Literary Humor

Encore, Encore! The brilliant sequel to the smash bestseller Auntie Mame is back and the reviews are in....

When Maud Marsh flings herself into George Bevan's cab in Piccadilly, he starts believing in damsels in distress. George traces his mysterious travelling companion to Belpher Castle, home of Lord Marshmoreton, where things become severely muddled. Maud's aunt, Lady Caroline Byng, wants Maud to marry Reddie, her stepson. Maud, meanwhile, is known to be in love with an unknown American she met in Wales. So when George turns up speaking American, a nasty case of mistaken identity breaks out.

The video stores are dying. But most of you don't care. You've got your Netflix and your Redbox and your DVR, so why deal with VHS tapes or scratched DVDs? Why deal with the grumpy guy at the worn-down independent video store?

Vivian doesn't feel like she fits in - and never has. As a child, she was so whimsical that her parents told her she was "left by fairies". Now, she is living alone in Dublin, where the neighbors treat her like she's crazy, her older sister condescends to her, social workers seem to have registered her as troubled, and she hasn't a friend in the world. So, she decides it's time to change her life. She begins by advertising for a friend. Not just any friend. She wants one named Penelope.

Mit präzisem Blick für die tragische Komik des Lebens stolpert Herr Lehmann durchs Leben. Durch jahrelange, ausgefuchste Ausweichmanöver und heroische Trägheit hat der arglistfreie, bis ins Mark ambitionslose Bierzapfer erfolgreich Ansprüche von Eltern, Vermietern, Nachbarn und Frauen ausgesessen. Nun, wir schreiben das Jahr 1989, lebt er weitgehend störungsfrei in seiner Eineinhalbzimmerwohnung in Kreuzberg, wenn er nicht in die nächste Kneipe geht. Doch plötzlich bricht eine unvorhergesehene Störung nach der anderen in seinen heißgeliebten Alltagstrott...

“Kirby has mastered the art of short fiction…A stunning collection from a writer whose talent and creativity seem boundless.” —NPR “Kirby takes joy in subverting the reader’s expectations at every turn. Her characters might be naïve, even reckless, but they aren’t about to be...

Henry Tuhoe is the quintessential 21st-century man. He has a vague job working for a multinational conglomerate - but everyone around him is getting laid off as the company outsources everything it can. Henry has a beautiful wife and an idyllic new home in the leafy suburbs. But his wife won't let him touch her. Then Henry's boss offers him a choice: go to the tiny Kingdom of Galado to oversee the launch of a new customer-service call center or lose the job with no severance.

Etta Mae is frustrated with her trailer-park life and her no-good family, and she has big dreams for something better. Working as the home nurse for the elderly but wealthy Howard Connard, Sr., she finally sees her chance - with her sexy curves and infectious charm, Etta Mae is determined to become his wife. Unfortunately, Connard's scheming, money-hungry son and stuck-up daughter-in-law are equally determined to make sure she doesn't.

Topanga Canyon is home to two couples on a collision course. Los Angeles liberals Delaney and Kyra Mossbacker lead an ordered, sushi-and-recycling existence in a newly gated hilltop community: He is a sensitive nature writer, she an obsessive realtor. Mexican illegals Candido and America Rincon desperately cling to their vision of the American Dream as they fight off starvation in a makeshift camp deep in the ravine.

Weighing in at 320 pounds, Winston "Tuffy" Foshay, is an East Harlem denizen who breaks jaws and shoots dogs and dreams of millions from his idea, Cap'n Crunch: The Movie, starring Danny DeVito. His best friend is a disabled Muslim who wants to rob banks, his guiding light is an ex-hippie Asian woman who worked for Malcolm X, and his wife, Yolanda, he married from jail over the phone. Shrewdly comical as this dazzling novel is, it turns acerbically sublime when the frustrated Tuffy agrees to run for City Council.

How will Jane Austen break the news to her fiancé that she’s not only undead, but also a 200-plus-year-old literary icon? In sleepy upstate New York, Jane’s wedding preparations have taken on a bloodsucking intensity. So when Walter suggests they ditch it all and combine their marriage and honeymoon with a house tour of Europe, Jane jumps at the chance to flee Lord Byron and the lingering threat of Charlotte Brontë. But to Jane’s chagrin, more than one secret from her past is about to resurface.

As a shaky truce between suburban gangsters starts to unravel, schlubby civilian Scott Clark has other things on his mind: if he can't afford to buy out his ex-father-in-law, Scott's about to lose the only house he's ever called home. In the red-hot urban housing market, he doesn't have a chance - until he and his best friends take the desperate measure of staging a fake drive-by shooting on the property to push down the asking price. But then Scott's mobster-posturing stunt attracts the attention of the real criminals.

A Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, New York Times best-selling author Dave Eggers is the voice of a generation. This stunning collection of his matchless short fiction includes the highly acclaimed “The Only Meaning of Oil-Wet Water.”

Polly Spencer is fine. She’s single, turning thirty and only managed to have sex twice last year (both times with a Swedish banker called Fred), but seriously, she’s fine. Even if she’s still stuck at Posh! magazine writing about royal babies and the chances of finding a plus one to her best friend’s summer wedding are looking worryingly slim.

From the author of Fight Club, the classic portrait of the damaged contemporary male psyche, now comes this novel about the apocalyptic marketing possibilities of female pleasure. Beautiful You is Palahniuk's much-anticipated satire of the emerging erotic thriller genre, a mash-up of mommy porn and chick lit à la Sex and the City, and fantasy lit à la Clan of the Cave Bear. Imagine if Ira Levin had a baby with Jean Auel.

In 1920s America, a plague is spreading fast. From New Orleans to Chicago to New York, the "Jes Grew" epidemic makes people desperate to dance, overturning social norms in the process. Anyone is vulnerable and when they catch it, they'll bump and grind into a frenzy. Working to combat the Jes Grew infection are the puritanical Atonists, a group bent on cultivating a "Talking Android", an African American who will infiltrate the unruly black communities and help crush the outbreak.

"Beautiful." —Sarah Jessica Parker "The best thing you'll read this year." —Kiley Reid, author of Such a Fun Age A raw, tenderly comic, and perfectly off-kilter novel about a woman who occasionally finds herself in "The Pit”—a delirious state of semiconsciousness—and the improbable...

In 1977, Ickey Jerusalem, San Francisco’s golden-boy poet laureate (based on Blake), is found dead in a locked, first-class toilet on an arriving red-eye flight. Ded Smith, a desperately unhappy, intelligent philistine with a highly developed philosophy to match, is called in to investigate the poet’s death. Thus begins a series of hilarious encounters with the members of Jerusalem’s coterie (updated amalgams of characters from Blake’s work).

This novel is the story of Dreyer, a wealthy and boisterous proprietor of a men’s clothing emporium. Ruddy, self-satisfied, and thoroughly masculine, he is perfectly repugnant to his exquisite but cold middle-class wife, Martha. Attracted to his money but repelled by his oblivious passion, she longs for their nephew instead, the thin, awkward, myopic Franz. Newly arrived in Berlin, Franz soon repays his uncle’s condescension in his aunt’s bed.

Struggling American writer Tim Nolinger pursues his journalism career in Paris while proper Frenchwoman Anne Sophie plans their wedding. When Tim covers the theft of a valuable manuscript, the story leads the couple to the local home of a reclusive American film director and his actress wife. Once there, Tim and Anne Sophie find themselves in the midst of a murder investigation, a French-American feud, and a reckless love affair that threatens to destroy their marriage even before it begins.