constant except their friendship?