Showing titles in Dark Humour

More preoccupied with drinking, sleeping, and writing, an unnamed student neglects his studies and invents three separate openings for a novel. The first introduces the Pooka MacPhellimey, "a member of the devil class", the second involves Mr. John Furriskey, a character belonging to another of the student's creations (writer Dermot Trellis), while the final opening features legendary Irish heroes Finn Mac Cool and Mad King Sweeny. Soon, Trellis' creations rebel against him, doing as they like while he sleeps, and the characters begin wandering in and out of each other's tales.

Chief Inspector Brian Hooley has a plan, and it won't make him popular. He wants to bring back autistic detective Jonathan Roper. Currently suspended on misconduct charges, his condition, coupled with a relentless work ethic, makes Roper a unique investigator with observational skills that allow him to see what others miss. But he is also a complex man who doesn't get social boundaries, and plenty of his colleagues just don't like him. Hooley doesn't care about that. He knows Roper is the one to make a difference.

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.

The last thing Alice expects to see at her husband’s graveside on his birthday is a giant, talking frog. On closer inspection, it’s a grown man dressed as Kermit. Turns out Alice’s husband is buried next to Ben’s older brother Harry, who—as a parting practical joke in his will—insisted that Ben visit his grave each year, on this specific day, dressed in an as-yet-undisclosed pageant of embarrassing fancy dress.

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.

Mark Renton is finally a success. An international jet-setter, he now makes significant money managing DJs, but the constant travel, airport lounges, soulless hotel rooms and broken relationships have left him dissatisfied with his life. He's then rocked by a chance encounter with Frank Begbie, from whom he'd been hiding for years after a terrible betrayal and the resulting debt. But the psychotic Begbie appears to have reinvented himself as a celebrated artist and - much to Mark's astonishment - doesn't seem interested in revenge.

Maddie Sanderson would be proud to honour her older brother's dying wish, that she scatters his ashes over eight destinations that the adventurous 29-year-old never got to visit before he died from cancer. But in his will, Josh assigned her an impossible partner to help complete the mission - Dominic Perry. Seriously, if Maddie weren't already at his funeral, she would have killed him for this.

Small and dyslexic, with a short fuse, bad teeth, a prison record and something to prove, Marguerite McNaughton - Maggsie - doesn't need anybody or anything, thank you very much. She's more than capable of looking after herself. She’s also about to discover that everyone needs someone, sometimes. Even her.

Elvira Carr is 27 and neuro-atypical. Her father - whom she suspects was in the secret service - has passed away and, after several Unfortunate Incidents growing up, she now spends most of her time at home with her overbearing mother. But when her mother has a stroke, Elvira is suddenly forced to look after herself or risk ending up in sheltered accommodation. Armed with her Seven Rules, which she puts together after online research, Elvira hopes to learn how to navigate a world that's full of people she doesn't understand.

After Nessa is widowed and her daughters leave for college, she’s left alone in her house near the ocean. In the quiet hours, she hears voices belonging to the dead—who will only speak to her. On the cusp of 50, Harriett’s marriage and career imploded, and she hasn’t left her house in months. But her life is far from over—in fact, she’s undergone a stunning metamorphosis. Jo spent 30 years at war with her body. The rage that arrived with menopause felt like the last straw—until she discovers she’s able to channel it.

Every day at 3:55 a.m., members of Team Movement clock in for their shift at big-box store Town Square in a small upstate New York town. Under the eyes of a self-absorbed and barely competent boss, they empty the day’s truck of merchandise, stock the shelves, and scatter before the store opens and customers arrive. Their lives follow a familiar if grueling routine, but their real problem is that Town Square doesn’t schedule them for enough hours―most of them are barely getting by, even while working second or third jobs

Allergic to group activities of any kind, all her life Serenata has run, swum and cycled on her lonesome. But now that she's hit 60, all that physical activity has destroyed her knees. As she contemplates surgery with dread, her previously sedentary husband, Remington, recently and ignominiously redundant, chooses this precise moment to discover exercise. Which should be good for his health, right? Yet as he joins the cult of fitness that seems increasingly to consume the whole of the Western world, her once-modest husband burgeons into an unbearable narcissist.

Berlin: a man wakes up in a trash can with no idea who he is. He's taken to hospital for treatment. Then people start trying to assassinate him. The man has to find out why, how to get them to stop, and what the CIA has to do with all this. There's also the little problem of working out who he used to be, and why that changed. Meanwhile, his girlfriend Piper and best friend Lance are trying to find him.

The world looks different a year after the dead rose from their graves. Survivors live in walled enclaves while the zombies roam freely in the wasteland. John, Chris, and Erik have made their home in the enclave of Haven and earn their keep in town by scavenging for supplies outside the walls. These excursions bring them face-to-face with grubby urchins, deadly warlords, and hordes of the undead.

