Comedy Essays

A missing photographer. A megalomaniacal millionaire. A drag queen hellbent on saving her club. The latest glittering mystery from the author of Murder in the Dressing Room… Misty Divine is bold, beautiful and back in action. She’s barely settled into her new role as the glamorous hostess of...

By his longtime friend and a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, the definitive biography of Larry McMurtry, the legendary author and screenwriter of Lonesome Dove, The Last Picture Show, and Brokeback Mountain, who transformed our vision of the West. Before Larry McMurtry became one of the...

In his sparkling memoir, M.K. Raina documents the many lives he has lived. From sharing the stage with some of the most celebrated actors in India to his journey as a young man witnessing the violence and horrors rampant through the streets of Kashmir, an entire history of northern India is...

The journey will be long and difficult, one thousand miles. Try not to be too obvious. Stick to the backroads. You’ ll know you’ ve arrived when you get there. Stephen Bolin leaves a bizarre note by his deathbed, asking his sisters to take his body back to his birthplace in Far North...

“Vivid . . . These stories, in which class divisions form impassable rifts and submission to the status quo comes at great psychic cost, have much to say about our contemporary reality." —The New York Times Book Review “What a gift to have these stories translated, finally, into English...

“Distressingly smart, wickedly sly, and side-clutchingly hilarious.” —Vanessa Chan, author of The Storm We Made “If you want a book that perfectly evokes millennial sexual politics under late-stage capitalism, and in which all of us—gay, straight, cis, and trans alike—are read for...

Una denuncia innovadora y urgente desde la primera línea del "trabajo sucio", el trabajo que la sociedad considera esencial pero moralmente comprometido. Pilotos de drones que llevan a cabo asesinatos selectivos. Inmigrantes indocumentados que trabajan en los mataderos industriales. Guardias...

Winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor “[T]his poised and playful debut novel is a sly satire on foodie culture and the modern hype machine. . . . As tart as ‘artisanal citrus,’ as sharp as a chef’s knife, The Lemon is both a gleeful foodie sendup and an incisive takedown of the...

An intimate peek into the life of the soldier-turned-lyricist Anand Bakshi, from his formative years in undivided Punjab to eventually moving to Bombay and landing his first film Bhala Aadmi in 1958. Along the way, he lost his mother, his place of birth, and his home and wealth, but his...

What makes you purr? Of all the questions in the world, this is the most important. It is also the great leveler. Because no matter whether you are a playful kitten or a sedentary senior, a scrawny alley Tom or a sleek-coated uptown girl, whatever your circumstances, you just want to be happy...

Chickpeas to Cook is the story of the woman of the tribe, women from some of the smallest of communities, often no more than a few hundred families in Singapore. How do these women live, think, breathe? What does the Dawoodi Bohra woman answer, for instance, when she’s asked if her daughter...

MT, as he is popularly known, is one of the most illustrious writers and film-makers from modern Kerala. His life’s work has won him the Jnanpith Award, the Sahitya Akademi Award, the National Film Award and the Padma Bhushan, among others. MT grew up in the village of Kudallur in Kerala and...

Una concisa y legible perspectiva de Cuba, revisada a fondo y escrita por cubanos para cualquier persona interesada en comprender rápidamente la turbulenta historia del país insular. Cuba: una breve historia abarca el período prehispánico, pasando por la lucha de Cuba por mantener la...

The stark and inhospitable high-elevation landscape of Nevada’s Great Basin Desert may not be an obvious (or easy) place to settle down, but for self-professed desert rat Michael Branch it’s home. Of course, living in such an unforgiving landscape gives one many things to rant about. Fortunately for us, Branch—humorist, environmentalist, and author of Raising Wild—is a prodigious ranter.

Sometimes, love is just an illusion. Sometimes, it becomes the sole purpose of your life. While stories on social media were trending, Raghu was lost in books. For him, even the idea of falling in love was limited to books-until he met Ruhi. As their love plays out against the backdrop of the...

A fresh exploration of American feminist history told through the lens of the beauty pageant world. Many predicted that pageants would disappear by the 21st century. Yet they are thriving. America’s most enduring contest, Miss America, celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2020. Why do they...

"Since time immemorial, India has been an ocean bed over which numerous stories have flowed and enriched the world. Storytellers from Tulsidas to Rohinton Mistry have added their magic to this magnificent repository. Inspired in part by Somadeva’s Kathasaritasagara, William Radice collects...

A brilliant biography of one of India’s greatest poets Mirza Mohammad Asadullah Khan Ghalib began writing poetry in Persian at the age of nine and the pre-eminent poet of the time, Mir, predicted a great future for the precocious genius when he was shown his verse. But success and material...

Winner of the 2019 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction Winner of the Shilts-Grahn Triangle Award for Lesbian Nonfiction Winner of the 2019 Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award A New York Times Notable Book of 2018 A revealing...

An honest, funny, neurotic, and totally gross love child of Mindy Kaling and Mary Roach. Mara Altman's volatile and apprehensive relationship with her body has led her to wonder about a lot of stuff over the years. Like, who decided that women shouldn't have body hair? And how sweaty is too...