Showing titles in Satire

Swan Songs follows hip-hop visionary Leonard Swanson as he works, quits, signs on, and travels the country, playing in small capacity venues for even smaller capacity audiences, for which he gets paid in booze, drugs and a night on a bedbug-ridden mattress somebody dragged in from the street, all the while making the album he thinks will change hip-hop forever.

Available to listeners for the first time, Sucker’s Portfolio showcases a collection of seven never-before-published works from Kurt Vonnegut, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Short, sardonic, and dark, these six brief fiction stories and one non-fiction piece are consummate Vonnegut with piercing satire and an eye for life’s obscene inanity. Also available for the first time is an unfinished science-fiction short story, included in the appendix.

Twenty-nine-year-old PhD student Ingrid Yang is desperate to finish her dissertation on the late canonical poet Xiao-Wen Chou and never read about ‘Chinese-y’ things again. When she accidentally stumbles upon a strange and curious note in the Chou archives, she convinces herself it’s her ticket out of academic hell. But Ingrid’s in much deeper than she thinks. Her clumsy exploits to unravel the note’s message lead to an explosive discovery, one that upends her entire life and the lives of those around her.

The third novel in the Portuguese Irregular Verbs trilogy sees von Igelfeld suffering the slings of academic intrigue as a visiting fellow at Cambridge, and the arrows of outrageous fortune in an eventful Columbian adventure. Between trips, von Igelfeld returns to his beloved Regensburg only that to discover while he has been away his murine colleagues have been at play.

In this surreal work by the author of The Master and Margarita, wealthy Moscow surgeon Filip Preobrazhensky implants the pituitary gland and testicles of a drunken petty criminal into the body of a stray dog named Sharik. As the dog slowly transforms into a man, and the man into a slovenly, lecherous government official, the doctor's life descends into chaos. A scathing indictment of the New Soviet Man, A Dog's Heart was immediately banned by the Soviet government when it was first published in 1925.

In music, counterpoint is the art of writing melodies that play in conjunction with one another, according to a strict set of rules, in order to emphasize the melody by contrast. In debate, point/counterpoint is a means of persuasion in which the speaker begins by conceding to their opponent’s argument before refuting it wholeheartedly. Aldous Huxley follows these traditions in his masterpiece Point Counter Point. The polarity between passion and reason in the intellectual life of the 1920s is demonstrated both in form and in theme in Huxley’s ambitious satire.

The first of Kafka’s three great novels, The Man Who Disappeared (America) follows the picaresque adventures of Karl Rossman, who is banished to America following a family scandal. Upon his arrival, Karl immediately happens upon his uncle, and from there follows a pattern of wandering, adoption and expulsion as Karl marches inexorably on towards the interior of the continent. With its blitheness and comical moments, The Man Who Disappeared is perhaps the most charming of Kafka’s works.

The doctor is back with a series of sessions from the likes of Sarah Silverman, Ted Danson, Weird Al Yankovic, and Maria Bamford. Based on the Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist, the show reunites star/creator Jonathan Katz with H. Jon Benjamin (as his son Ben) and Laura Silverman (as receptionist Laura).

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.

Napoleon has England on edge. For the cunning and conniving Becky Sharp, it’s an opportunity to take advantage of the chaos and improve her lowly station. Her friend Amelia Sedley, a blue-blood pawn, affords Becky entrée into the moneyed class. As the guileless Amelia pines for a rakish soldier, the ruthless Becky climbs upward, setting the stage for a domestic battlefield of greed, ambition, deception, and dizzying reversals of love and fortune.

Pete Walker is back on the dating scene. He wants that Romeo and Juliet level of passion but keeps getting Shrek and Donkey instead. Could uninhibited fitness fanatic Penny be the one? Cat-crazy Miranda seems nice, but there is something intriguing about Lila. It’s just a shame her hobbies include car theft.

When Curmudgeon Avenue introduces sisters Edna and Edith Payne, their presence is not welcomed by the proud, yet grouchy Victorian terrace. Widowed Edith is looking for love, and dates one of Edna's ex-boyfriends Maurice. This does not end well, especially for the cat. Edna is heartbroken after her long-term partner moved to France and is now unhappily cohabiting with her idiot sister.

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.

Irreverently juggling magical realism, film noir, hip hop, and chicanismo, Tropic of Orange takes place in a Los Angeles where the homeless, gangsters, infant organ entrepreneurs, and Hollywood collide on a stretch of the Harbor Freeway. Hemmed in by wildfires, it's a symphony conducted from an overpass, grandiose, comic, and as diverse as the city itself - from an author who has received the California Book Award and the Association for Asian American Studies Book Award, among other literary honors.

Kate and Scott’s marriage has always been a lot of fun, with alcohol at the heart of it. After all, what’s more entertaining than a good laugh and a large drink…or six? But recently, those relaxing drinks have become more crutch than comfort - and the couple have almost forgotten how to talk to each other sober. Then their teenage daughter Holly uploads a video of their humiliating drunken escapades, which gets picked up by YouTube superstar PinkyPud - and goes horrifyingly viral.

The Venislarn. Vastly intelligent aliens from another dimension or dribbling insane gods from a distant realm? It’s impossible to tell. What’s certain is that they’re here and they’re going to destroy our world. But, hey, there’s no mileage to be gained from telling the kiddywinks that monsters are real.

An underpaid, overworked certified flight instructor cheats death while attempting to teach a cast of incompetent student pilots to fly at a skeezy South Florida flight school; all in the quest to build flight time so he can get a “real job” at an airline. The planes break, the regs break, metal gets bent, students are lost at sea, and a Top Gun wannabe student, who has 400 hours of flight instruction, still hasn’t made his first solo flight.

Eat your heart out, Nostradamus! There's a new soothsayer in town and his name is Scott Adams. The ruthless ridiculer of corporate idiocy, together with Dilbert, Dogbert, and the twits in management, turns his eagle eye on everything from new work-avoiding technology to sex with aliens. He predicts that (finally!) we'll learn to harness the most abundant resource in the universe: stupidity.

Nobody blows smoke like Nick Naylor. He’s a spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies - in other words, a flack for cigarette companies, paid to promote their product on talk and news shows. The problem? He’s so good at his job, so effortlessly unethical, that he’s become a target for both anti-tobacco terrorists and for the FBI. In a country where half the people want to outlaw pleasure and the other want to sell you a disease, what will become of Nick Naylor?

Anatole France (1844-1924) was a French poet, journalist, and novelist who wrote several best sellers. The Revolt of the Angels is a mischievous take on the theology of modern society; it chronicles the thoughts of Arcade, a lowly guardian angel, as he discovers the ugly truths of his divine master in the library of his human charge As Maurice, the young man abandoned by Arcade, struggles to get his guardian back, one gets a view of a wide variety of the author’s artistic personalities, most of whom are fallen angels.