Written in reaction to what Bentley perceived as the sterility and artificiality of the detective fiction of his day, Trent's Last Case features Philip Trent, an all-too-human detective who not only falls in love with the chief suspect but reaches a brilliant conclusion that is totally wrong. Trent's Last Case begins when millionaire American financier Sigsbee Manderson is murdered while on holiday in England. A London newspaper sends Trent to investigate, and he is soon matching wits with Scotland Yard's Inspector Murth.

Isaac stands alone on a bridge and screams into the river below. And then, an answer. A cry of despair perhaps even greater than his own. The sound draws Isaac into the woods. What he finds there changes everything. It's a tale that might seem familiar. A broken man and an unexpected guest, who can't stay forever. But real life isn't a story. It's full of truths, messy and surprising, that Isaac has been hiding from his new, improbable friend....

A cold-blooded killer strikes at the hottest moment: the new head of a sauna-stove company is murdered. . . in the sauna. Who has turned up the temperature and burned him to death? The evidence points in the direction of Anni Korpinen - top salesperson and the victim's potential successor at Steam Devil. And as if hitting middle age, being in a marriage that has lost its purpose, and struggling with work weren't enough, Anni realises that she must be quicker than both the police and the murderer to uncover who is behind it all - before it's too late. .

Detective Roger LeCarre. Scourge of crime. Guardian of Exeter. Amateur squash player. And now, party guest at Powderham, the manor house owned by mysterious billionaire tech genius Eli Quartz. It is a small and unconventional gathering: the Bishop, a fading radio star, a desperate aristocrat, the ageing butler and his absurdly beautiful daughter—and Detective Roger LeCarre. Then a snowstorm blows in and the group realise they are trapped. And when, completely against expectations for this kind of situation, someone winds up dead, it's obvious who must solve the crime.

Splitting the party is never a good idea, but sometimes, that's just the hand fate deals you. On Nazere, the gang's plans are cast into the wind when a stubborn foe returns to settle a score. Back in Cardinia, Stacy has her hands full trying to help Dave, while Dave does everything in his power to avoid being helped. Tim and Cooper stagger out of the desert, to find themselves in a whole new world of trouble.

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.

Deeming the Whore's Head Inn no longer safe to hide in, the gang decide to take a more proactive role in their pursuit to get back to reality, or at least to keep Mordred from doing so.

It's Valentine's Day, and Ellie Knight finds herself eating Nutella in the bar stock after a no-show date. But single doesn't have to be the loneliest number, does it? She goes back home to her flatshare and weird flatmates. It's okay there's black mould everywhere, right? With a hangover from hell, she goes to the office job she thought she would have quit by now. Doesn't everyone hate their job? Maybe Ellie isn't following the official life plan, but perfect is overrated.

In The End of The World Running Club Edgar Hill ran 550 miles after an apocalypse to try and find his family. He had it easy. This is his wife’s story. Beth Hill has survived the apocalypse with a baby and toddler in tow. And what’s more she’s done it alone - without her husband’s help. He’s never been any help. But when disaster strikes and someone steals her kids, she knows what she has to do.

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.

At sixty-four Mickey Sabbath is still defiantly antagonistic and exceedingly libidinous; sex is an obsession and a principle, an instrument of perpetual misrule in his daily existence. But after the death of his long-time mistress - an erotic free spirit whose great taste for the impermissible matches his own - Sabbath embarks on a turbulent journey into his past. Bereft and grieving, tormented by the ghosts of those who loved and hated him, he contrives a succession of farcical disasters that take him to the brink of madness and extinction...

Michael Beard is a Nobel prize-winning physicist whose best work is behind him. Trading on his reputation, he speaks for enormous fees, lends his name to the letterheads of renowned scientific institutions and half-heartedly heads a government-backed initiative tackling global warming. A compulsive womaniser, Beard finds his fifth marriage floundering. But this time it is different: she is having the affair, and he is still in love with her.

Meet Samuel: stalled writer, bored teacher at a local college, obsessive player of online video games. He hasn't seen his mother, Faye, in decades, not since she abandoned her family when he was a boy. Now she has suddenly reappeared, having committed an absurd politically motivated crime that electrifies the nightly news, beguiles the Internet, and inflames a divided America. The media paints Faye as a radical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mother was an ordinary girl who married her high school sweetheart.

Tommo has just started at a new school—a training ground for the Scottish elite—when his friend Johnnie's brother is found dead in a Land Rover on a Highland farm. There's a shotgun at his feet. Nobody seems clear about what has happened, least of all Tommo. A child of the middle class, and with new independence thrust upon him, Tommo finds himself invited into fading crumbling houses. It's the early nineties and this elite is struggling for relevance. Alienated from the mainstream, and running low on inherited wealth, his peers have retreated into snobbery and fatalism.

Meet Jim Carrey. Sure, he's an insanely successful and beloved movie star drowning in wealth and privilege — but he's also lonely. Maybe past his prime. Maybe even...getting fat? He's tried diets, gurus, and cuddling with his military-grade Israeli guard dogs, but nothing seems to lift the cloud of emptiness and ennui. Even the sage advice of his best friend, actor, and dinosaur skull collector Nicolas Cage isn't enough to pull Carrey out of his slump.