Literary Humour

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.

Winner of the 2007 Audie Award for Biography/Memoir and Finalist for Narration by the Author From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, mega-bestselling author who wore his celebrity with extraordinary grace comes a magnificently appealing book about teaching and about how one great storyteller found his...

Winner of the 2007 Audie Award for Biography/Memoir and Finalist for Narration by the Author From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, mega-bestselling author who wore his celebrity with extraordinary grace comes a magnificently appealing book about teaching and about how one great storyteller found his...

Named a Best Book of the Year by Entertainment Weekly, Vogue, Time, Esquire, BookPage, and more This darkly hilarious and “delicious new novel that ravishes with sex and food” (The Boston Globe) from the acclaimed author of The Pisces and So Sad Today is a “precise blend of desire...

This novel had its birth in the death of Martin Amis's closest friend, the incomparable Christopher Hitchens, and it is within that profound and sprawling friendship that Inside Story unfurls. From their early days as young magazine staffers in London, reviewing romantic entanglements and the...

It’s the end of the millennium and death is on the horizon. American writer Samson Young absconds to England with a terminal illness and a bad case of writer’s block, his flight across the Atlantic a last-ditch attempt to find a good story before it’s too late. What he discovers, in a dark...

Part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon--Private eye Doc Sportello surfaces, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era In this lively yarn, Thomas Pynchon, working in an unaccustomed genre that is at once exciting and accessible, provides a classic...

“Genius… It is miraculous to read these pieces… You must read The Best of Me.” —Andrew Sean Greer, New York Times Book Review David Sedaris’s best stories and essays, spanning his remarkable career—as selected and read by the author himself. Featuring fresh and classic recordings...

This is a children's recycling book that is hilarious, yet positive, and will give children a whimsical view on recycling. They will not look at a soda can in the same way, again!

Von Andy Warhol entdeckt, als Stilikone und Talkgast verehrt, ist Fran Lebowitz in den USA eine Kultfigur. Mit der Netflix-Serie "Pretend It's a City" ihres Freundes Martin Scorsese wird sie weltweit gefeiert. Lebowitz' Ruhm begründet aber hat ihr Schreiben, das sie als ebenso aufmerksame wie weise Beobachterin der Menschen und ihres Alltags zeigt.

Aaron thinks genre fiction is an affront to the fiction-writing craft. He often quotes the essayist Arthur Krystal, who says literary fiction "melts the frozen sea inside of us". Ironically Aaron doesn't seem to realize that he's emotionally frozen. The vivacious Laurie, lover of flamingo-patterned attire and all things hot pink, is the one person who might be capable of melting him.

In this brilliant mix of literary satire and crime caper, Frankie Abandonato, a small-time con man on the run, finds refuge by posing as V. S. Mohle - a famously reclusive writer - and teaching in a prestigious writing program somewhere in Texas. Streetwise and semiliterate, Frankie finds that being treated as a genius agrees with him. The program has been funded by Rex Schoeninger, the world’s richest novelist, who is dying. Buzzards are circling, angling for the remains of Rex’s fortune, and Frankie quickly realizes that he has been presented with the opportunity of a lifetime.

John Harmon returns from exile expecting to receive an inheritance, but knows that he must marry a stranger, Bella Wilfer, in order to collect. He fakes his own death and takes on a new identity in order to observe her first. Some of the memorable characters in this, the last completed Dickens novel, include Bella who, unlike other Dickens heroines, cannot be accused of unnatural virtue; the insolent barrister Eugene Wrayburn; the amiable Boffin; and the rascal Silas Wegg.

Cy Riemer is the patriarch of a successful and loving Chicago family. But not all is copacetic in Cy's world. The scientific newsletter he publishes is foundering financially, his ex-wife still relies on him for money and intimacy, and he can never seem to find the time or the wherewithal to relax. Much of Cy's stress is caused by the trouble he has with his brilliant and duplicitous son, Jack.

Alors qu’un typhon menace la baie de Hong Kong, la brigade policière de Jackie Thran encercle la cave à vin la plus sécurisée du monde, installée dans d’anciens bunkers de l’armée britannique. Un trio de braqueuses, aux agissements excentriques, s’y est infiltré et retient en otage l’impressionnant stock de M. Coetzer, estimé à trois cent cinquante millions de dollars…Revisitant avec brio les codes du film de braquage, Céline Minard signe un roman drôle et explosif, où la subversion se mêle à l’ivresse.

"Dans la liste des précautions oratoires, celle-ci occupe une place à part. Elle souhaite jouer la surprise par sa forme, une vulgarité appuyée qui aurait pour mission de gommer à l'avance le pire des soupçons : une pensée réactionnaire. L'interlocuteur ne doit pas se récrier avant la remarque promise. Mais une petite réticence aux commissures des lèvres signifiant "Toi, passer pour un vieux con !?" semble bienvenue. Elle était espérée."

Hear two hilarious but improbable letters, one from a very fed-up cat writing to her owner; the second, from a very worn-out husband who's tired of his wife and looking for some semblance of peace.