Absurdist Fiction

Caleb Horowitz is 27, and his wildest dreams are about to come true. His manuscript has caught the attention of the literary agent, who offers him fame, fortune, and a taste of the literary life. He can’t wait for his book to be shopped around to every editor in New York, except one: Avi Dietsch, a college rival and the novel’s “inspiration”. When Avi gets his hands on it, he sees nothing but theft - and opportunity. Caleb is forced to make a Faustian bargain, one that tests his theories of success, ambition, and the limits of art.

An urgent and unforgettable collection of stories, Show Them a Good Time explores types - men and women, their assigned roles and meanings - in modern society. A young, broke Irish woman narrates her relationship with a successful comedian in New York; two hapless university students take to the stage in a bid to assert their autonomy; a school teacher makes her way through a series of dead-end dates, gamely searching for love or distraction as the world teeters towards ruin.

Una legione di spiriti diabolici, malvagi, virtuosi, paranoici e sexy contro il conformismo del Megaconcerto di Beneficenza e la violenza dei signori della guerra. Non si sa chi vincerà, ma come dice Stan Hakaleimekalahani "ci sarà gran piagnanza e gran ridanza".

Zebra is the last in a line of anarchists, atheists, and autodidacts. When war came, her family didn't fight; they took refuge in books. Now alone and in exile, Zebra leaves New York for Barcelona, retracing the journey she and her father made from Iran to the United States years ago. Books are Zebra's only companions - until she meets Ludo. Their connection is magnetic; their time together fraught. Zebra overwhelms him with her complex literary theories, her concern with death, and her obsession with history. He thinks she's unhinged; she thinks he's pedantic.

A retired general—the leader of the latest military takeover—moves to a peaceful island and decides to rid it of what he sees as its last remaining “anarchic” components. The island, described by its people as a utopia, the last peaceful resort for mankind, morphs into dystopia when the general, in the hope of bringing order to the island life, begins to act more and more like a dictator. The first ones to revolt against the general are the seagulls.

Fairy tales are as old as language itself. Long, long ago, storytellers all around the world told tales of wonder both to enchant and entertain us, and also to teach us that – if we are good and kind and courageous enough – we can change the world for the better. For this is what fairy tales do. They give us hope. As we travel through the dark and dangerous world of the fairy tale, as we fight dragons and outwit ogres and save our sisters and brothers, we learn that we are capable of anything.

Lara the Runaway Cat tells the story of Gobi, the loveable pug who followed Dion Leonard across a gruelling 155-mile trek across the Gobi Desert, and her mischievous cat sister, Lara, who runs away from her family, seeking a courageous adventure and different life.

Are you a Law & Order or CSI crime junkie? In these You Solve It mini mysteries, you get to be the lead detective who takes on the case. You will read the case file, collect the evidence and solve the crime. Become an iDetective.

As head of the crisis management team at a Madison Avenue PR firm, Leonard Lundell spends his days counseling executives whose reputations have been ruined by scandal. But Leonard has been managing a strange and debilitating crisis of his own that’s held him captive his entire adult life: Leonard likes to eat soap, pencils, paint chips—anything with no nutritional value. For years, he’s kept his compulsion hidden behind a professional veneer.

Enter the wonderfully weird, always uncomfortable, side-splittingly funny world of The Terrifying Realm of the Possible, where your worst fears of who you are or might become are always just around the corner. In these masterful short stories from the singular mind of the actor and comedian Brett Gelman, you’ll meet five individuals, each navigating a uniquely strange stage of life.

When 34-year-old Ms Shibata gets a new job in Tokyo to escape sexual harassment at her old one, she finds that, as the only woman at her new workplace—a company that manufactures cardboard tubes—she is expected to do all the menial tasks. One day, she announces that she can't clear away her colleagues' dirty cups—because she's pregnant and the smell nauseates her. The only thing is...Ms Shibata is not pregnant.

In this bold and brilliant short work of experimental fiction by the author of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers and Lanny, Max Porter inhabits Francis Bacon in his final moments, translating into seven extraordinary written pictures the explosive final workings of the artist's mind. Writing as painting rather than about painting, Porter lets the images he conjures speak for themselves as they take their revenge on the subject who wielded them in life.

An early 20th century tale of a young European American immigrant who has a series of adventures in America.

It is a time of unrest in the BookWorld. Only the diplomatic skills of ace literary detective Thursday Next can avert a devastating genre war. But a week before the peace talks, Thursday vanishes. Has she simply returned home to the RealWorld or is this something more sinister? All is not yet lost. Living at the quiet end of speculative fiction is the written Thursday Next, eager to prove herself worthy of her illustrious namesake.

Jenlena and Daphne are two aimless humanities grads living in a crumbling Montreal when animals besiege cities and towns across the world, terrorizing their human residents. Though shocking, the threat is quickly neutralized when the animals are killed en masse for the safety of humanity. In the post-fauna world, Jenlena is transformed, shaking off her characteristic passivity to capitalize on other people’s heartbreak and grief by selling plants that have come to replace pets, and impersonating dogs for pay.

An author goes on a book tour for his new bestseller which, as people keep telling him, is one hell of a book. One morning, he meets The Kid: a young Black boy who looks just like the one he keeps seeing on the news. And The Kid wants him to tell his story. It's the story of a boy who spent most of his life trying to hide. And it may not be that different from the story of our author. But to find out why, you'll have to listen to this for yourself.

Greg is a reporter who is about to get the story of his life. The Prophet, an elusive figure who makes predictions about disasters has just tapped him to do an exclusive interview. Except Greg's not really a reporter. Two minutes before entering his apartment, he didn't exist and when he meets the Prophet he finds out his true purpose- to kill the Prophet. But killing someone who is near omnipotent isn't easy, in fact, it takes more than one try even if you get it right.

Existential noir meets absurd comedy when a young man reluctantly enlists as source material for an art project. Stanley had known it was a mistake to accept his uncle Lech's offer to apartment-sit in Prague - he'd known it was one of Lech's proposals, a thinly veiled setup for some invasive, potentially dangerous performance art project. But whatever Lech had planned for Stanley, it would get him to Prague and maybe offer a chance to make things right with T after his failed attempt to propose.

Margherita Dolcevita è una ragazzina allegra, intelligente e appena sovrappeso, con un cuore che di tanto in tanto perde un colpo. Vive con la famiglia fra città e campagna. Un giorno, davanti alla sua casa, spunta, come un fungo, un cubo di vetro nero circondato da un asettico giardino sintetico e da una palizzata di siepi. Sono arrivati i signori Del Bene, i portatori del "nuovo", della beatitudine del consumo. Amici o corruttori? La famiglia di Margherita cade in una sorta di oscuro incantesimo, nessuno rimane immune.

Benjamin was never the sharpest tool in the shed. For as long as he can remember, he’s longed for adventure in far-away lands. But every day he wakes up in the same boring suburb, where nothing ever happens.