Satire Comedy

Tom is a bit of a waster...Turning the wrong side of t30 hit him pretty hard, and what with having no money, no love life, no decent job prospects to speak of, and with debt coming out of his ears, well, the future wasn’t exactly looking too rosy. Tom knew he wanted more out of life and now was the right time to make a fresh start, but, in typical fashion, he didn't have a plan or even the faintest idea of where to begin. So, logically, he'd start by quitting his current job and see what turned up in the process!

The brilliant Alexander McCall Smith became an international sensation with his New York Times best-selling No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency novels. His award-winning wit, made famous through that series, is fully on display in 44 Scotland Street.

What’s a white knight to do when his princess is causing utter havoc, leading in mass murder? Go to the famous Black Sorcerer of Grimslock for help, apparently. What’s a black sorcerer to do when the white knight comes to him for help? Keep him, naturally.

In the year 2038, there’s only one destination that can play host to the world’s wealthiest adventure seekers: the Pengalaman Island Resort and Virtual Reality Theme Park. Located on a private South Pacific island, guests here live out their wildest fantasies in custom-made virtual reality simulations while also enjoying the usual amenities of an exclusive five-star getaway. All is relatively breezy until famed billionaire and avid guest, Mr. Wagner, goes missing within a virtual simulation. His only hope? A daring rescue led by Derek Ambrose and his ragtag search party.

A searing portrayal of Vienna's bourgeoisie, it begins with the arrival of an unnamed writer at an 'artistic dinner' hosted by a composer and his society wife-a couple he once admired and has come to loathe. The guest of honor, a distinguished actor from the Burgtheater, is late. As the other guests wait impatiently, they are seen through the critical eye of the writer, who narrates a silent but frenzied tirade against these former friends, most of whom have been brought together by Joana, a woman they buried earlier that day.

Academy Award nominee Samuel L. Jackson ( Pulp Fiction) rocks this mock bedtime story, capturing a hilarious range of emotions as the voice of a father struggling to get his child to sleep. Go the F**k to Sleep is a bedtime book for parents who live in the real world, where a few snoozing kitties and cutesy rhymes don’t always send a toddler sailing blissfully off to dreamland.

Kurt Vonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul's rebellion is vintage Vonnegut – wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.

Julian Barnes pens a kind of detective story, relating a cranky amateur scholar’s search for the truth about Gustave Flaubert and the obsession of this detective, whose life seems to oddly mirror those of Flaubert’s characters.

Welcome to Chromatacia, where life is strictly regulated by one’s limited color perception. Civilization has been rebuilt after an unspoken “Something that Happened” five hundred years before. Society is now color vision—segregated, everything dictated by an individual’s visual ability, and governed by the shadowy National Color in far-off Emerald City. Twenty-year-old Eddie Russett, a Red, is about to go on trial for a murder he didn’t commit, and he’s pretty certain to be sent on a one-way trip to the Green Room for execution by soporific color exposure.

He was born into an ancient powerful dynasty and, through no fault of his own, became one of the most recognisable men on the planet. His life was a constant barrage of press intrusion and manipulation. Until finally, he demanded that it stop. In order to get the privacy he so craved, he has written a frostbite-and-all book that goes deep inside the castle walls and exposes every shouting match, fist-fight, betrayal, teddy bear, awkward hug and tear-stained wedding rehearsal for the world to feast their eyes on.

A twisted tale of murder in the world of big-stakes bass fishing tournaments. Filled with ex-wives, evangelists, and an armed pit-bull, this is a story that could only be concocted by Carl Hiaasen, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, New York Times best-selling author, and czar of Florida noir fiction.

This novel by Carl Hiaasen, author of Tourist Season and Native Tongue, begins as most thrillers do, with a killing. But this is no everyday, hum-drum, garden variety killing. Our hero, Nick Stranahan, a 42-year-old private investigator who has killed five men and been married five times, skewers his attacker's aorta with the razor-sharp bill of a stuffed marlin.

À la ferme du Manoir, c'est la révolution : les animaux ont pris le pouvoir. Désormais, ils ne travailleront que pour eux-mêmes, et bâtiront ensemble un avenir radieux. Désormais, ils ne connaîtront plus de maître, car tous les animaux sont égaux. Ou, du moins, presque tous... Cette nouvelle traduction restitue toute la verve satirique d'une fable politique magistrale. Tristement intemporelle et terriblement drôle, La Ferme des animaux n'a pas fini de faire réfléchir les Hommes. Traduction Clotilde Meyer

Valentine disparue... Qui la cherche vraiment ? Entre satire sociale, polar contemporain et romance lesbienne, le nouveau roman de Virginie Despentes est un road-book qui promène l'auditeur entre Paris et Barcelone, sur les traces de tous ceux qui ont connu Valentine, l'adolescente égarée... Les différents personnages se croisent sans forcément se rencontrer, et finissent par composer, sur un ton tendre et puissant, le portrait d'une époque.

Set in the 26th century A.D., Yevgeny Zamyatin's masterpiece describes life under the regimented totalitarian society of OneState, ruled over by the all-powerful "Benefactor." Recognized as the inspiration for George Orwell's 1984, We is the archetype of the modern dystopia, or anti-Utopia: a great prose poem detailing the fate that might befall us all if we surrender our individual selves to some collective dream of technology and fail in the vigilance that is the price of freedom.

Eugene Debs Hartke describes an odyssey from college professor to prison inmate to prison warden back again to prisoner in another of Vonnegut's bitter satirical explorations of how and where (and why) the American dream begins to die. Employing his characteristic narrative device - a retrospective diary in which the protagonist retraces his life at its end, a desperate and disconnected series of events here in Hocus Pocus show Vonnegut with his mask off and his rhetorical devices unshielded.

Set at a small, affluent liberal-arts college in New England at the height of the Reagan '80s, The Rules of Attraction is a startlingly funny, kaleidoscopic novel about three students with no plans for the future - or even the present - who become entangled in a curious romantic triangle.

Following a cancer diagnosis, 40-year old Prin vows to become a better man and a better Catholic. He’s going to spend more time with his kids and his wife, care for his recently divorced and aging parents, and also expand his cutting-edge research into the symbolism of the seahorse in Canadian literature. But when his historic college in downtown Toronto faces a shutdown and he meets with the condominium developers ready to take it over - including a foul-mouthed young Chinese entrepreneur and Wende, his ex-girlfriend from graduate school - Prin hears the voice of God.

Barbara Lee Handbook (pronounced “Hanbok”), whom fans will know as Barbie Moran, the ‘80s bombshell and star of the cult sci-fi film Weird Menace, sits down with Director Toner Low to discuss the making of the classic film - set on a distant planet, featuring mutant attackers, cyber ladies of the 34th century, and no shortage of warring spaceships - for the Blu-ray edition, in this absurdly funny and poignant meditation on art, legacy, and our ambivalence about the life choices that define us.

If laughter is the best medicine, then this book is your prescription. Turn off the news and spend a few days not following current events. Instead, return to the basics - humanity's ability to laugh at itself. Maybe you should even do a news cleanse for a few days! Hide under the covers and listen to these stories instead. Or listen to a chapter a day, or a story a day for 101 days. This book contains the antidote to whatever is troubling you. They will definitely put you in a good mood.