Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Dark Humour

Ray is not a bad guy. He mostly did not cheat on his heavily pregnant wife. He only sometimes despises every one of his friends. And though his career as a freelance tech journalist is dismal and he spends his afternoons churning out third-rate listicles in his boxer briefs, he dreams of making a difference. But Ray is about to learn that his special talent is for making things worse.

All alone, with only his electric guitar and his overactive ego for company, Eddie Virago, proud owner of the last Mohican haircut in Dublin, leaves his home town to find fame in the wild world of the London rock scene. Things don't quite go as planned, however, and he finds himself living in a ramshackle hotel with a neurotic girl he met on the ferry over while a bewildering array of acid-house ravers, saloon-bar revolutionaries, music biz wideboys and media primadonnas all seem oh-so-anxious to help Eddie on his way....

When his loving wife, Betty, plans a trip to Ireland for Fatty O’Leary’s 40th birthday things go wrong almost immediately: the seats in economy class on the plane are too small; Irish bathroom furniture is not as commodious as he'd have liked. And all the time Fatty must put up with the unthinking cruelty of strangers.

When Robert (or Kidder, as his best friend calls him) decides to impress at a job interview by making up a son, he discovers that maintaining the lie is far harder than he thought - so he invents a story that 'Brodie' has been kidnapped. After all, it's not like they're going to find the fake boy. But a few weeks later, Kidder receives a call to collect his nonexistent son from the police station, a boy who looks exactly like the picture he photoshopped....

A mother and her two young children rent a battered old RV (optimistically christened the Chateau) and embark upon a journey through the Alaskan wilderness. At first their trip feels like a vacation: they spot wild animals and build bonfires. But as they travel deeper into the forest, dodging wildfires and eccentric locals, we learn more of the events that forced them to escape their old lives in search of something redemptive out at the very edge of civilization.

You won't remember Mr Heming. He showed you round your comfortable home, before you took the plunge and bought it. But all these years later, he still has the key. That's absurd, you laugh. Of all the many hundreds of houses he has sold, why would he still have the key to mine? The answer to that is, he has the keys to them all.

Colleen and Andrew are drinking too much; they haven’t had sex for months; and their son, Ned, is still on drugs. They need a break. In an attempt to mend their marriage, they go off to a remote beachside cottage and pledge not to drink for the week. But the promised beach is nowhere in sight; the weird landlord, Wolf, is always hanging around; their car breaks down; and their attempts to fix their marriage are undermined by the lies they’re still telling each other. If they weren’t so obsessed with their own lives, they might realise something more sinister is going on.

When Bea Hanlon follows her preacher husband, Max, to a remote island in the Pacific, she soon sees that their mission will bring anything but salvation.... Advent Island is a place beyond the reaches of Bea's most fitful imaginings. It's not just the rats and the hordes of mosquitoes and the weevils in the powdered milk. Past the confines of their stuffy little house, amidst the damp and the dust and the sweltering heat, rumours are spreading of devil chasers who roam the island on the hunt for evil spirits. And then there are the noises from the church at night.