Literary Humor

In the shadows of a seismic shift in American politics comes Tom Rachman's timely and hilarious new work. Basket of Deplorables takes an incisive and satirical look at the United States in the era of Trump data breaches, liberal self-righteousness, red-hat rancor, Starbucks macchiatos, Ultimate Fighting factories, and Internet sinkholes.

An unforgettable tour de force in the voice of an ordinary-extraordinary woman who has simply had enough. Through the character of Bina, who is writing out her story on the backs of discarded envelopes, Anakana Schofield filters a complex moral universe filled with humour and sadness, love and rage, and the consolations, obligations and mysteries of lifelong friendship. A work of great power, skill, and transformative empathy from a unique and astonishing writer, whose previous book, Martin John, was shortlisted for the Giller Prize.

Reclusive literary legend M. M. "Mimi" Banning has been holed up in her Bel Air mansion for years. But after falling prey to a Bernie Madoff-style Ponzi scheme, she's flat broke. Now Mimi must write a new book for the first time in decades, and to ensure the timely delivery of her manuscript, her New York publisher sends an assistant to monitor her progress. The prickly Mimi reluctantly complies - with a few stipulations: no Ivy Leaguers or English majors. Must drive, cook, tidy. Computer whiz. Good with kids.

You’ve never seen romance do this before. So brutally honest and breathtakingly perverse you’ll want to throw this book at the wall, but you’ll also want to know if it can possibly get any more disturbing (it can and it does). And as you start to wonder whether men and women were ever even meant to be together, a surprise ending brings the trilogy full circle and provides unexpected closure to an issue raised by a certain photographer's assistant in the first book. Eunuchs and Nymphomaniacs is about how we love today and how increasingly we try to avoid it altogether.

Who but P.G. Wodehouse could have extracted high comedy from the most noble and ancient game of golf? And who else could have combined this comedy with a real appreciation of the game, drawn from personal experience? Wodehouse's brilliant but human brand of humor is perfectly suited to these stories of love, rivalry, revenge, and fulfillment on the links.

The year is 2084, and that famous Margaret Thatcher quote has become a reality: There really is no such thing as society. No one speaks to anyone else. No one looks at anyone else. People don’t collaborate, they only compete...It all sounds rather morbid, does it not? But please don’t despair, there is hope, and it comes in the form of our hero: Renee Ann Blanca. Wishing to fill the society-shaped hole in her life, our Renee does the unthinkable: She goes in search of human company!

Brought up in Switzerland, the only son of well-to-do parents, Charles Fryerne is somewhat unprepared for the world he meets when he goes up to Oxford University in the early 1980s. There he meets a fascinating social set, including a stellar young playwright, a student dubbed 'the future leader of the Conservative party' and a mercurial figure with ambitions to become the youngest prime minister since Pitt. When they leave university, the characters go their separate ways.

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.

Josh Levin is an aspiring screenwriter teaching ESL classes in Chicago. His laptop is full of ideas, but the only one to really take root is Zombie Wars. When Josh comes home to discover his landlord, an unhinged army vet, rifling through his dirty laundry, he decides to move in with his girlfriend, Kimmy. It's domestic bliss for a moment, but Josh becomes entangled with a student, a Bosnian woman named Ana, whose husband is jealous and violent. Disaster ensues, and as Josh's choices move from silly to profoundly absurd, The Making of Zombie Wars takes on real consequence.

A Friend of the Earth opens in the year 2025, as Tyrone O'Shaughnessy Tidewater ekes out a bleak living in southern California, managing a rock star's private menagerie. Global warming is a reality. The biosphere has collapsed and most of the major mammalian species are extinct.

Tuesday Mooney is a loner. She keeps to herself, begrudgingly socializes, and spends much of her time watching old Twin Peaks and X-Files DVDs. But when Vincent Pryce, Boston’s most eccentric billionaire, dies—leaving behind an epic treasure hunt through the city, with clues inspired by his hero, Edgar Allan Poe—Tuesday’s adventure finally begins.

Listen to hilarious unabridged stories starring the ever-popular Jeeves and Wooster from the master of great British comedy: P. G. Wodehouse. Stories featured: "Jeeves Takes Charge", "Jeeves and The Unbidden Guest", "The Artistic Career of Corky", "The Aunt and the Sluggard", "Clustering Round Young Bingo", "Jeeves and the Hard-boiled Egg", and "The Rummy Affair of Old Biffy".

Eleanor knows she's a mess. But today she will tackle the little things. She will shower and get dressed. She will have her poetry and yoga lessons after dropping off her son, Timby. She won't swear. She will initiate sex with her husband, Joe. But before she can put her modest plan into action - life happens. Today, it turns out, is the day Timby has decided to fake sick to weasel his way into his mother's company. It's also the day Joe has chosen to tell his office - but not Eleanor - that he's on vacation.

When his third wife abandons him in Tucson, boozing, misanthropic anarchist Henry Holyoak Lightcap shoots his refrigerator and sets off in a battered pick-up truck for his ancestral home in West Virginia. Accompanied only by his dying dog and his memories, the irascible warhorse (a stand-in for the "real" Abbey) begins a bizarre cross-country odyssey - determined to make peace with his past-and to wage one last war against the ravages of "progress".

From the acclaimed PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize-winning author of A Naked Singularity, a shockingly hilarious novel that tackles, with equal aplomb, both America’s most popular sport and its criminal justice system. From Paterson, New Jersey, to Rikers Island to the streets of New York, Sergio de la Pava’s Lost Empress introduces listeners to a cast of characters unlike any other in modern fiction: dreamers and exiles, immigrants and night-shift workers, a lonely pastor and others on the fringes of society - each with their own impact on the fragile universe they navigate.

For more than four decades, Thomas McGuane has been heralded as an unrivaled master of the short story. Now the arc of that achievement appears in one definitive volume. Set in the seedy corners of Key West, the remote shore towns of the Bahamas, and McGuane's hallmark Big Sky country, with its vast and unforgiving landscape, these are stories of people on the fringes of society, whose twisted pasts meddle with their chances for companionship.

Middle-aged, married, but living on his own, Prin has lost his way. Desperate for money and purpose, he moves to small-town Indiana to work for an evangelical millionaire who’s building a theme park inspired by Dante’s Inferno. He quickly becomes involved in the difficult lives of his co-workers and in the wider struggles of their opioid-ravaged community while trying to reconcile with his distant wife and distant God. Both projects spin out of control, and when a Black teenager is killed, creationists, politicians and protesters alike descend.

A foundling of mysterious parentage, Tom Jones is brought up by the benevolent and wealthy Squire Allworthy as his own son. Tom falls in love with the beautiful and unattainable Sophia Western, a neighbor’s daughter, whose marriage has already been arranged. When Tom’s sexual misadventures around the countryside get him banished, he sets out to make his fortune and find his true identity.

Under the Glacier represents Nobel laureate Halldor Laxness at his entertaining and brilliantly inventive best. Philosophy, theological speculation and charming wit combine to make this novel a timeless fable of modern times. A youthful emissary of the Bishop of Iceland travels to the beautiful and mysterious district of Snæfellsnes, locally known as "Under Glacier" to investigate the affairs of the parish and its enigmatic pastor.

On a brisk October morning in New York, Julie Jenson, a single 38-year-old book publicist, gets a hysterical phone call from her friend Georgia. Reeling from her husband's announcement that he is leaving her for a samba teacher, Georgia convinces a reluctant Julie to organize a fun girls' night out with all of their single friends to remind her why it is so much fun not to be tied down.