Absurdist Comedy

From “weird, scary, ingenious” (The New York Times) stand-up comedian Maria Bamford, an instant New York Times bestselling, brutally honest, and “laugh-out-loud funny” (Jennette McCurdy, #1 New York Times bestselling author) memoir about show business, mental health, and the comfort of...

“A propulsive, madcap story” (The New York Times) about a salaryman who decides to put his life up for sale in the classifieds section of a Tokyo newspaper after a botched suicide attempt. "An outstanding writer not only of Japan, but of the world." —The Atlantic After salaryman Hanio...

Mr. Quark is a down-on-his-luck pot smuggler hiding out in the mountains of Columbia with his dog, High Pockets, and a small band of banditos led by the irascible José. Times are lean, and to liven up their exile, José decides to mug a family of American tourists. Among the spoils are physics texts, which launch Mr. Quark on a sidesplitting, boisterous adventure north to California, where he confronts the owner of the books with his own theories.

From the author of The Remains of the Day, here is a novel that is at once a gripping psychological mystery, a wicked satire of the cult of art, and a poignant character study of a man whose public life has accelerated beyond his control. The setting is a nameless Central European city where Ryder, a renowned pianist, has come to give the most important performance of his life. Instead, he finds himself diverted on a series of cryptic and infuriating errands that nevertheless provide him with vital clues to his own past.

A member of the landed gentry, with a seemingly guaranteed income from his estate in the country, Oblomov lives in Petersburg, uninterested in the business that provides his living and barely aware that the revenue is diminishing. Not that he leads a dissolute life of extravagance, balls and entertainment. Instead he is a dreamer, a sybarite, content above all to spend most of the day supine, in bed. The novel opens with Oblomov thus ensconced, attended only by his dirty, grumbling, indolent servant Zahar, who has looked after him since childhood, catering to his every need.

Richard Brautigan's world is one of gentle magic and marvelous laughter, of the incredibly beautiful and the beautifully incredible. Trout Fishing in America is a pseudonym for the miraculous. A journey that begins at the foot of the Benjamin Franklin statue in San Francisco's Washington Square, that wanders through the wonders of America's rural waterways, and that ends, inevitably, with mayonnaise. Funny, wild, and sweet, Trout Fishing in America is an incomparable guidebook to the delights of exploration.

Told with biting humor, brutal honesty, and moments of absurd laughter, Why Is My Bra Still On? is a darkly comedic, deeply emotional novel about friendship, loyalty, and what it really means to be family.

The beloved author of The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared returns with an enchanting adventure that skewers the greed and hypocrisy that dominates our time and holds lessons about what’s truly important in life. Meet Ole Mbatian Jr., a Maasai warrior; Kevin...

One of them is a bestselling Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist. The other is a winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Together, they form the League of Comic Justice, battling evildoers in the name of . . . Okay, we made that line up. What they do form is a writing team of pure comic...

What I wanted more than anything was to be standing beside Schmidt, in concert with Schmidt, at the foot of Saint Sebastian’s Abyss along with Schmidt, hands cupped to the sides of our faces, debating art, transcendence, and the glory of the apocalypse.” Former best friends who built their careers writing about a single work of art meet after a decades-long falling-out. One of them, called to the other’s deathbed for unknown reasons by a “relatively short” nine-page email, spends his flight to Berlin reflecting on Dutch Renaissance painter Count Hugo Beckenbauer.

Four years. One mistake. Infinite trouble. After settling into married life and something dangerously close to respectability, time-hopping duo Stewart and Frankie thought their chaotic days were behind them. But when a sharp-eyed journalist blackmails them over a small historical hiccup (involving a guard, the Tower of London, and perhaps one too many jokes), they’re forced back into the madness they once barely escaped. Their mission? Obey her bizarre demands—or have their very existence unravelled. With help from their old friends—headstrong Anne Boleyn, the ever-enigmatic alien ...

¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ Chaos erupts at Howling Manor! Rival spies crash and clash. Werewolves howl and prowl. Evil genius Dr. Vladislav Volkov’s deranged experiments are coming back to bite—literally. Your survival depends on unraveling the truth... fast. Before someone unravels you! ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ In the ominous shadows of 1930s pre-World War II espionage, the shrewdly scheming Dr....

