Biography Humor

There are things Chelsea Devantez probably shouldn’t be telling you. Many of them are in this book: some are embarrassing (like when she tried to break her three year spell of celibacy using a guide of seduction tips). Some are confessional (getting sentenced to the “hell hill” at Mormon church camp). Some are TMI (a series of outrageous doctor visits that ended with one doctor misdiagnosing her as “pregnant.” Woopsies!).

Mindy Kaling has lived many lives: the obedient child of immigrant professionals, a timid chubster afraid of her own bike, a Ben Affleck–impersonating Off-Broadway performer and playwright, and, finally, a comedy writer and actress prone to starting fights with her friends and coworkers with the sentence “Can I just say one last thing about this, and then I swear I’ll shut up about it?”

Thinking all monasteries were like the ones he saw in the movies, Jesse Itzler arrived at the New Skete religious community in remote Cambridge, New York, with a shaved head and a suitcase filled with bananas. To his surprise, New Skete monks have most of their hair. They're Russian Orthodox, not Buddhist, and they're also world-renowned dog breeders and authors of dog-training books that have sold in the millions.

At 24, Sebastian Maniscalco arrived in LA with a suitcase and saved up minimum wages. He knew no one and nothing about standup comedy, but he was determined to go for it anyway. At 44, he's on the Forbes' list of highest earning comedians, sells out arenas, and has starred in four hit comedy specials including Why Would You Do That? on Showtime. Stay Hungry tells the story of the 20 years in between.

Well hello to you dear audiobook browser. Now I have your attention it would be rude if I didn't tell you a little about my literary feast. So, here is the thing: is it just me or does anyone else find that adulthood offers no refuge from the unexpected horrors, peculiar lack of physical coordination and sometimes unexplained nudity, that accompanied childhood and adolescence? I am proud to say I have a wealth of awkward experiences - from school days to life as an office temp - and here I offer my 18-year-old self (and I hope you, too, dear listener) some much needed caution and guidance on how to navigate life's rocky path.

When Tyler Merritt was diagnosed with cancer, everything he thought he knew about what mattered in life changed. This Changes Everything is a humorous and optimistic love letter to this beautiful life. Though he made it through a highly invasive surgery and thought he was in the clear, Tyler soon realized that the cancer had other plans. It wasn’t a question of if the tumor would come back for an encore, his doctors told him. It was a question of when.

Daniel Sloss' stand-up comedy engages, enrages, offends, unsettles, educates, comforts, and gets audiences roaring with laughter - all at the same time. In his groundbreaking specials, seen on Netflix and HBO, he has brilliantly tackled everything from male toxicity and friendship to love, romance, and marriage - and claims (with the data to back it up) that his on-stage laser-like dissection of relationships has single-handedly caused more than 300 divorces and 120,000 breakups.

Michael Palin's diaries begin when he was newly married and struggling to make a name for himself in the world of television comedy. But Monty Python was just around the corner...Enjoying an unlikely cult status early on, the Pythons then proceeded to tour the USA and Canada. As their popularity grew, so Palin relates how the group went their separate ways, later to re-form for stage shows and the celebrated films The Holy Grail and Life of Brian.

From her raucous musical numbers to turning upsetting news into laughs as the host of The Amber Ruffin Show or in her Late Night with Seth Meyers segments, Amber is no stranger to finding the funny wherever she looks. With equal parts heart and humor, she and her sister Lacey Lamar shared some of the eye-opening and outrageous experiences Lacey had faced in Nebraska in their first book. Now, the dynamic duo makes it clear—Lacey isn’t the only one in the family with ridiculous encounters to share!

Doug Stanhope is one of the most critically acclaimed and stridently unrepentant comedians of his generation. What will surprise some is that he owes so much of his dark and sometimes uncomfortably honest sense of humor to his mother, Bonnie.

James Acaster wakes up heartbroken and alone in New York, his relationship over, a day of disastrous meetings leading him to wonder if comedy is really what he wants to be doing anymore. A constant comfort in James' life has been music, but he's not listened to anything new for a very long time. Idly browsing 'best of the year' lists, it dawns on him that 2016 may have been a grim year for a lot of reasons, but that it seemed to be an iconic year for music. And so begins a life-changing musical odyssey, as James finds himself desperately seeking solace in the music of 2016....

Millions of viewers know and love Bob Saget from his role as the sweetly neurotic father on the smash hit Full House, and as the charming wisecracking host of America's Funniest Home Videos. And then there are the legions of fans who can't get enough of his scatological, out-of-his-mind stand-up routines, comedy specials, and outrageously profane performances in such shows as HBO's Entourage and the hit documentary The Aristocrats.

Bruce Vilanch is known as a go-to comedy writer for award shows, sitcoms, and top-heavy variety specials, but he has also been responsible for quite a few of the worst shows ever put on television—legendarily bad productions. It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time is a lifetime reflection of what Vilanch has experienced, learned, forgotten, dismissed, and embraced in decades of working in show business

One gorgeous autumn day, Harrison discovers that his wife—the sweet, funny, loving mother of their three daughters, a woman “who’s spent just about every Sunday of her life in a church”—is having an affair with a family friend. This revelation propels the hysterical, heartbreaking events in How to Stay Married, casting our narrator onto “the factory floor of hell,” where his wife was now in love with a man who “wears cargo shorts, on purpose.” What will he do? Kick her out?

Following his two New York Times best sellers, Brain Droppings and Napalm & Silly Putty, comes George Carlin's third audiobook, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?, a riotous journey through the mind of one of America's premiere comic observers.

What happened was this: Jenny Slate was a human mammal who sniffed the air every morning hoping to find another person to love who would love her, and in that period there was a deep dark loneliness that she had to face and befriend, and then we are pleased to report that she did fall in love, and in that period she was like chimes, or a flock of clean breaths, and her spine lying flat was the many-colored planks on the xylophone, but also she was rabid with fear of losing this love, because of past injury.

In his compelling autobiography, Michael McIntyre reveals all. With deeply personal and captivating narration, Michael unveils his incredible journey: from his showbiz roots, to his appalling attempts to attract the opposite sex, to going from selling just one ticket at the Edinburgh Festival to half a million at his last tour. Written and narrated by Michael himself, Life and Laughing is the hilarious performance and life story from one of the country's most loved comics.

“Because she was my mother, the death of zaftig good-time gal Renay Corren is newsworthy to me, and I treat it with the same respect and reverence she had for, well, nothing. A more disrespectful, trash talking woman was not to be found.” So began Andy Corren's unforgettable obituary for his mother, Renay Mandel Corren, in her hometown paper The Fayetteville Observer, a tribute that went on to touch the hearts of millions around the globe. In his brief telling of the life and legend that was Renay, Andy captured only a slice of his loving and fabulously unconventional mother.

I'll Just Be Five More Minutes is a personal essay collection of laugh-out-loud-funny, tear-jerking, and at times cringey true stories of Emily's experiences as a neurodivergent woman. With the newfound knowledge of her ADHD, Emily candidly reexamines her complicated relationships (including one with a celebrity stalker), her money problems, the years she spent unknowingly self-medicating, and her hyperfixations (two words: decorative baskets). A memoir-in-essays both entertaining and enlightening, I'll Just Be Five More Minutes is for people with ADHD, as well as those who know and love them.

Running with Scissors is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of being Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her psychiatrist, a dead ringer for Santa and a lunatic in the bargain.