Surreal Humor

WHAT IF DONALD TRUMP DIED… AND NO ONE WANTED HIM? In this darkly hilarious and politically sharp work of satire, Donald J. Trump arrives in the afterlife—where even the divine are exhausted. Denied entry to both Heaven and Hell, he’s bounced through a surreal cosmic bureaucracy filled with audits, errors, and purgatorial loops that feel suspiciously like Mar-a-Lago with worse lighting. INSIDE THIS SATIRICAL AFTERLIFE, YOU’LL FIND: God and Satan, arguing over whether he’s their problem A Wharton ethics class taught by Jimmy Carter A Twitter account that’s reinstated, suspended, ...

Twenty sharp, illustrated parables for the anxious and allegedly functional. Tiny stories you can read in a breath and carry all day. Inside you’ll find modern fables about stress returns, apology punch cards, “safety” bubbles that grow bars, fear hiding behind anger, the myth of multitasking, and other everyday circus acts, told with dry humor and a single black-and-white illustration for each. What you’ll get 20 bite-size stories (500–800 words each) + one B/W illustration per tale Themes: anxiety, boundaries, attention, modern life, small mercies A tone that’s darkly funny, ...

The biggest joke in existence is that all of it was rejected by the Peer Review Committee. Universe Under Review is an absurd, sharply satirical take on evolution, told through the universe’s hopeless struggle against a catastrophically cautious Peer Review Committee. Every breakthrough that shaped reality is rejected on principle. The Peer Review Committee hated all of them. Particles? Too unstable. Stars? Too dramatic. Cells? Too experimental. Multicellularity? Absolutely not. Skeletons, lungs, warm blood? Denied for budgetary reasons. Fire? Introduces catastrophic risk without ...

"Narrator Katharine Chin nails the dark humor and flat tone of this bizarre and fascinating short story collection."- AudioFile A new creation by the author of Severance, Bliss Montage crashes through our carefully built mirages. What happens when fantasy tears the screen of the everyday to wake...

Long live the bloodsuckers. On Planet X—formerly Earth, formerly functional—the nation has elected an Uber Vampire whose hunger isn’t metaphorical. His rule spreads through screens, signals, and devotion, draining the population dry while demanding adoration, obedience, and fluids. Preferably red. Nancy and John are retired, irritated, and profoundly unimpressed. When neighbors start hissing, bread is declared treason, and the sky turns grape-purple with suppression gas, they do what any sensible elders would do: form a resistance. Armed with duct tape, lemon bars, outlawed books, and...

""Michele Gerber Klein—at long last—gives Gala Dalí the close-up she deserves. When Gala met Salvador, they met their destinies. Surreal takes us backstage at the endless performance piece that was the couple’s life’s work and life’s play—a salient ingredient—and reshuffles art...

Beloved TV host Bill Geist pens a reflective memoir of his incredible summers spent in the heart of America in this New York Times bestseller. Before there was "tourism" and souvenir ashtrays became "kitsch," the Lake of the Ozarks was a Shangri-La for middle-class Midwestern families on...

In a world where the over-consumption of vampire novels has forced the good and honorable government to deem garlic an illegal substance of danger and horror, a group of rebellious restaurateurs take matters into their own garlic-butter laced hands.

She’s not a scientist. She’s not a visionary. She’s a tabloid-obsessed file clerk who spends her evenings devouring celebrity gossip and tinkering with discarded appliances. But when she turns two vintage microwaves into a working teleportation device, everything changes. What begins as a bizarre experiment with laundry and late-night TV spirals into corporate conspiracy, shadowy research firms, experimental pills, and a mysterious protocol that no one is supposed to survive. Meanwhile, in a quiet Idaho farming town, potatoes begin beating like human hearts. Pastors argue theology. ...

A finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Story Prize, the first ever collection of “dazzlingly told” (The New York Times) literary short stories from Don DeLillo, the National Book Award-winning author of Underworld and Falling Man. Set in Greece, the Caribbean, Manhattan, a...

