Showing titles in Dark Humour

Sweden, late summer of 2011. Self-taught astrophysicist Petra has calculated that the atmosphere will collapse on the 21st of September that year, around 21.20 to be more precise, bringing about the end of times. Armed with this terrible knowledge, Petra meets Johan, a doomsday prophet, and Agnes, a widow of 75 who has made bank living a double life on social media as a young influencer. Together, the trio race through Europe as they plan to make the most out of the time they have left, in more ways than one. But of course, things rarely go to plan, even the end of the world.

Vampires have walked among us for thousands of years. These reanimated corpses survive by draining and consuming the blood of the living, and their threat to humanity cannot be ignored. Throughout the centuries, professors and peasants have offered their own vampire-fighting tips, but these were often old wives' tales, based more on superstition than on fact. Here, for the first time, is a comprehensive vampire-fighting guide for the 21st century.

In the land of Lapvona, the lord of the land Villiam is cheating the local villagers of their food, their water, their livelihoods. Grotesque and ridiculous, he marries the pregnant and tongueless ex-nun Agata, whom he believes will make him God, and his son will be the second Christ.

Korede is bitter. How could she not be? Her sister, Ayoola, is many things: the favorite child, the beautiful one, possibly sociopathic. And now Ayoola's third boyfriend in a row is dead. Korede's practicality is the sisters' saving grace. She knows the best solutions for cleaning blood, the trunk of her car is big enough for a body, and she keeps Ayoola from posting pictures of her dinner to Instagram when she should be mourning her 'missing' boyfriend. Not that she gets any credit.

Tony Hunt, author of 'Geordie Boy - small events in a child's life', has taken a darker turn with this collection of short stories, centred around the volunteers who work in a Lake District charity shop. The five stories are linked in parallel; each story standing alone, but as you listen to each one, a fuller picture appears of the strains and stresses that afflict people who have retired to the Lakes to seek serenity, but instead find themselves at the mercy of events.

Viktor Alekseyevich Zolotaryov is an aspiring writer in Ukraine, with only his pet king penguin, Misha, for company. After Viktor gets a job writing obituaries for a local newspaper, he soon finds that his articles are being used as a hit list by some unknown organisation. Feeling as lost and unhappy as his penguin, Viktor’s life takes a complicated turn when he takes in Sonya, the young daughter of an old friend, and hires Nina to be her nanny. Can Viktor protect everyone and keep himself (and his penguin) alive, or is he destined to become the subject of the paper’s latest obituary?

Lydia is hungry. She's always wanted to try sashimi, ramen, onigiri with sour plum stuffed inside—the food her Japanese father liked to eat. And then there is bubble tea and the vegetables grown by the other young artists at the London studio space she is secretly squatting in. But Lydia can't eat any of this. The only thing she can digest is blood, and it turns out that sourcing fresh pigs' blood in London—where she is living away from her vampire mother for the first time—is much more difficult than she'd anticipated.

It’s the height of the Palm Beach charity ball season: for every disease or cause, there’s a reason for the local luminaries to eat (minimally), drink (maximally) and be seen. But when a prominent high-society dowager suddenly vanishes during a swanky gala and is later found dead in a concrete grave, panic and chaos erupt. Kiki Pew was notable not just for her wealth and her jewels - she was an ardent fan of the winter White House resident just down the road and a founding member of the Potussies, a group of women dedicated to supporting their president.

Kyle Hammond is suffering a surprise birthday party he really didn’t want. As he blows out the candles on his cake, he makes a token wish. Three days later, to his utter astonishment, that wish comes true. All his problems solved, Kyle is counting his blessings when a pensioner turns up at his door unannounced. The stranger then confounds Kyle by claiming credit for his good fortune, followed by a bizarre declaration: When Edmund Wishkin grants a wish, there’s always a price to pay. Whether he believes the old man or not, Kyle is about to discover the true cost of a wish fulfilled.

This omnibus edition contains the final four books of the bestselling Tome of Bill series. Bill Ryder is an unlikely hero trying to survive in a world of supernatural horrors. Despite awesome powers, loyal allies, and a Brooklyn-sized attitude; the odds are stacked heavily against him. Bill must fulfill his destiny and save the world from the ancient terrors that threaten it -- all while trying to build some semblance of a social life.

