Satire Comedy

In Lionel Shriver's entertaining send-up of today's cult of exercise - which not only encourages better health, but now like all religions also seems to promise meaning, social superiority, and eternal life - an aging husband's sudden obsession with extreme sport makes him unbearable.

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.

A man with a borrowed name steps from a flashy red sports car—also borrowed—onto the estate of his youth. But all is not as it seems. There is a new family living in the drafty old house: the Godleys, descendants of the late, world-famous scientist Adam Godley, whose theory of existence threw the universe into chaos. And this mystery man, who has just completed a prison sentence, feels as if time has stopped, or was torn, or was opened in new and strange ways. He must now vie with the idiosyncratic Godley family, and with a woman from his past who comes bearing an unusual request.

Are you lacking direction in how to whip up a swanky soiree for lumberjacks? A dinner party for white-collar workers? A festive gathering for the grieving? Don't despair. Take a cue from entertaining expert Amy Sedaris and host an unforgettable fete that will have your guests raving.

When Lexi Blake was 12 years old, a fortune teller gave her the following cryptic message: In your 30th year, once the dog jumps over you, your life will change in the most unexpected ways.

Wealthy and devout, Michael and Julia Glynn are the envy of their neighbors and the model Irish Catholic couple, bearing Michael's increasingly painful and crippling arthritis with stoicism. In hope of a miracle, their priest suggests a family pilgrimage to Lourdes. Yet these pious holiday plans are thrown into doubt when anonymous, obscene letters begin to arrive, full of terrible accusations.

LOVE, DISHONOR, MARRY, DIE, CHERISH, PERISH leaps cities and decades as Rakoff sings the song of an America whose freedoms can be intoxicating, or brutal. The characters' lives are linked to each other by acts of generosity or cruelty.

Cosa faresti se fossi Dio? Pirjeri Ryynänen, gruista di Helsinki, una risposta l'avrebbe trovata nei quotidiani monologhi di protesta che in cima alla sua gru rivolge all'Onnipotente: eliminerebbe fame e povertà, proteggerebbe l'ambiente e garantirebbe a tutti pace e felicità. Ma il lavoro da fare è infinito. Forse è per questo che Dio è così stanco e depresso: non ne può più dell'umanità, delle sue iniquità e delle sue guerre, e se non ha ancora distrutto la Terra è solo perché è tanto bella, e poi che colpa ne hanno gli altri animali?

The scholarly discipline of Bullshit Studies has blossomed in the last several years, fertilized by a number of critical works on the subject and the growing importance of the issue across a wide range of professions. Now, best-selling author and lifelong practitioner Stanley Bing enters the field with a comprehensive look at the many attractive jobs now available to those who are serious about their bullshit and prepared to dedicate their working life to it.

Warning: This isn't the real thing...it's funnier! "Gerber's affectionate, giggle-inducing send-up is one giant step toward restoring the somewhat debased art form known as 'parody,'" says Sean Kelly, former editor of National Lampoon. If you love Harry Potter - or if you have had enough of him! - you've gotta hear this.

Mark Russell & Shannon Wheeler's faithful yet irreverent approach to the Bible made their book God Is Disappointed in You a modern cult classic. Now, by popular demand, they turn their attention to the best parts left out of the canonical Bible, including the Midrash, the Apocrypha, Gnostic Gospels, and more! And if you thought the Bible had some weird stuff in it....

Anatomie d'un mariage et d'une famille - les Berglund -, ce livre analyse les illusions, les déceptions et les compromis d'une génération de baby-boomers qui avaient rêvé un jour de changer le monde. Mais c'est aussi un acte d'accusation implacable à l'égard d'une nation qui a cessé depuis longtemps d'incarner ses propres valeurs. Qu'avons-nous fait de notre liberté ?, se demandent les personnages de Jonathan Franzen.

Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, author of the highly regarded Portuguese Irregular Verbs (200 LTD copies sold!) and a pillar of the Institute of Romance Philology in the proud Bavarian city of Regensburg, finds that life is very difficult these days. His academic rival (and owner of a one-legged dachsund) Detlev-Amadeus Unterholzer has been winning undeserved recognition. With help from the matchmaking Ophelia Prinzel, he stumbles toward a romance with Frau Benz, a charming widow who owns her very own Schloss and a fleet of handsome cars.

Wild rabies runs rampant through the woods. The foxes are gaining ground, boldly making their way into the village. In Dichtersruhe, an insular yet charming haven stifled by the Swiss mountains, these omens go unnoticed by all but the new parish priest. The residents have other things on their mind: literature. Everyone’s a writer - the nights are alive with reworked manuscripts. So when the devil turns up in a black car claiming to be a hot-shot publisher, unsatisfied authorial desires are unleashed and the village’s former harmony is shattered.

A few years ago, small-time finance journalist Matthew Prior quit his day job to gamble everything on a quixotic notion: a Web site devoted to financial journalism in the form of blank verse. When his big idea - and his wife's eBay resale business - ends with a whimper (and a garage full of unwanted figurines), they borrow and borrow, whistling past the graveyard of their uncertain dreams.

Saddle up for a wildly absurd ride in The Horsemaid, Reid Mockery’s laugh-out-loud parody of Frieda McFadden’s The Housemaid. This uproarious tale of mystery and muck plunges listeners into a world of high-stakes secrets, low-stakes chores, and the questionable ethics of hooved companionship.

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.

Björn is a compulsive, meticulous bureaucrat who discovers a secret room at the government office where he works—a secret room that no one else in his office will acknowledge. When Björn is in his room, what his co-workers see is him standing by the wall and staring off into space looking dazed, relaxed, and decidedly creepy. Björn’s bizarre behavior eventually leads his co-workers to try and have him fired, but Björn will turn the tables on them with help from his secret room.

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).

Jane Dorner has two modes: PR Jane, twenty-five, chummy, and eager to sell you a feminist vibrator or a self-care/bereavement subscription box; and Actual Jane, twenty-nine, drifting through mediocre workdays and lackluster dates while paralyzed by her crushing mountain of overdue medical bills. When her job performance is called into question, Jane’s last-ditch effort to preserve her livelihood and pay off her debt is to land a white whale of a client. Enter Cass and Tom—proprietors of a “wellness retreat” based out of a ramshackle country house that may or may not be giving off cult vibes.