A Romantic Comedy of Surreal Proportions If you love the satire of Airplane and the parody of Spinal Tap, then you'll love this insane journey into the romantic novel. Take one lovelorn southern belle, one mostly invisible pink unicorn spirit guide, then add 9 ill-fated lovers and retire to a safe distance. Can the sensational though desperate Emily Spankhammer find true love, or will that true love escape her once again? Billionaires, circus performers, Highlanders and Cajun chefs... could one be right for poor Emily, or does her spirit guide have other ideas? Littered with the finest ...

The complete television soundtracks of all 12 episodes of the legendary BBC sitcom Ground-breaking, satirical and anarchic, The Young Ones introduced alternative comedy to mainstream TV, and made household names of its writers and performers. It ran for two series on BBC Two between 1982 and...

A science fiction, fantasy, and humorous tale with a strong social theme, narrating the tragic experience of an individual held captive in a Mooncheesist re-education camp on the dark side of the Moon. The story exposes the fragile social balance that arises from the blurred line between the rightful struggle for the rights of different groups and the intolerance exercised by cancel culture as a form of ideological cleansing, where a new ideology incessantly replaces an old belief, constantly pitting factions against each other until total social madness ensues. Does anyone know what our ...

Being a hot billionaire just isn't what it used to be... To dirt-poor Wetta, romance novels aren’t a diversion, they’re a life plan. Certain her ticket out of Dullsville lies between those steamy pages, she spends her days crafting her own catalogue of the demure, waiting for her hero-in-a-Jag to appear. Everything changes when she catches sight of “The One”—handsome, bed-hopping billionaire Veego Drake. Convinced he’s her destiny, Wetta crosses the country to track him down and start her glorious new life. Nothing prepares her for the rollercoaster ride that awaits. Treacherous...

What can one say about the 'jokey' content within these pages? Well, it provides no more than an opportunity for the author to smirk, in a quite mad fashion, and ensure that his readership will continue to bestow solitary heavenly bodies on his foul, pointless conjurings. You see, it's all rather funny... to him.

In the small town of Upper Cupswater, Angela and Alan Godsick are preparing for their son Champ's ninth birthday. But what should be a simple celebration quickly spirals into something far stranger. A retired magician, a mysterious mango shipment, and a trick gone wrong turn their world upside down as reality begins to unravel in the most bizarre ways. As Angela and Alan scramble to make sense of the increasingly surreal events, they are drawn into a bewildering performance where nothing is quite as it seems. Can they uncover the truth behind the mysterious magician Rupert Russel before ...

They call him The Walrus. . . TV weatherman Wilson "The Walrus" Wigham notices some odd correlations between natural disasters and sociopolitical turmoil and finds himself swept up in a comical whirlwind of events that carries him from his little Wisconsin town to the great old country of India and all the way back again.

Welcome to the Fitzhugh multiverse of genteel chaos, spectral jazz goats, and one emotionally co-dependent gator named Elvis. In Cedric III: The Collected Chronicles, Southern society unravels through four decadent acts of absurdity, satire, and scandal. Colonel Cedric Beauregard Fitzhugh III—a reluctant aristocrat with a talent for catastrophe—faces murder-mystery brunches, cotillion combat, swamp courtroom drama, and existential alligator therapy, all while clutching his bourbon and wondering why the raccoons look so organized. With Arora Palindrome wielding her clipboard like a ...

When Paula shows up for the annual BFF weekend and everyone’s mysteriously gone, she thinks she died and went to heaven, and in unhinged acts of liberation, acts accordingly - with a twist. Funny and surreal, "Paula Thinks She's Dead" is a story of life, the afterlife, social norms, and what it's like to no longer give a care. From the author of the award-winning short story, "The Whisper," which was published in her 2024 collection, "A Sign of Life: Poetry and Short Stories."

WELCOME TO THE GREAT GAME. You didn’t just pick up a book. You triggered a side quest. Inside these pages are pocket universes stitched together with chaos, caffeine, and the kind of questions you usually ask at 3 a.m. when your Wi-Fi’s out and you’re staring at the ceiling. You’ll meet cursed wanderers who turn paperwork into holy rituals, gods who treat the multiverse like their personal TikTok, and algorithms trying to understand why humans cry over dog videos. This isn’t just a story collection—it’s a playground for anyone who’s ever wanted to poke the universe and see ...