Every weekend, in basements and car parks across the country, young men with good white-collar jobs and absent fathers take off their shoes and shirts and fight each other barehanded. Then they go back to those jobs with blackened eyes and loosened teeth and the sense that they can handle anything. Fight Club is the invention of Tyler Durden, projectionist, waiter and dark, anarchic genius. And it's only the beginning of his plans for revenge on the world.

Dove Connolly is dead. That’s not good for anyone in Tullyanna, never mind Dove. Now his best friend, Sharkey, is home asking awkward questions about Dove’s death, about the strange graphic novel he left behind and, most of all, about Sandra. Sandra Mohan. Missing now for more than a decade, whereabouts unknown. This, however, is a town dead-set on keeping its secrets. And Sharkey is already drawing attention from all the wrong quarters.

Amber Patterson is tired of being a nobody: an invisible woman who melts into the background. She deserves more. She deserves a life of wealth, luxury and leisure. Daphne Parrish is the golden girl of Bishops Harbor, Connecticut. With her model looks, her picture-perfect mansion and her millionaire husband, Jackson, she has everything Amber wants.

In this sequel to Randy Henderson's acclaimed debut novel, Finn Fancy Necromancy, Finn Gramaraye is settling back into the real world after his twenty-five-year-long imprisonment in the otherworld of the Fey. He's fallen in love again with Dawn, the girl next door who waited for him. He's proved his innocence of the original crime of Dark Necromancy, and he's finding a place in the family business - operating a mortuary for the Arcane, managing the magical energies left behind when an Arcane being dies to prevent it from harming the mundane world.

On a chilly February day two old friends meet in the throng outside a crematorium to pay their last respects to Molly Lane. Both Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday had been Molly's lovers in the days before they reached their current eminence, Clive as Britain's most successful modern composer, Vernon as editor of the quality broadsheet The Judge. Gorgeous, feisty Molly had had other lovers too, notably Julian Garmony, Foreign Secretary, a notorious right-winger tipped to be the next prime minister.

He became a best-selling novelist while still in college, immediately famous and wealthy. He watched his insufferable father reduced to a bag of ashes in a safety-deposit box. He was lost in a haze of booze, drugs and vilification. Then he was given a second chance. This is the life of Bret Easton Ellis, the author and subject of this remarkable novel. Confounding one expectation after another, Lunar Park is equally hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking. It’s the most original novel of an extraordinary career - and best of all: it all happened, every word is true.

Filled with relentless drinking in seamy bars and glamorous nightclubs, wild, drug-fuelled parties, and dispassionate sexual encounters, Less than Zero - narrated by Clay, an 18-year-old student returning home to Los Angeles for Christmas - is a fierce coming-of-age story, justifiably celebrated for its unflinching depiction of hedonistic youth, its brutal portrayal of the inexorable consequences of such moral depravity and its author’s refusal to condone or chastise such behaviour.

It's December 23rd and Clara Dunphy is running around Oxford Street like a blue-arsed fly trying to buy presents. She wants to make Christmas perfect: it's a lifelong ambition. And a challenging one at the best of times, even without taking her sixteen guests - sorry, "loved ones" - and their varying degrees of social dysfunction into account. Meanwhile, something weird has happened to her marriage, and the ho, ho, ho is thin on the ground. Why does Christmas have such an emotional hold over us? Why does family stuff hit the peak of its madness on December the 25th?

It's New Year's Eve, the holiday of forced fellowship, mandatory fun, and paper hats. While dining out with her husband and their friends, Kirshenbaum's protagonist - an acerbic, mordantly witty, and clinically depressed writer - fully unravels. Propelled by stand-up comic timing and rife with pinpoint insights, Kirshenbaum examines what it means to be unloved and loved, to succeed and fail, to be at once impervious and raw. Rabbits for Food shows how art can lead us out of - or into - the depths of disconsolate loneliness and piercing grief.

Helen, a graduate student on a quest to save the planet, is one of the best minds of her generation. But when her irreplaceable advisor’s student sex scandal is exposed, she must choose whether to give up on her work or accompany him to RIP, a research institute which grants safe harbour to the disgraced and the deplorable. As Helen settles into life at the institute alongside her partner Hew, she develops a crush on an older novelist, while he is drawn to an increasingly violent protest movement.