Showing titles in Dark Humour

A customer service assistant spends her long workdays printing letters. Her one friend is the printer and, in the dark confines of her office, she begins to open up to him, talking about her fears, her past, her hopes and dreams. To her, it seems like a beautiful friendship is blossoming. To her boss, it seems like she’s losing her mind.

The theme that unites these stories in this dazzling first collection by Curtis Sittenfeld is how even the cleverest people tend to misread others and how much we all deceive ourselves. Sharp and tender, funny and wise, this collection shows Sittenfeld’s knack for creating real, believable characters while also skewering contemporary mores with brilliant dry wit.

It all starts with a girl.... (Because yes, there's always a girl.) Jason Priestley (not that one) has just seen her. They shared an incredible, brief, fleeting moment of deep possibility, somewhere halfway down Charlotte Street. And then, just like that, she was gone - accidentally leaving him holding her old-fashioned, disposable camera, chock-full of undeveloped photos.... And now Jason - ex-teacher, ex-boyfriend, part-time writer and reluctant hero - faces a dilemma: Should he try and track The Girl down? What if she's The One?

Former policeman Ray ‘Sugar’ Leonard is no stranger to bad breaks. But even Walter White never had to open up and share his feelings with a bunch of misfits like Ray’s chemotherapy group: a giant God-bothering Welsh bouncer, a sharp-suited wannabe Wolf of Wall Street, and a misanthropic, potty-mouthed little old lady. Compared to that lot, getting mugged on his way home from the clinic was almost a relief.

A Mosca, in un afoso pomeriggio di primavera, due letterati stanno elencando le prove dell'inesistenza di Dio. Lo straniero che si intromette nella discussione è di tutt'altro parere. Non solo, ma è stato presente al processo di Gesù. Si tratta infatti del Diavolo, nei panni del mago Woland, e la sua spettacolare comparsa getterà nel caos il burocratismo sovietico e l'élite letteraria del tempo. Satira devastante e fantastica, il romanzo, in parte ambientato nella capitale sovietica e in parte nell'antica Gerusalemme, è uno dei massimi capolavori della letteratura.

Set in the author’s native Belfast, the ten stories in Sweet Home lay bare the heartbreak and quiet tragedies that run under the surface of everyday lives. A lonely woman is fascinated by her niqab-wearing neighbours; a middle-aged teacher becomes obsessed with a young Gaelic football player; and an employer covers for his two employees caught having sex in a public toilet.

Meet Cherry, a bandit queen on the run, driving a pink soft-top convertible through the Badlands of Southeast England. She's never felt more Thelma and Louise in her life - except there are three of them in the car and one of them is dead. How did a head nurse and mother of two end up driving a handcuffed policeman and the corpse of a murdered refugee on a journey to find justice? Pursued by a racist, roid-raged, shaven-headed officer of the law - not to mention by her husband and daughter - what else can a woman with a conscience do in modern Britain?

Quentin and Lottie Bredin, like many modern couples, can't afford to divorce. Having lost their jobs in the recession, they can't afford to go on living in London; instead, they must downsize and move their three children to a house in a remote part of Devon. Arrogant and adulterous, Quentin can't understand why Lottie is so angry; devastated and humiliated, Lottie feels herself to have been intolerably wounded. Mud, mice and quarrels are one thing - but why is their rent so low?

Here, in Lynne Truss' first novel, we meet Osborne Lonsdale, a down-at-heel journalist, mysteriously attractive to women, who writes a regular celebrity interview for Come into the Garden. This week his "Me and My Shed" column will be based on the charming garden outhouse owned by TV sitcom star Angela Farmer. Unbeknownst to Osborne, driving down to Devon to interview Angela in her country retreat, the sleepy magazine has been taken over by new management.

It was my father’s arrest that brought me here, although you could certainly say that I took the scenic route. Here is rehab, where Ben - the only son of a rich South Dublin banker - is piecing together the shattered remains of his life. Abruptly cut off, at the age of 27, from a life of heedless privilege, Ben flounders through a world of drugs and dead-end jobs, his self-esteem at rock bottom. Even his once-adoring girlfriend, Clio, is at the end of her tether. Then Ben runs into an old school friend who wants to cut him in on a scam.

Driven by money, power and success, Gabriel has worked ruthlessly to get to the very top of the banking game. He's not going to let the inconvenience of a terminal brain tumour get in his way. But the tumour has other ideas. As it grows, it appears to be doing strange things to Gabriel's personality. Whether he likes it or not, he seems to be becoming less selfish, less mercenary, less unlikeable. Once he could dismiss the rest of humanity as irrelevant. Now he's not so sure.

Palahniuk’s fashion-model protagonist has it all - boyfriend, career, loyal best friend - until an accident destroys her face, her ability to speak, and her self-esteem. Enter Brandy Alexander, Queen Supreme, one operation away from becoming a bona fide woman.

There are angels, and they are not beneficent or loving. But they do watch over us. They watch our lives unfold, analyzing us for repeating patterns and redundancies. When they find them, the angels simplify those patterns and remove the redundancies, and the problem that is "you" gets solved.

Björn Diemel will reden: sowohl über die Einschulung seiner Tochter als auch über das Tantra-Seminar, das er aus Versehen mit seiner Ex-Frau besucht hat. Leider hat ein Unbekannter Björns Achtsamkeitstrainer, Joschka Breitner, krankenhausreif geprügelt – bei dem Versuch, dessen Tagebuch an sich zu bringen. Björn entwendet kurzerhand selbst die Aufzeichnungen seines Therapeuten und macht sich auf die Suche nach dem Täter.

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.

Some women have it all. Others are 34 and rent a tiny flat alone because they recently found their long-term boyfriend in bed with their boss. Newly single and jobless, Ginny Taylor is certain her life can’t get any worse. But then she encounters her downstairs neighbour for the very first time. Cassie Frost was a once-loved actress, but after a recent mishap she desperately needs a new publicist. And Ginny is a publicist who desperately needs a job - but can she be persuaded to work for the uber-difficult, excessively prickly woman that lives below her floorboards?

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of On the Bright Side by Hendrik Groen, read by Patrick Ryecart. Everyone's favourite octogenarian is back and - together with the Old-But-Not-Dead Club - is more determined than ever to wreak havoc. After a year mourning the death of his beloved friend Eefje, Hendrik picks up his pen once again to chronicle the goings on both inside his care home and in the increasingly confusing world outside.

Mark Renton is a very sick young man. He's sick of heroin and sick of trying to get off it but, above all, Renton is thoroughly sick of himself. What with vampire ghost babies, exploding siblings and disatorous sexual encounters, it's pain to see why Renton gloomily contends that 'life does not get any easier'.

When saying 'I do' to the love of her life, it didn't matter to Marie that Scott had been married before. But four years later, it's a different story. These days, Marie feels as though Scott sees more of his first wife and their children than he does of her and their energetic toddler. All she wants is for them to be a happy, blended family, but it's not so easy when his ex-wife refuses to let the two families meet. Well, Marie's had enough - there's only so much a woman can take! Now she's setting out to find his ex and prove that she's a decent person who can be trusted with the children.

From Sophia Bannion’s first day on the Storytelling team at HEBE, a luxury skincare/wellness company based in New York’s trendy SoHo neighborhood, it’s clear something is deeply amiss. But Sophia, pushing thirty, has plenty of skeletons in her closet next to the designer knockoffs and doesn’t care. Though she leads an outwardly charmed life, she aches for a deeper meaning to her flat existence—and a cure for her brutal nail-biting habit. She finds it all and more at HEBE, and with Tree Whitestone, HEBE’s charismatic founder and CEO.