Satire Comedy

Set in the world of the Victorian professional and landed classes, the story centres on Mr Harding, a clergyman of great personal integrity who is nevertheless in possession of an income from a charity far in excess of the sum devoted to it.

Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone? Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.

Despite the title, Dickens's portrayal of early industrial society is less relentlessly grim than that in novels by contemporaries such as Elizabeth Gaskell or Charles Kingsley. Hard Times weaves the tale of Thomas Gradgrind, a hard-headed politician who raises his children Louisa and Tom without love and to have no empathy, their lives completely devoid of beauty, culture, or imagination. Only after a series of crises does their father realise that the manner in which he raised his children has ruined their lives.

After the death of his fiancee due to medical errors, hospital pharmacist Daniel O'Dwyer escapes to Oak Island, North Carolina. The only things on his mind are fresh sea air, fresh seafood, Fat Tire Amber Ale, and the avoidance of any type of healthcare institution. But fate and jellyfish draw him back, and reluctantly, he agrees to go undercover to combat narcotic drug diversion at nearby Boiling Grove Community Hospital.

Twenty-five-year-old rookie Repo Agent, Andrea Sloan, doesn't like accepting help from anyone - especially not arrogant musicians who are too charming for their own good. Even though she swore off men years ago, Andi finds herself drawn to handsome rockstar, Cooper Barnett, as he continually pops up in her life when she least expects it. Their budding relationship becomes even more complicated when Cooper talks Andi into letting him ride-along on one of her repos, and they come across a very naked, very dead body.

In Leonard Wibberley's classic political satire, a tiny backwards country decides the only way to survive a sudden economic downturn is to declare war on the United States and lose to get foreign aid - but things don't go according to plan. The Mouse That Roared was made into a successful feature film starring Peter Sellers. Books in The Grand Fenwick Series: Books 2 through 5 are best read after The Mouse That Roared, but all of the books can be read and enjoyed at any point in the series. Book 1: The Mouse That Roared Book 2: The Mouse On The Moon Book 3: The Mouse On Wall Street Book 4: ...

The novel that set the stage for his modern classic, The Satanic Verses, Shame is Salman Rushdie's phantasmagoric epic of an unnamed country that is "not quite Pakistan". In this dazzling tale of an ongoing duel between the families of two men - one a celebrated wager of war, the other a debauched lover of pleasure - Rushdie brilliantly portrays a world caught between honor and humiliation.

Holiday Greetings from Sugar and Booze is a music-filled holiday comedy starring Ana Gasteyer and Maya Rudolph, with a jolly cast including Patti LuPone, Rachel Dratch, and Richard Kind. In this heartwarming story of love and friendship, we follow the journey of “Sugar” and “Booze” as they go from inseparable college buddies to busy working moms who mostly keep in touch with each other, and their close friends and family, through annual holiday letters.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the manicured lawns and symmetrically planted flower beds in our beautiful neighborhood. There’s something undeniably picturesque about the row of houses, their paint colors all meticulously approved by a committee of self-appointed taste experts who seem to be more worried about the shade of beige than actual world problems. However, all this beautifully decorated façade comes at a great price—putting up with the HOA board members. Now, if you're unfamiliar with the phenomenon that is an HOA (Homeowners Association), allow me to enlighten you. You either ...

[Contains explicit content] Get ready for a completely improvised and unscripted Audible Original that invites you to listen in on the funniest phone calls from the world’s weirdest town. Bad Reception is an entirely improvised comedy, set entirely on the phone. A cast of over 40 top comedians and improvisers brings to life (and completely makes up) the story of South Grampers, Northern California - the Movie Theater Butter Capital of the World.

In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway, brutalized, and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later, only slightly the worse, and the family moves on with their lives, resuming their prized places in the saga of the American dream, comforted in the realization that though their money may have been what endangered them, it is also what assured them their safety.

When an industrial accident unleashes an "airborne toxic event", a lethal black chemical cloud floats over the Gladneys' lives. The menacing cloud is a more urgent and visible version of the "white noise" engulfing the Gladneys - radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, ultrasonic appliances, and TV murmurings - pulsing with life yet suggesting something ominous.

It's not every afternoon that an enigmatic, comely blonde named Stilton (like the cheese) walks into the scruffy gin joint where Sammy "Two Toes" Tiffin tends bar. It's love at first sight, but before Sammy can make his move, an air force general named Remy arrives with some urgent business. 'Cause when you need something done, Sammy is the guy to go to; he's got the connections on the street.

Pregnant and secretly married, Cheryl Anway scribbles what becomes her last will and testament on a school binder shortly before a rampaging trio of misfit classmates gun her down in a high school cafeteria. For a handful of people still reeling from that horrific day, life remains derailed.

In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. Then, a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon, other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind....

Meet Julia Bancroft. Fabulous, talented, beautiful…deluded and friendless. You won’t like her at first but maybe her ‘nice’ lessons might change your mind? Being nice doesn't come naturally to (self-proclaimed) renowned Regency romance author, Julia. But when her husband walks out on her and she realises she has no friends, she faces a future of dying alone with the pesky cats eating her face. Thankfully, she doesn't have any cats but drastic times call for drastic measures. With the help of her oh, so lovely, but annoying new neighbour, Julia dabbles in her least favourite things -...

Bill (Lord) Rowcester was well and truly in the gumbo. With the benefit of hindsight he could see that setting himself up as a Silver Ring bookie might not have been his smartest move ever. Particularly when being down on his dibbs threatens his oncoming nuptials with the sterling Jill Wyvern. Lucky for Bill he had the land-lease of Jeeves. Lucky indeed that the fish-fed mastermind's formidable genius was at liberty to take a header into such teasers as borrowing the stellar Mrs. Spottsworth's pendent for an hour or three.

The richest, most depraved man on Earth, Malachi Constant, is offered a chance to take a space journey to distant worlds with a beautiful woman at his side. Of course, there's a catch to the invitation....

From Boston's social underworld emerges Verena Tarrant, a girl with extraordinary oratorical gifts, which she deploys in tawdry meeting-houses on behalf of "the sisterhood of women". She acquires two admirers of a very different stamp: Olive Chancellor, devotee of radical causes, and marked out for tragedy; and Basil Ransom, veteran of the Civil War, with rigid views concerning society and women's place therein. Is the lovely, lighthearted Verena made for public movements or private passions?

In New York Magazine, Rhoda Koenig calls The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, "...a novel of blazingly hot revenge, one that amply illustrates the saying about heaven having no rage like love turned to hate, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."