Showing titles in Satire

In music, counterpoint is the art of writing melodies that play in conjunction with one another, according to a strict set of rules, in order to emphasize the melody by contrast. In debate, point/counterpoint is a means of persuasion in which the speaker begins by conceding to their opponent’s argument before refuting it wholeheartedly. Aldous Huxley follows these traditions in his masterpiece Point Counter Point. The polarity between passion and reason in the intellectual life of the 1920s is demonstrated both in form and in theme in Huxley’s ambitious satire.

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.

World famous author Arthur Fletch is dead. His final novel, the most anticipated book in history, remains unfinished. But the ending won’t write itself. Fletch’s publisher, Merriweather Press, has invited six authors to Fletch’s private island in Scotland. Authors whose books have never had the big marketing budgets or publicity opportunities. In other words, midlist. And they’re about to be presented with the opportunity of a lifetime.

Dale Figgo is the only hate-monger ever to be kicked out of the Proud Boys for being too dumb and incompetent. Now his already messy life is about to get more complicated, thanks to two formidable adversaries. The first is Viva Morales, a clever woman recently taken to the cleaners by her ex-husband, now working at the supposedly philanthropic Mink Foundation and renting a room in Figgo's apartment; the second, Twilly Spree, a millionaire with an anger management problem, especially when it comes to those who deface the environment.

The doctor is back with a series of sessions from the likes of Sarah Silverman, Ted Danson, Weird Al Yankovic, and Maria Bamford. Based on the Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist, the show reunites star/creator Jonathan Katz with H. Jon Benjamin (as his son Ben) and Laura Silverman (as receptionist Laura).

Entrusted with the lives of Jesus Christ's top servicemen, YouTube superstars Matt Watson and Ryan Magee must travel to the farthest reaches of the earth and terminate public enemy number one: Osama bin Laden. Discovering along their journey that things aren't always so easy for two incredibly rich and handsome celebrities, the dynamic duo is put through the ultimate trial of courage, patriotism, and friendship.

Someone wants to murder Princess Melilot. This is sadly normal. Melilot is sick of being ordered to go on dangerous quests by her domineering stepmother. Especially since she always winds up needing to be rescued by her more magically talented stepsisters. And now, she's been commanded to marry a king she’s never met. When hideous spider-wolves attack her on the journey to meet her husband-to-be, she is once again rescued—but this time, by twelve eerily similar-looking masked huntsmen.

Adrian Mole is thirty, single and a father. His cooking at a top London restaurant has been equally mocked ('the sausage on my plate could have been a turd') and celebrated (will he be the nation's first celebrity offal chef?) And the love of his life, Pandora Braithwaite, is too busy as the newly elected MP for Ashby-de-la-Zouch to notice him. Frustrated, disappointed, and undersexed, Adrian despairs until a letter from his past changes everything.

Fifteen years after losing most of his family to a devastating, pudding-related tragedy, Simon Debovar has settled into a life of self-imposed exile from the stinking, selfish morass of humanity. Content that his daily highlights will include hazelnut coffee, a long bath, and the occasional jar of olives, his life is completely upturned by the discovery that his ornate living room carpet is the deciding factor in a bet between God and Satan.

Kurt Vonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul's rebellion is vintage Vonnegut – wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.

Suppose you were murdered and then woke up 300 years earlier in someone else’s body. Wouldn’t you want to put yourself in suspended animation and be re-awoken in time to prevent yourself being murdered in the first place? This is the extraordinary tale of an ordinary man in a race across Time.

Jessamyn St. Germain is meant to be a star. Not an actor who occasionally books yogurt commercials and certainly not a lowly usher at one of Vancouver's smallest regional theatres. No, she is bound for greatness, and that's why the part of Maria in the theatre's upcoming production of The Sound of Music is hers. Or it's going to be.

It's March 2020, and a calamity is unfolding. A group of friends and friends-of-friends gathers in a country house to wait out the pandemic. Over the next six months, new friendships and romances will take hold, while old betrayals will emerge, forcing each character to reevaluate whom they love and what matters most.

Humour, mystery, and a time leap back to the 1970s. Could you relive your life and change the past? However, history always repeats … or does it?… Jason Apsley is about to find out.

Mark Russell & Shannon Wheeler's faithful yet irreverent approach to the Bible made their book God Is Disappointed in You a modern cult classic. Now, by popular demand, they turn their attention to the best parts left out of the canonical Bible, including the Midrash, the Apocrypha, Gnostic Gospels, and more! And if you thought the Bible had some weird stuff in it....

Anthony Trollope's classic novel centers on Mr. Harding, a clergyman of great personal integrity whose charitable income far exceeds the purpose for which it was intended. On discovering this, young John Bold turns his reforming zeal toward exposing what he regards as an abuse of privilege, despite the fact that he is in love with Mr. Harding's daughter, Eleanor.

Marc-Uwe lives together with a kangaroo. The kangaroo is a communist and it is really into Nirvana. It's a classical Berlin flat-sharing community, where the deep questions of life are debated: Is lying in a hammock already a kind of passive resistance? Must the Kangaroo place its pouch onto the conveyor belt at the airport security check?

When Sam’s wife first tells him about Vitek, a twenty-first-century fertility lab, he sees it as the natural next step in trying to help their future child get a “leg up” in a competitive world. But the more Sam considers the lives that his child could lead, the more he begins to question his own relationships and the choices he has made in his life.

Stoned and porn-addicted surfer Baxter Kent is terrified of women and anxious to make things work with a sex robot. Acid junkie Arden Coover has a useless philosophy degree and a doomed relationship he believes might save him. His younger sister Tess is considering, or resisting, a convenient but loveless marriage to a wealthy, narcissistic novelist. Ryland Richter, an alcoholic insurance executive with too much money and too few scruples, is seeking toxic solace in the arms of a dangerously unhinged subordinate.

A member of the landed gentry, with a seemingly guaranteed income from his estate in the country, Oblomov lives in Petersburg, uninterested in the business that provides his living and barely aware that the revenue is diminishing. Not that he leads a dissolute life of extravagance, balls and entertainment. Instead he is a dreamer, a sybarite, content above all to spend most of the day supine, in bed. The novel opens with Oblomov thus ensconced, attended only by his dirty, grumbling, indolent servant Zahar, who has looked after him since childhood, catering to his every need.