Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Comedy & Humor

Conrad Avery Sutton III is dead, but he's still around. And he's bent on revenge, frat-boy style. Responsible for the hazing "accident" that killed him is supposed golden boy Ryan Hutchins. Cult sensation Will Clarke delivers a darkly comic tale described as a cross between Animal House and The Lovely Bones.

Sepp Gregory, a reality-TV hunk and one of People magazine's "sexiest men alive", is on tour to promote his debut novel. Not that Sepp's actually read the book - he doesn't have to. He lived it! And everyone just wants him to take his shirt off. The book has hit the best-seller list and is even getting rave reviews from serious critics. Aside from Harriet Post, that is. One of the blogosphere's most respected literary minds, Harriet fears that the novel's reception means the end of civilization is upon us.

A frequent contributor to such high-profile publications as GQ and the Los Angeles Times, Peter Birkenhead is perhaps best known for his widely read essays and cultural musings on Salon.com. In Gonville, Birkenhead wields his cuts-to-the-bone prose in a memoir focusing largely on a father who is at once a magnetic personality and a violent, cruel force.

When four divorced and widowed friends, Pauline, Della, Kat and Rita, decide to open a retreat especially for women who just need to get away from it all, The Ladies Farm is born. Situated beside a lazy river in the idyllic location of Sydonia, Texas, The Ladies Farm seems poised for great success. Then one day Barbara Morrison, the rich widow of Della’s secret lover, arrives in her bright red T-Bird--and she’s brought a whole load of trouble with her.

Expert satirist Benjamin Cheever, author of Famous After Death, uses his dark sense of humor to deliver another searing look at suburbia. Literary editor Stuart Cross and his wife Andie, a film critic, hire the talented Louise to be nanny to their two young girls. Louise’s perfection, however, begins to irritate the ambitious, but less accomplished Stuart and Andie, and soon the parents’ jealousy gets the better of them.

Best-selling author Brock Clarke is acclaimed for his wry, absurdist humor. In Exley, Clarke introduces nine-year-old Miller, who becomes convinced that his father—who left without explanation—must have run away to join the military, and is now lying comatose in a VA hospital. Thinking a visit from his father’s favorite writer will help revive him, Miller decides to track down "A Fan’s Notes" author Frederick Exley.

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.

In You Blew It!, Josh Gondelman, comedian and cocreator of the Modern Seinfeld twitter account, teams up with Joe Berkowitz, an equally wry and ruthless social observer, to dissect a range of painfully hilarious faux pas. Breaking down the code violations of modern culture - particularly our fervent, ridiculous addiction to technology - Gondelman and Berkowitz will keep you laughing as they explore how social blunders are simply part of the mystery that is you.

Their meeting in a parking lot outside a high school football game was both completely forgettable and utterly life changing. Because no matter how you look at it, it is piss-poor luck to meet the love of your life before your life has even started. Fierce and ambitious, Alison is determined to shed her Midwestern roots and emerge an actress. Kyle, all heart and spiritual yearning, believes medicine can heal the world. What could these mismatched souls have to do with each other?

When the greedy owner of a Las Vegas movie catering company tries to muscle in on a local, family owned business in Honolulu, it leaves a very bad taste in the mouths of the natives, and the battle for paradise begins for Joseph, a young Hawaiian chef. As far as Joseph's father, Sid, is concerned, this is an invasion on par with Captain Cook, and the mainlanders have to be stopped at all costs.

Author Julie Cannon’s beloved Homegrown series has brought joy through good country living to countless readers. The third in the series, Those Pearly Gates looks in on Imogene Lavender and her family two years after the death of her husband and her marriage to the Rev. Lemuel Peddigrew. For Imogene and her daughter, Jeanette, life as pastors’ wives is proving more difficult than they first imagined. But a family emergency forces everyone to reevaluate relationships with each other and God.

Mara Brennan is about to unravel. Three days after her twenty-eighth birthday, her boyfriend dumps her, leaving her with nothing but a basement apartment, a futon and a pile of unpaid bills. On top of that, her job, working as a receptionist at a cosmetic surgery clinic is a nightmare; her boss is a tyrant; and her friends have gotten ahead of her in the game of life. Mara realizes it's time for an identity makeover. She devises the OM List, a personal pathway to perfection inspired by her best friends, Olivia and Mitz, and her newfound love for yoga.

Actor Matthew McConaughey descends into a surreal desert of the soul, an admirer of Miley Cyrus performs a 3,000-word sentence in defense of his passion, an aging porn star dons a dinosaur costume to film the sex scene of a lifetime, and Leonard Cohen shills for Subway: these mercurial and wildly varied stories explode the conventions of short fiction.

Prudence Burns is an overly idealistic Brooklyn girl who has inherited a derelict plot of land named Woefield Farm. Her motley crew of farm hands consists of Earl, an elderly, reclusive bluegrass legend; Seth, an agoraphobic heavy-metal blogger in early recovery from alcoholism; and Sara, an 11-year-old girl with a flock of elite show poultry. When Prudence is felled by a thyroid condition, things on the farm begin to fall apart, resulting in valiant and sometimes ill-advised attempts to restore domestic bliss.

Zach Post is an editor for It magazine with an impressive history: his father is a famous architect, his mother a socialite, and he has attended Colgate, Berkley, and Liverpool University. Or, at least that's what everyone thinks. When obnoxious new editor Mark Larkin is quickly promoted, Zach's secrets are threatened, and his future no longer seems bright. But he knows what to do-Mark Larkin must be eliminated.

In Gotham Tragic, the New York-based writer skewers celebrity culture with dead-on humor and deft plotting. Wenzel's subject, Kyle Clayton, is an author whose drunken escapades draw as much interest as his novels. But when he attempts to turn over a new leaf, he finds that years of excess are not so easily left behind. His engagement to a Turkish woman and conversion to Islam are threatened by an old flame and by militant Muslims who declare a fatwa against him.

Patrick Wensink’s Broken Piano for President earned him status as an internationally best-selling author - as well as a "World’s Nicest Cease and Desist" from Jack Daniel’s. Deshler Dean is only at his brilliant best when he’s blackout drunk. Having invented a hamburger as addictive as crystal meth, scored a record contract for his alt-rock band, and become entangled in the biggest war since WWII, Deshler finds himself tackling the fast-food industry - and trying to save the world.

Robert James, a private detective more interested in chronicling his cases than solving them, gets a midnight call from a young woman whose older husband has been found with a knife in his chest. Murder, corruption, and betrayal ensue as he's drawn into the dark underworld of his client, but hapless Robert and his sidekick, a flower-delivery guy, can't stop drinking, smoking, and philosophizing long enough to keep up. Imagine The Big Sleep via Fernando Pessoa, with a side of Buster Keaton.

The citizens of Claxton, Texas, are justifiably possessed with a healthy thirst - on the dusty plains of West Texas, they're in the midst of a seven-year drought when the town finally votes to go wet. The opposition faction, and its leader, Miss Jessica Cater, manage to shut down the promotion beer-store owner Buck Turlock has cooked up just in time for the Fourth of July celebration. But will Buck's schemes lead Miss Jessie to rethink her position?

In The Time Seller, AG and his family live in a smallish apartment with a not-so-smallish debt to the bank. But AG dreams of a different life and steps onto a path of exhilarating uncertainty.