Literary Humor

London Fields by Martin Amis is a forthcoming title from Farrar, Straus and Giroux...

"I do not say there is no character as well drawn in Shakespeare [as D'Artagnan]. I do say there is none that I love so wholly." --Robert Louis Stevenson "The lasting and universal popularity of The Three Musketeers shows that Dumas, by artlessly expressing his own nature in the persons of his...

When Alex pulls up to meet 'Max', he expects everything but a 90-year-old lady who has her heart set on getting to Brussels by carpool. As for 'Max', who is actually called Maxine, she could not be more ill at ease when settling into the seat next to this young man with bloodshot eyes. When it becomes clear that Maxine is suffering from Alzheimer's and wants to take matters into her own hands while she still can, and that Alex battles severe depression, a wonderful friendship starts to form between the unlikely pair. Before long, their travel plans take an unexpected turn.

A writer Time magazine has said "everybody should read", Sam Lipsyte, author of the New York Times best-selling The Ask, offers up The Fun Parts, a book of bold, hilarious, and deeply felt fiction. A boy eats his way to self-discovery, while another must battle the reality-brandishing monster preying on his fantasy realm. In another story, an aerobics instructor, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, makes the most shocking leap imaginable to save her soul. These are just a few of the tales, some first published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Playboy, that unfold in Lipsyte’s richly imagined world.

Oscar Hopkins is a high-strung preacher's kid with hydrophobia and noisy knees. Lucinda Leplastrier is a frizzy-haired heiress who impulsively buys a glass factory with the inheritance forced on her by a well-intentioned adviser. In the early parts of this lushly written audiobook, author Peter Carey renders the seminal turning points in his protagonists' childhoods as exquisite 19th-century set pieces.

*Best New Science Fiction for Summer by The Washington Post *A Most-Anticipated book of 2017 by The Millions Everyone else knows the truth about you, now you can know it, too. That’s the slogan. The product: a junky contraption that tattoos personalized revelations on its users’...

Mr Edgar Finchley, unmarried clerk, aged 45, is told to take a holiday for the first time in his life. He decides to go to the seaside. But Fate has other plans in store...From his abduction by a cheerful crook, to his smuggling escapade off the south coast, the timid but plucky Mr Finchley is plunged into a series of the most astonishing and extraordinary adventures. His rural adventure takes him gradually westward through the English countryside and back, via a smuggling yacht, to London.

Set in the San Francisco of 2013, I Hate the Internet offers a hilarious and obscene portrayal of life among the victims of the digital boom. As billions of tweets fuel the city's gentrification and the human wreckage piles up, a group of friends suffers the consequences of being useless in a new world that despises the pointless and unprofitable. In his first full-length novel, Jarett Kobek tackles the pressing questions of our moment.

Despite her innate ambition and summa cum laude smarts, Kate Pearson has turned into a major slacker. After being dumped by her handsome French "almost fiancé", she abandons her grad school plans and spends her days lolling on the couch, leaving her apartment only when a dog-walking gig demands it. Her friends don't know what to do other than pass tissues and hope for a comeback while her practical sister, Angela, pushes every remedy she can think of, from trapeze class to therapy to job interviews.

Hendrik Groen mag dan oud zijn, hij is nog lang niet dood en niet van plan zich eronder te laten krijgen. Toegegeven: zijn dagelijkse wandelingen worden steeds korter omdat de benen niet meer willen en hij moet regelmatig naar de huisarts. Technisch gesproken is hij bejaard. Maar waarom zou het leven dan alleen nog maar moeten bestaan uit koffi edrinken achter de geraniums en wachten op het einde? In korte, ogenschijnlijk luchtige, maar vooral openhartige dagboekfragmenten laat Hendrik Groen je een jaar lang meeleven met alle ups en downs van het leven in een verzorgingshuis in Amsterdam-Noord.

On the advice of a five-dollar psychic, Tina Martin, a zany, overworked mother of two, quits her high-powered job and moves her family to Shanghai. Tina yearns for this new setting to bring her the zen-like inner peace she’s always heard about on infomercials. Instead, she becomes a totally exasperated fish out of water. Fish Heads and Duck Skin will resonate with anyone who has ever wondered who they are, why they were put here, and how they ever lived before eating pan-fried pork buns.

The complete BBC Radio 4 satirical comedy series about a seasoned presenter of travel documentaries, Brian Gulliver, who finds himself in a hospital's secure unit after claiming to have experienced a succession of bizarre adventures. In series one we hear about Brian's travels in Gelbetia, a country run by doctors; Juradia, where every other person is a lawyer; Osminia, a land where marriage is outlawed; Sham, a country where alternative therapies abound; Erosia, which has a very different view of sexual politics; and Jampoa, where fame definitely equals fortune.

Numero Zero is the feverish and delightfully readable tale of a ghostwriter in Milan whose work pulls him into an underworld of media politics and murderous conspiracies (involving the cadaver of Mussolini's double, naturally). This novel is vintage Eco - corrupt newspapers, clandestine plots, imaginary histories - and will appeal to his many readers and earn him legions of new ones.

Norman Mailer fused fact and fiction to create indelible portraits of such figures as Marilyn Monroe, Gary Gilmore, and Lee Harvey Oswald. In The Gospel According to the Son, Mailer reimagines, as no other modern author has, the key character of Western history. Here is Jesus Christ's story in his own words: the discovery of his divinity and the painful, powerful journey to accepting and expressing it, "as if I were a man enclosing another man within."

Sidi lives a hermetic life as a bee whisperer, tending to his beloved “girls” on the outskirts of the desolate North African village of Nawa. He wakes one morning to find that something has attacked one of his beehives, brutally killing every inhabitant. Heartbroken, he soon learns that a mysterious swarm of vicious hornets committed the mass murder - but where did they come from, and how can he stop them? If he is going to unravel this mystery and save his bees from annihilation, Sidi must venture out into the village and then brave the big city and beyond in search of answers.

¡Duérmete, carajo! es un cuento para dormir para los padres que viven en el mundo real, en el cual un par de gatitos ronroneando y unas líneas simpáticas no son lo suficiente para zumbar a un niño pequeño a dormir felizmente. Profano, cariñoso y franco de manera radical, cuenta la...

Everyone in Cape Cod thinks that Mother is a wonderful woman: pious, hardworking, frugal. Everyone except her husband and seven children. To them she is a selfish and petty tyrant, endlessly comparing her many living children to the one who died in childbirth, keeping a viselike hold on her offspring even as they try to escape into adulthood. Welcome to Mother Land: a suffocating kingdom of parental narcissism.

This stylish, charming, and delightfully witty comedy showcases all the reasons why P.G. Wodehouse is hailed as one of the most sharp-witted writers of the 20th century. It begins when a proper British earl falls asleep in a dentist’s chair - and wakes up in the body of America’s favorite child star.

It's all here: the story of how Robin lost his birthright as the King's Ranger at Locksley, his archery feats at Nottingham, the outlaws' war with the Sheriff, Robin's pursuit of Marian, and many tales of bravery, rescue, laughter and rivalry with Little John, Friar Tuck, Allan-a-Dale, Much the Miller, Will Scarlett, and all the others.Now you can have this incomparable story read to you, in a gripping full stereo audio book. The story is adapted from the Paul Creswick text. It is faithful to the entire original story.

Set in the world of the Victorian professional and landed classes, the story centres on Mr Harding, a clergyman of great personal integrity who is nevertheless in possession of an income from a charity far in excess of the sum devoted to it.