Showing results by publisher "Hachette Audio" in Literature & Fiction

"I've experienced a whole lot the last few years and I have a lot to share. So I hope that you'll take a moment to sit back, relax and enjoy the words I've put together for you in this book. I think you'll find I've left no stone unturned, no door unopened, no window unbroken, no rug unvacuumed, no ivories untickled. What I'm saying is, let us begin, shall we?" (Ellen DeGeneres)

David Foster Wallace made an art of taking readers into places no other writer even gets near. In his exuberantly acclaimed collection, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, he combines hilarity and an escalating disquiet in stories that astonish, entertain, and expand our ideas of the pleasures that fiction can afford.

The only lie told more often than "no, that looks totally cute on you" and "I got AIDS through oral" is "it gets better". Well, a lotta times it don't. Sometimes it just sucks less. But I promise you: Where there's a Willam, there's a way. But this isn't all about me (for once). It's about you and how you can suck less at a variety of things drag queens are so much better at than the average person.

It's 1973, and David Leveraux has landed his dream job as a Flavorist-in-Training, working in the secretive industry where chemists create the flavors for everything from the cherry in your can of soda to the butter on your popcorn. While testing a new artificial sweetener - Sweetness #9 - he notices unusual side-effects in the laboratory rats and monkeys: anxiety, obesity, mutism, and a generalized dissatisfaction with life. David tries to blow the whistle, but he swallows it instead.

Colin Quinn has noticed a trend during his decades on the road - that Americans' increasing political correctness and sensitivity have forced us to tiptoe around the subjects of race and ethnicity altogether. Colin wants to know: What are we all so afraid of? Every ethnic group has differences, everyone brings something different to the table, and this diversity should be celebrated, not denied. So why has acknowledging these cultural differences become so taboo?

Have you ever wished you could live in an earlier, more romantic era? Ladies, welcome to the 19th century, where there's arsenic in your face cream, a pot of cold pee sits under your bed, and all of your underwear is crotchless. (Why? Shush, dear. A lady doesn't question.) Unmentionable is your hilarious, scandalously honest (yet never crass) guide to the secrets of Victorian womanhood.

Are you a witless cretin with no reason to live? Would you like to know more about every piece of knowledge ever? Do you have cash? Then congratulations, because just in time for the death of the publishing industry as we know it comes the final book ever published, and the only one you will ever need: The Onion's compendium of all things known. Replete with an astonishing assemblage of facts, figures, statistics, threats, blood, and additional fees to edify even the most simple-minded book-buyer, The Onion Book of Known Knowledge is packed with valuable information.

High above the bustling streets of Dubai, in the world's most luxurious skyscraper, reside the gods and goddesses of the modern world. Since they emerged 14 billion years ago from a bus blaring a tune remarkably similar to the Mister Softee jingle, they've wreaked mischief and havoc on mankind. Unable to control their jealousies, the gods have splintered into several factions, led by the immortal enemies XOXO, Shanice, La Felina, Fast-Cooking Ali, and Mogul Magoo. Ike Karton, an unemployed butcher from New Jersey, is their current obsession.

Hap and Leonard are an unlikely pair - Hap, a self-proclaimed white-trash rebel, and Leonard, a tough-as-nails, black, gay Vietnam vet and Republican - but they're the closest friend either of them has in the world. Hap is celebrating his wedding to his longtime girlfriend, Brett (who is also Hap and Leonard's boss), when their backyard barbecue is interrupted by a couple of Pentecostal white supremacists. They're not too happy to see Leonard, and no one is happy to see them, but they have a problem, and only Hap and Leonard will take the case.

In this utterly unconventional autobiographical novel, Mark Leyner gives a reading in the food court of a mall. Besides Mark's mother, who's driven him to the mall and introduces him before he begins, and a few employees of fast food chain Panda Express who ask a handful of questions, the reading is completely without audience. The action of Gone with the Mind takes place exclusively at the food court, but the territory covered in this audio has no bounds.

Mack McAllister has a $600 million idea. His mindfulness app, TakeOff, is already the hottest thing in tech, and he's about to launch a new and improved version that promises to bring investors running and may turn his brainchild into a $1 billion business. Katya Pasternack is hungry for a scoop that will drive traffic. An ambitious journalist at a gossipy tech blog, Katya knows that she needs more than another PR-friendly puff piece to make her the go-to byline for industry news.

Are you lacking direction in how to whip up a swanky soiree for lumberjacks? A dinner party for white-collar workers? A festive gathering for the grieving? Don't despair. Take a cue from entertaining expert Amy Sedaris and host an unforgettable fete that will have your guests raving.

Why did the Three Little-Pigs call 911? Will the Three Bears sue Goldilocks for trespassing? Who cracked the Humpty Dumpty case? Find out the answers to these fascinating legal inquiries and many others in these hilarious reenactments of bedtime classics transferred into the courtroom and translated into legalese. Eleven different voices, including the author's, bring life to such characters as Little-Pigg, Diana Freewoman, the Jolly Green Giant, and of course various attorneys. The perfect tales for our litigious age.

Charlotte Holden, Sugar's favorite pediatrician, knows better than anyone that love only leads to heartbreak. Instead she's focused on creating the Grow Clinic, an outpatient center for children. All she has to do now is host the best Founder's Day parade in the history of Sugar, Georgia, to win over a big-city donor. Easy as peach pie. Then sexy Jace McGraw blows back into town and utters those three words every woman dreads: We're still married.

Nineteen-year-old Nayeli works at a taco shop in her Mexican village and dreams about her father, who journeyed to the US to find work. Recently it has dawned on her that he isn't the only man who has left town. In fact there are almost no men in the village - they've all gone north. While watching The Magnificent Seven, Nayeli decides to go north herself and recruit seven men - her own "Siete Magníficos" - to repopulate her hometown and protect it from the bandidos who plan on taking it over.

"What is in my book, you ask? (I'm really glad you asked, by the way, because now I get to tell you.) Time travel. Gay marriage. Sportsballing. Futuristic goggles that DO NOTHING. Tiny brags from my publisher, stuff like: 'This is an uproarious, uncensored take on empathy, personal responsibility, and what it means to be human.' So please, join me in the glorious art of windmill tilting by reading this 'collection of rousing, uncensored personal essays, letters, and stories' (I have no idea why that's in quotes)."

Forty-five-year-old Donna Koczynski is an ex-punk rocker, a recovering alcoholic, and the mother of two teenagers whose suburban existence detonates when she comes home early from a sales conference in Las Vegas to the surprise of a lifetime. As her world implodes, she sets off on an epic road trip to reclaim everything she believes she's sacrificed since her wild youth: Great friendship, passionate love, and her art. But as she careens across the US from Detroit to New York to Memphis to Nashville, nothing turns out as she imagines.

Rae Wallace would rather drown in a vat of pinot greezh and be eaten by her own beagle than make another trip down the aisle - even if it is her best friend's wedding. She's too busy molding the minds of first graders and polishing that ol' novel in the drawer to waste time on any man. But when her best friends stage an intervention, Rae is forced to give in. After all, they've hatched a plan to help her find love the 21st century way: online.

As winter deepens in snowbound Pollard, Illinois, 30-something Francis Falbo is holed up in his attic apartment, recovering from a series of traumas: his mother's death, his beloved wife's desertion, and his once-ascendant rock band's irreconcilable break-up. Francis hasn't shaved in months, hasn't so much as changed out of his bathrobe - "the uniform of a Life in Default" - for nine days.

From the creators of the smash hit play comes the ultimate audiobook of Jewish humor, a hysterical guide to Judaism that explores all of the religion's stereotypes, history, and shameless guilt trips.