"Bigfoot Buds" is a hilarious, heartwarming, and utterly absurd tale of friendship, cannabis, and the unexpected magic of rural life. When Hank 'Hazy' Thompson, a third-generation cannabis farmer, finds himself on the brink of financial ruin, he discovers an unlikely savior in the form of Gronk, a gentle giant of a Sasquatch with a surprising affinity for cannabis and a knack for keeping thieves at bay. As Hank and Gronk navigate the challenges of running a cannabis farm, they forge an unbreakable bond, communicating through a mix of grunts, gestures, and shared laughter. Their partnership ...

Show Puppies at the Puppy Parade Show is a comedy collection featuring the stories: THE PLACE WHERE THEY PAY WITH DOLL-HAIRS THE FIRST PERSON TO SAY HOLY GUACAMOLE! SHOW PUPPIES AT THE PUPPY PARADE SHOW Each story is written with one goal in mind: to make you laugh. In The Place Where They Pay With Doll-Hairs, meet the porcelain ponies of Tressville, where mysterious “doll-hairs” are worth trillions and the strange rules of the town lead to cosmic chaos. In The First Person to Say Holy Guacamole!, follow a cosmic research team searching for the origins of humanity’s greatest ...

What if the world’s not ending, it’s just having an allergic reaction to itself? Step into the wings of the Apollo Theatre with Reggie Porter, the most dangerous man in British comedy (according to Zara, his manager, and possibly MI5). With a biro, a Greggs leaflet, and six pages of forbidden insight, Reggie isn’t just doing a set, he’s detonating sacred cows one punchline at a time. From gay frogs to £6 cheddar, from God to oat milk, The Gig is not a short story, not a manifesto, and definitely not safe for anyone still clinging to certainty. It’s a stand-up sermon. A comic ...

A time-traveling scientist, a nervous funeral director, and an ancient curse—Southend on Sea is about to get seriously weird. Chaos, curses, and comedy guaranteed! Dennis Dogmore (the spitting image of Eric Morecambe) is a neurotic, funeral-obsessed hypochondriac whose Southend-on-Sea parlour hasn’t seen a corpse in weeks. His love life is lifeless, his confidence is six feet under, and Fenella—the woman of his dreams—would rather tango with literally anyone else. Enter Miss Miftley Wade: a razor-sharp, possibly unhinged scientist from ninety-four years in the future, with a time ...

All George ever wanted to do was make the world laugh. That's why its strange that he grew up to be a sad clown in a local circus. When he's fired from his job because the world no longer wants to be reminded of their sorrows, he finds himself spiraling into places he no longer recognizes. Is art reflecting life? Will George rise to the occasion or drown in his new-found despair? A satirical look at the interplay between art and capitalism, told through the person least likely to succeed.

You didn’t pick up a book. You picked up a Node—a pocket doorway into a set of worlds where stories don’t describe reality. They shape it. In Sector Folio-7, a catastrophic cascade has begun. Worlds are bleeding into each other, rules are breaking, and a city built from living pages is starting to collapse from the inside. Streets repeat out of order. People forget who they are mid-sentence. And “plot holes”—literal voids—open in the ground and swallow entire blocks. Mara Keene is a Scriptor tasked with keeping this place intact. She enters the City of Echoing Pages to recover...

Cannibal queens, vampire gods, and a collapsing timeline. Time travel’s messiest crew is back—this time, in a world too bloody for even Molly’s ink. When time travel starts to make sense, you’re doing it wrong. Molly Thompson—former 19th-century lady of the night, now married and moonlighting as a time-travel archivist—is at her wit’s end. Her latest chronicle defies logic, taste, and any semblance of order. And that’s before the vampire world shows up. It all begins when their ever-glamorous alien companion, Vah, declares her intention to rescue her long-lost sister, Vibeta...

The First Mann on Mars is a riotous, irreverent romp across the solar system, blending absurd comedy, interplanetary intrigue, and just the right amount of science fiction chaos, perfect for fans of Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, and anyone who’s ever wondered if Earth’s fate could hinge on a slightly incompetent human, a snarky AI, and a rogue sausage. Derek Mann is, by most reasonable definitions, completely unqualified for space exploration. Yet somehow he has become the First Mann on Mars. With him are Barry, the highly sarcastic and occasionally metallic companion, and Doreen, a ...