Literary Humor

"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.

Named one of the best books of 2018 by NPR The “delicious and addictive” (Salon) Claire DeWitt series returns with a thrilling, noirish knockout of a novel that follows three separate narratives starring the self-proclaimed “world’s greatest detective.” As Cara Hoffman, author of...

“Abbi Waxman is both irreverent and thoughtful.”—#1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Giffin Squashed among a bus full of strangers, mother-daughter duo Jessica and Emily Burnstein watch their carefully mapped-out college tour devolve into a series of off-roading misadventures...

Gil Gamesh, the only pitcher who ever literally tried to kill the umpire. The ex-con first baseman, John Baal, “The Babe Ruth of the Big House,” who never hit a home run sober. If you’ve never heard of them—or of the homeless baseball team the Ruppert Mundys—it’s because of the Communist plot, and the capitalist scandal, that expunged the entire Patriot League from baseball memory.

Kathy is a writer. Kathy is getting married. It’s the summer of 2017 and the whole world is falling apart. Fast-paced and frantic, Crudo unfolds in real time from the full-throttle perspective of a commitment-phobic artist who may or may not be Kathy Acker. From a Tuscan hotel for the super-rich to a Brexit-paralyzed UK, Kathy spends the first summer of her 40s adjusting to the idea of a lifelong commitment. But it’s not only Kathy who’s changing. Fascism is on the rise, truth is dead, the planet is heating up, and Trump is tweeting the world ever-closer to nuclear war.

Hilarious, profound, and achingly true to life, Jonas Karlsson's new novel explores the true nature of happiness through the eyes of a hero you won't soon forget. A passionate film buff, our hero's life revolves around his part-time job at a video store, the company of a few precious friends, and a daily routine that more often than not concludes with pizza and a movie in his treasured, small space in Stockholm. When he receives an astronomical invoice from a random national bureaucratic agency, everything will tumble into madness.

On a hot summer day some 20 years after he was famously converted to kindness, Ebenezer Scrooge still roams the streets of London, spreading Christmas cheer, much to the annoyance of his creditors, his nephew, and his employee, Bob Cratchit. However, when Scrooge decides to help his old friend and former partner, Jacob Marley, as well as other inhabitants of the city, he will need the assistance of the very people he's annoyed. He'll also have to call on the three ghosts that visited him two decades earlier.

After 200 years undead, Jane Austen still has bite. But will her most recent literary success be her last? Life was a lot easier for Jane when she was just an unknown, undead bookstore owner in a sleepy hamlet in upstate New York. But now the world embraces her as Jane Fairfax, author of the best-selling novel Constance - and she’s having a killer time trying to keep her true identity as the Jane Austen a secret. Even the ongoing lessons in How to Be a Vampire, taught by her former lover Lord Byron, don’t seem to be helping much.

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...

Marnie MacGraw and Patrick Delaney have been in love for a few years now, enough to realize that they are imperfectly perfect together. Still, there are some things that maybe need a little attention. Marnie’s ebullient; he’s brooding. She thrives on change; he prefers stability. She sees marriage and parenthood in their future, but he can’t see beyond the shadow of an earlier tragedy. Then an eight-year-old surprise from Patrick’s past shows up on their doorstep, cartwheeling into their lives and spinning things in all directions.

When the university merged his Department of Linguistics with English, Professor Desmond Bates took early retirement, but he is not enjoying it. But his daily discontent is nothing compared to the affliction of hearing loss, which is a constant source of domestic friction and social embarrassment. In the popular imagination, he observes, deafness is comic, as blindness is tragic, but for the deaf person himself it is no joke.

When Scat comes up with an idea for the hottest new soda ever, he's sure he'll retire as the next savvy marketing success story. But in the treacherous waters of corporate America, there are no sure things. Suddenly Scat finds himself scrambling to save not only his idea, but his yet-to-be-realized career. With the help of a scarily beautiful and brainy girl called 6, he sets out on a mission to reclaim the fame and fortune that, time and again, elude him.

This wickedly fun debut is a stunning reinvention of the myth of Narcissus as a modern novel of manners, about two young, well-heeled couples whose parallel lives intertwine over the course of a summer, by a sharp new voice in fiction.

“Hopeful, funny, and full of wisdom. A meditation on fatherhood by one of our most perceptive writers.” —Tara Westover, author of Educated “With playfulness and sharp insight, [Zambra] turns everyday moments into something unforgettable, blending wit and heart in every page.” —Los...

According to Max Disher, an ambitious young black man in 1930s New York, someone of his race has only three alternatives: "Get out, get white, or get along." Incapable of getting out and unhappy with getting along, Max leaps at the remaining possibility. Thanks to a certain Dr. Junius Crookman and his mysterious process, Max and other eager clients develop bleached skin that permits them to enter previously forbidden territory. What they discover in white society, however, gives them second thoughts.

New York City is on high alert: a gasoline truck is stuck in the Midtown tunnel and the driver has fled. Through panic and gridlock, Alex and Ruth must transport their beloved old dachshund, whose back legs are suddenly paralyzed, to the animal hospital, using a cutting board as a stretcher. But this is also the weekend when Alex and Ruth must sell the apartment in which they have lived for most of their adult lives.

Taking its title from a group of stories that begin the book, Bream Gives Me Hiccups moves from contemporary LA to the dorm rooms of an American college to ancient Pompeii, throwing the listener into a universe of social misfits, reimagined scenes from history, and ridiculous overreactions. In one piece a tense email exchange between a young man and his girlfriend is taken over by the man's sister, who is obsessed with the Bosnian genocide ("The situation reminds me of a little historical blip called the Karadordevo agreement").