Satire Comedy

Lamar Jimmerson is the leader of the Gnomon Society, the international fraternal order dedicated to preserving the arcane wisdom of the lost city of Atlantis. Stationed in France in 1917, Jimmerson comes across a little book crammed with Atlantean puzzles, Egyptian riddles, and extended alchemical metaphors. It's the Codex Pappus—the sacred Gnomon text. Soon he is basking in the lore of lost Atlantis, convinced that his mission on earth is to administer to and extend the ranks of the noble brotherhood.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the Artificially Intelligent (DSM-V-AI Edition) is a darkly comedic, sharply insightful exploration of the psychological quirks and malfunctions of artificial minds. Equal parts parody and philosophy, it catalogs the new frontier of synthetic psychopathology with absurd precision.

Dr. Edith Vane, scholar of English literature, is contentedly ensconced at the University of Inivea. Her dissertation on pioneer housewife memoirist Beulah Crump-Withers is about to be published, and her job's finally safe, if she only can fill out her AAO properly. She's a little anxious, but a new floral blouse and her therapist's repeated assurance that she is the architect of her own life should fix that. All should be well, really. Except for her broken washing machine, her fickle new girlfriend, her missing friend Coral.

Charlie Campbell was your average, balding, thirty-year-old alcoholic with a dead-end job and a penchant for shambling through life one mistake after another. However, none of that mattered following the sudden arrival of a mysterious sickness that brought with it infected mobs of zombie-like creatures thirsting for the flesh of the living. Trapped in a Chicago apartment the morning after a raucous bachelor party, Charlie and his old fraternity buddies must battle for survival against the cannibalistic horde, a military invasion and their own rampant stupidity.

A cruise ship for retired sex addicts, the USS Exciter, is the site of a party a lot of people on board will never forget (but some of them will, anyway). Lurking in the cargo hold is Horace Dracul, half-brother of the legendary Dracula, and he dreams of reaching the shores of a country where the blood flows like wine and bright, shiny lights are seemingly infinite. However, another member of the Exciter’s well-aged population has some secrets of her own: Martha - retired cyborg and ex-spy.

Fans of New York Times best seller The Nanny Diaries will rejoice in this wickedly hilarious novel, which acclaimed author Katharine Weber says is "much funnier and darker". Optioned for a major motion picture starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, The Ivy Chronicles skewers the twisted priorities of America's well-heeled elite.

In Gulliver's Travels, the narrator represents himself as a reliable reporter of the fantastic adventures he has just experienced. But how far can we rely on a narrator who has been impersonated by someone else? The work purports to be a travel book, and describes the shipwrecked Gulliver's encounters with the inhabitants of four extraordinary places: Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and the country of the Houyhnhnms.

In The Quantity Theory of Morality, Will Self’s unconventional new novel, his pen remains dipped in vitriol and elegance as ever. In this dark yet hilariously satirical “state-of-an-era novel,” Self’s target is a collective morality that is nothing more or less than pure sociability. His middle-class, middle-English characters appear trapped in a timeless go-round of polite chitchat in dinner parties that refract like a hall of mirrors as the novel progresses, until one day someone says something to the effect of, “This way to the gas chamber, please, ladies and gentlemen.”

Timothy ‘Timbo’ Smith, part-time healer and self-styled security analyst, travels down the dark canyons of global capitalism, from short-selling scams in the City to the depleted rainforests of Brazil. His accomplices in this irresistible safari through the late modern world are two reformed alcoholics, the lovely and brilliant Lee ‘Lethal’ Thorold, and her husband Professor Luke Deverill, lecherous Oxford philosopher and caustic computer wizard.

AMPUTATION is the first novel to be written about the inferno that obliterated two Los Angeles cities in January of 2025. Major characters are comedian Stephen Colbert; Karen Bass; a Timothée Chalamet stunt double; a fiercely pro-Palestinian heiress and her Zionist father; disgraced Grey’s Anatomy writer Elisabeth Finch and a failed indie film producer—along with an assorted battalion of ordinary people, opportunists, and looters.

The irresistible wit and charm of Alexander McCall Smith's New York Times best-selling No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series has won over countless fans. The same subtle humor and enchanting characterizations are full on display in At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances, the third entertaining novella starring Professor Doctor Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld.

Fat and friendless, carer to her mother by day and a secret binge eater by night, 28-year-old Alison hates her life. She feels powerless to help herself until one day she encounters the person she would like to be and determines to transform herself. Admiration soon turns to obsession, and as Alison loses weight she discovers she’s capable of things she never imagined. Will she get the life she desires or the life she deserves?

"Narrator Joe Gaminara keeps listeners right where the author wants them: teetering between perception and reality." — AudioFile Magazine From acclaimed British poet Luke Kennard comes The Transition: an intriguing and mysterious debut audiobook. Do you or your partner spend more than you earn?...

You Might Be a Narcissist If… is the ultimate bathroom book for the self-obsessed (and the poor souls who have to deal with them). Packed with laugh-out-loud observations, cringeworthy truths, and some suspiciously accurate red flags, this book will help you determine whether you’re just a little full of yourself… or if it’s time for some serious self-reflection.

An underpaid, overworked certified flight instructor cheats death while attempting to teach a cast of incompetent student pilots to fly at a skeezy South Florida flight school; all in the quest to build flight time so he can get a “real job” at an airline. The planes break, the regs break, metal gets bent, students are lost at sea, and a Top Gun wannabe student, who has 400 hours of flight instruction, still hasn’t made his first solo flight.

The Watergate Rhymes aims to educate, reflect, and learn from that consumptive scandal, while using satire to see the humor in the human frailties of that maligned administration - and in ourselves, all with the perspective and understanding that only precious time enables.

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.

Irreverently juggling magical realism, film noir, hip hop, and chicanismo, Tropic of Orange takes place in a Los Angeles where the homeless, gangsters, infant organ entrepreneurs, and Hollywood collide on a stretch of the Harbor Freeway. Hemmed in by wildfires, it's a symphony conducted from an overpass, grandiose, comic, and as diverse as the city itself - from an author who has received the California Book Award and the Association for Asian American Studies Book Award, among other literary honors.

Listen to the results of Dave Barry's Bad Song Survey, a compilation of some of the worst songs ever written. From "MacArthur Park" to "Feelings," from "Dreams of the Everyday Housewife" to "Leader of the Pack," this is the audio the record industry didn't want you to hear! Download more Dave Barry.

The Museum of Curiosity is BBC Radio 4's monumental comedy edifice, and the only one with gargoyles in the foyer. It allows nothing inside unless it makes you scratch your head, stroke your chin or, at the very least, go 'Hmm'. Secondly, it is almost completely empty. Fortunately, helping to fill its vacant plinths is a gathering of the world's most original minds.