Satire Comedy

Fifteen-year-old Jacob feels almost on the inside: almost smart, almost funny, almost good-looking, almost worthy of falling in love. His sister is too busy dating guys in Whitesnake jackets to notice, and his best friend is occupied with his own painful pubescent crisis. Jacob's mother has just started a curious (and rather un-Christian) holy war with the church across the street, while his father has secretly moved into the garage.

Oreo is raised by her maternal grandparents in Philadelphia. Her black mother tours with a theatrical troupe, and her Jewish deadbeat dad disappeared when she was an infant, leaving behind a mysterious note that triggers her quest to find him. What ensues is a playful, modernized parody of the classical odyssey of Theseus with a feminist twist, immersed in seventies pop culture, and mixing standard English, black vernacular, and Yiddish with wisecracking aplomb.

Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal phrase containing all the letters of the alphabet: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island’s Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop.

Nonsense Novels was first published in 1920 yet a century later remains a huge favorite among Stephen Leacock fans. The British-born Canadian writer was renowned for his humor, and Nonsense Novels epitomizes both this skill and his mastery of the ridiculous. From an ill-fated Middle Ages romance to the dubious skills of a pitiful private eye and the happy outcome of a generations-old Scottish feud, Nonsense Novels is a tremendous listen.

Anatole France (1844-1924) was a French poet, journalist, and novelist who wrote several best sellers. The Revolt of the Angels is a mischievous take on the theology of modern society; it chronicles the thoughts of Arcade, a lowly guardian angel, as he discovers the ugly truths of his divine master in the library of his human charge As Maurice, the young man abandoned by Arcade, struggles to get his guardian back, one gets a view of a wide variety of the author’s artistic personalities, most of whom are fallen angels.

I played all those cool video games. I watched all those movies. I even read the books. In most of 'em, the hero shoots the bad guys, drives a sweet car, never gets hungry, and always seems to get laid by the end. Yeah. Whatever. I gotta be straight with you about why I wrote this journal, and it comes down to one thing, the apocalypse kinda sucks. It doesn’t meet my expectations at all.

The Big Jewish Book for Jews brings together Jewish wit, inspiring tales, classic skills, and even pickle recipes, for the instruction and edification of the modern Jew. Readers will learn how to sacrifice a lamb unto the Lord, the rules of Canasta, how to build a pyramid (the Bernie Madoff and the Egyptian kind), and how not to accept the first table you are shown to in a restaurant.

Adrian Mole is thirty, single and a father. His cooking at a top London restaurant has been equally mocked ('the sausage on my plate could have been a turd') and celebrated (will he be the nation's first celebrity offal chef?) And the love of his life, Pandora Braithwaite, is too busy as the newly elected MP for Ashby-de-la-Zouch to notice him. Frustrated, disappointed, and undersexed, Adrian despairs until a letter from his past changes everything.

Ryan Fleming is a young agnostic reeling from his brother’s death. Though he is deeply angry with God, he makes good on a promise he made to his brother in the final moments of his life: to visit a church at least once. But shortly after his arrival, the slick megachurch’s shoddily installed video projector falls on his head—sending Ryan through a wormhole into another world. To make it back to his own universe, he must partner with a woman named Faith to awaken a long-sleeping King—the World-Maker who can make all things new.

Convinced of his own moral and intellectual superiority, the nameless protagonist of this debut novel is also paralyzed by self-consciousness. Yet, inspired by Stephen King’s On Writing, he decides to dedicate four hours a day to work on his own novel over the course of one summer. Only, he must also balance his creative goals with a part-time government job and looking after his girlfriend’s possibly brain-damaged Pomeranian dog. Too bad he’s uninspired by his job, almost kills the dog, and realizes his novel is slowly morphing into misguided fan fiction about writer Michel Houellebecq.

From the number one New York Times best-selling author of the Man Booker Prize-winning novel Lincoln in the Bardo and the story collection Tenth of December, a 2013 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction. Talking candy bars, baby geniuses, disappointed mothers, castrated dogs, interned teenagers, and moral fables - all in this hilarious and heartbreaking collection from an author hailed as the heir to Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon.

More than a quarter of a century ago, Leo Rosten presented the first comprehensive and hilariously entertaining lexicon of the colorful and deeply expressive language of Yiddish. Said to "give body and soul to the Yiddish language," The Joys of Yiddish went on to become an indispensable tool for writers, journalists, politicians and students, as well as a perennial best seller for three decades.

From Sophia Bannion’s first day on the Storytelling team at HEBE, a luxury skincare/wellness company based in New York’s trendy SoHo neighborhood, it’s clear something is deeply amiss. But Sophia, pushing thirty, has plenty of skeletons in her closet next to the designer knockoffs and doesn’t care. Though she leads an outwardly charmed life, she aches for a deeper meaning to her flat existence—and a cure for her brutal nail-biting habit. She finds it all and more at HEBE, and with Tree Whitestone, HEBE’s charismatic founder and CEO.

A one-in-ten-billion natural disaster devastates Chicago. A Jewish comedian, his most devoted fan, and the city’s mayor must struggle to move forward while the world—quite literally—caves beneath their feet. With this polyphonic tale of Chicago-style politics and political correctness, stand-up comedy and Jewish identity, celebrity, drugs, and animal psychology, Levin has constructed a monument to laughter, love, art, and resilience in an age of spectacular loss.

In an attempt to gain congressional approval for a top-secret weapons system, Washington lobbyist "Bird" McIntyre teams up with sexy, outspoken neocon Angel Templeton to pit the American public against the Chinese. When Bird fails to uncover an authentic reason to slander the nation, he and Angel put the Washington media machine to work, spreading a rumor that the Chinese secret service is working to assassinate the Dalai Lama.

“Begins here first account of operative me, agent number 67 on arrival Midwestern American airport greater _____ area. Flight _____. Date _____. Priority mission top success to complete. Code name: Operation Havoc.” Thus speaks Pygmy, one of a handful of young adults from a totalitarian state sent to the United States, disguised as exchange students, to live with typical American families and blend in, all the while planning an unspecified act of massive terrorism.

Behold the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM), today’s fastest growing carbohydrate-based religion. According to church founder Bobby Henderson, the universe and all life within it were created by a mystical and divine being: the Flying Spaghetti Monster. What drives the FSM's devout followers, a.k.a. Pastafarians? Some say it’s the assuring touch from the FSM’s “noodly appendage”. Then there are those who love the worship service, which is conducted in pirate talk and attended by congregants in dashing buccaneer garb.

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.

Tiller is an average American college student with a good heart but minimal aspirations. Pong Lou is a larger-than-life, wildly creative Chinese American entrepreneur who sees something intriguing in Tiller beyond his bored exterior and takes him under his wing. When Pong brings him along on a boisterous trip across Asia, Tiller is catapulted from ordinary young man to talented protégé, and pulled into a series of ever more extreme and eye-opening experiences that transform his view of the world, of Pong, and of himself.

From the author of Fight Club, the classic portrait of the damaged contemporary male psyche, now comes this novel about the apocalyptic marketing possibilities of female pleasure. Beautiful You is Palahniuk's much-anticipated satire of the emerging erotic thriller genre, a mash-up of mommy porn and chick lit à la Sex and the City, and fantasy lit à la Clan of the Cave Bear. Imagine if Ira Levin had a baby with Jean Auel.