Humor & Satire

Meet Elizabeth Zott: a one-of-a-kind scientist in 1960s California whose career takes a detour when she becomes the unlikely star of a beloved TV cooking show....

Seconds before the Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect....

Looking at real estate isn’t usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage....

Meet Rabo Karabekian, a moderately successful surrealist painter who we meet late in life and see struggling....

A wickedly clever, tenderhearted, and intricately plotted novel about a hard-luck lawyer's refusal to concede defeat, even as fate, the court system, and a gang of untouchable con artists conspire against him....

Lost something? Gabriela Rose knows how to get it back. As a recovery agent, she’s hired by individuals and companies seeking lost treasures, stolen heirlooms, or missing assets of any kind. She’s reliable, cool under pressure, and well trained in weapons of all types....

For two sworn enemies, anything can happen during the Hawaiian trip of a lifetime - even love....

Eugene Debs Hartke describes an odyssey from college professor to prison inmate to prison warden back again to prisoner....

The top 10 list is populated. The sponsorship program is open. The difficulty is ramping up. The first three floors were nothing compared to what Carl and Donut now face....

Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking....

Mark Manson turns his gaze from the inevitable flaws within each individual self to the endless calamities taking place in the world around us....

Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness....

An orphan’s life is harsh - and often short - in the mysterious island city of Camorr. But young Locke Lamora dodges death and slavery, becoming a thief under the tutelage of a gifted con artist. Locke is the leader of a band of light-fingered brothers known as the Gentleman Bastards....

Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him....

Smarting from her recently canceled wedding and about to turn forty, Laurie Sassalyn returns to her Maine hometown of Calcasset to handle the estate of her great-aunt Dot, a spirited adventurer who lived to be ninety-three....

Macy Sorensen is settling into an ambitious if emotionally tepid routine: work hard as a new pediatrics resident, plan her wedding to an older, financially secure man, keep her head down....

Everyone in Cedar Creek, Texas, knows Jack McNight is an arrogant devil. Physically, I get it: he’s tan and fit, with coal-black hair that’s clearly been scorched by hellfire. Oh, and his personality? It burns just as hot....

Private Investigator Bernie Little and his canine companion, Chet, return home to encounter some alarming developments....

In Jim’s absence, Zorlando has been doing a pretty good job keeping Windfall safe. He doesn’t know - and may not be equipped for - what is heading straight toward Noobtown, though....

People say Beartown is finished. A tiny community nestled deep in the forest, it is slowly losing ground to the ever encroaching trees. But down by the lake stands an old ice rink....

A masterpiece of satire, this classic has entertained and enlightened readers the world over with its sly and ironic portrayal of human life from the vantage point of Screwtape, a highly placed assistant to "Our Father Below"....

Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is 77 years old and crazy, standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-men-who-want-to-talk-about-Jesus crazy....

Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate; she works an easy job at a hip art gallery and lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side....

Number one New York Times best-selling author Janet Evanovich returns with the latest book in her massively popular Stephanie Plum series....

In 1970s Baltimore, 14-year-old Mary Jane loves cooking with her mother, singing in her church choir, and enjoying her family’s subscription to the Broadway Showtunes of the Month record club....

Nancy Kranich (played by Emmy-nominated actress Natasha Lyonne of Russian Doll and Orange Is the New Black) is a night nurse on an orbiting space station. But Nancy hates her job, is sick of space, and longs to find adventure and a safe place to smoke cigarettes that won’t blow everyone up.  But when Nancy gets caught up in an outer-space conspiracy involving President Kennedy, former vice-president Richard Nixon, and an intergalactic object that could change the course of history, she gets way more adventure than she bargained for.  

A community of outsiders takes over an abandoned gas station. They spend their days ripping up asphalt, drinking beer and eating hot dogs, and wandering through woods and towns in search of new ways of living. People come and go: a charismatic landscaper, Italian anarchists, a policewoman, travelers. A teenager drifts into homelessness. And The Girl With No Name keeps a journal of her attempts to meet new people and sleep with them, sex that is “not a sideline” but the motivating force in a story she is struggling to understand.

This is a satellite-dish-free zone of tall houses, standing shoulder to shoulder with big front doors, five floors apiece. You could almost be in Kensington. This is where the actors, writers and media types live, where small children wearing smart uniforms and shoes in the shape of lightbulbs get ferried every day to schools that are not local. Some people are luckier than others; fortune smiles on some and gobs on the rest. Jo Metcalf smokes and spies on the smug Cunninghams down the street as they play their bile-inducing game of happy families.

In the town of Blackjack, Nevada, washed-up singer Jimmy Wayne is down on his luck, playing covers to a limited and uninterested audience in a third-rate casino. One morning, he awakens to find that everything has changed. Not only has he accidentally murdered Wendy, his girlfriend, but he's also written the best song he's ever produced. Is it the act of killing that helps him create his finest work? And if it is, should he go for a full album? Wrestling for his desire for success and his grasp of morality, Jimmy starts searching for the most terrible people he has ever known.

Gene Stevens owns a gorgeous rare guitar—his favorite "axe". He wouldn't be seen dead without it. Until one day, he's seen dead with it. Somebody has murdered him with his own axe and left it lying next to him, covered in blood. He'd be rocking and rolling his grave if he could see it now. Guitar store owner Dana Osborne is determined to track down the killer. She's joined by her young employee Brody, and guitar store cat Paws McCartney. Can this amateur band bring the case to an irrefutable coda, or will justice in the backwaters of Aotearoa fade out like an '80s hair metal anthem?

When the final four women in competition for an aloof, if somewhat sleazy, bachelor’s heart arrive on a mysterious island in the Pacific Northwest, they mentally prepare themselves for another week of extreme sleep deprivation, invasive interviews, and of course, the salacious drama that viewers nationwide tune in to eagerly devour. Each woman came on The Catch for her own reasons - brand sponsorships, followers, and yes, even love - and they’ve all got their eyes steadfastly trained on their respective prizes.  

Zainab, Funmi and Enitan first meet at University in northern Nigeria, all learning how to become themselves. It's an experience that binds the three very different women together. When Enitan moves to New York to elope with a white man, Zainab and Funmi are left behind, with drastically different fortunes. Over the course of 30 years, their lives and friendships diverge and change. Funmi is separating from her husband, trying to understand her daughter Remi. Zainab finds herself the sole breadwinner for her husband and their four sons.

Set in Rhode Island, Winner of the National Book Award tells the story of twins who could not be more different. Abigail Mather is a woman of passionate sensual and sexual appetites, while her sister, the book-loving local librarian Dorcas, lives a quiet life of the mind. But when the sisters are sought out by the predatory and famous poet, Guy DeVilbiss, who introduces them to Hollywood hack writer and possible psychopath Conrad Lowe, they rapidly become pawns in a game that leads to betrayal, shame and ultimately, murder.

As an agent of the Society for Magickal Heritage, I, Cordelia Vesper, have an important job: rescue endangered creatures, artefacts, books, and spells wherever they are to be found. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to keep British magick alive. So we rescued a valuable book from a long-lost library, only it proved to be unusually...chatty. And it's got a foul mouth, too. What manner of weird magick is this? Somebody else thinks it's pretty interesting, too. Ancestria Magicka, they call themselves. Brand-new. Big trouble.

A young actress, involuntarily committed to City of Roses Psychiatric Hospital, plunges James Flynn into a dangerous new adventure when she claims one of the most powerful producers in Hollywood is trying to kill her. Still convinced he's a secret agent for Her Majesty's Secret Service, Flynn springs into action, helps her escape, and finds himself embroiled in a battle with a dangerous sociopath worth billions. In the process, he uncovers a high-tech conspiracy to control the mind of every human being on Earth.

One year has passed since Dr. Newton and Magneteer took their fight to the streets. Lives were lost. The damage incalculable. The public demands answers. But with Newton incarcerated and Magneteer on the run, Cameron and Rebecca are left to pick up the pieces. If they can't appease the citizens they swore to protect, the Newton Force is no more. Further complicating matters is the arrival of two new superheroes calling themselves the Legion of Liberty. Filling the void left vacant by the Newton Force, it doesn't take long for the Legion of Liberty to win the public over. 

Welcome to MeZuss. Diversion, depression, atheism, suicide, sabotage, OCD, transformation, angels, healings, darkness, happiness, truth, sarcasm, God, fame, betrayal, revolution, murder, televangelists, sex traffickers, sociopaths, narcissists, visions, and the end of the world as you know it. It’s the perfect love story…. Do you feel fine?

From swimming on Hampstead Heath to illicit trysts in hayfields, or counting stock in corner shops and stifling parenting classes to pedicures in Florence, this collection of short stories includes some previously unpublished in audio, and covers the gamut of human nature—our foibles, our loves, our desires, hopes, ambitions and failures. Rich in observation and speckled with a delicious dark humour, Fool for Love confirms Deborah Moggach's place as one of our finest observers of human life.

Lucie Yi has tried love—it didn’t work. She’s decided that finding Mr Right is a myth, and that finding Mr Right-enough-to-have-children-with is the next best option. So when she meets easy-going Collin Read on a platonic co-parenting website, it finally feels like she has found her version of happily-ever-after. But things take a turn for the worse when they move back home to Singapore where her very traditional family and remorseful ex-fiancé await.

After mother of five and former FBI profiler Andie Stern solved a murder—and unraveled a decades-old conspiracy—in her New Jersey town, both her husband and the West Windsor police hoped that she would set aside crime-fighting and go back to carpools, changing diapers, and lunches with her group of mom-friends, who she secretly calls The Cellulitists. Even so, Andie can’t help but get involved when the husband of Queen Bee Molly Goode is found dead. Though all signs point to natural causes, Andie begins to dig into the case and soon risks more than just the clique’s wrath.