Showing results by publisher "Audible Studios" in Satire

Sure, everyone gets sick sometimes, but do you realize that plenty of those folks also die slow, unpleasant deaths from diseases that stumped even the experts at top-notch (still privately run) hospitals? That's right: There are plenty of illnesses that even physicians have never heard about. Nodding Disease, Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, and Cutaneous Horn (yes, you grow a horn) are all featured here in pithy, energetic entries. You won't have to worry about socialized medicine if you have this book....

Local weather reporter Suzanne Maretto craves nothing more than to transcend life at her suburban cable television news station and follow in the footsteps of her idol: Barbara Walters. When she concludes that her unglamorous husband is getting in the way of her dream of stardom, the solution seems obvious: Get rid of him. She seduces a 15-year-old admirer, Jimmy, and persuades him to do her dirty work. Mission accomplished, Suzanne takes to the airwaves in her new role as grieving widow, in search of a TV deal. If that means selling Jimmy down the river, she’s ready.

When Bonnie Grayduck relocates from sunny Santa Cruz California to the small town of Lake Woebegotten, Minnesota, to live with her estranged father, chief of the local two-man police department, she thinks she's leaving her troubles behind. But she soon becomes fascinated by another student - the brooding, beautiful Edwin Scullen, whose reclusive family hides a terrible secret. (Psst: they're actually vampires. But they're the kind who don't eat people, so it's okay.)

A young boy comes of age within the confines of post-civil-war Beirut, with conflict and comedy lurking round every corner. Adam dreams of becoming an astronaut, but who has ever heard of an Arab on the moon? He battles with his father, a book-hoarding journalist with a penchant for writing eulogies, his closest friend, Basil, a Druze who is said to worship goats and believe in reincarnation, and a host of other misfits and miscreants in a city attempting recover from years of political and military violence.

Written to be sold under the pseudonym of "Mark Harvey", this 20,000-word novella was never published in Vonnegut’s lifetime. Basic Training is a bitter, profoundly disenchanted story that satirizes the military, authoritarianism, gender relationships, parenthood, and most of the assumed mid-century myths of the family. Haley Brandon, the adolescent protagonist, comes to the farm of his relative, the old crazy who insists upon being called The General, to learn to be a straight-shooting American....

Sam Bennett is the last of a dying breed, a former Mad Man, now made redundant after 30 years at the same advertising agency. Left with his awards and a case of Bulgarian whiskey (which he still can’t remember buying), Sam retreats to his home, awaits the summer arrival of his daughter and crazy son-in-law, Muller, is plagued by panic attacks and has an incident involving a pressed ham on a liquor store window with a young security guard named Max. .

Margherita Dolcevita è una ragazzina allegra, intelligente e appena sovrappeso, con un cuore che di tanto in tanto perde un colpo. Vive con la famiglia fra città e campagna. Un giorno, davanti alla sua casa, spunta, come un fungo, un cubo di vetro nero circondato da un asettico giardino sintetico e da una palizzata di siepi. Sono arrivati i signori Del Bene, i portatori del "nuovo", della beatitudine del consumo. Amici o corruttori? La famiglia di Margherita cade in una sorta di oscuro incantesimo, nessuno rimane immune.

Jude, a profoundly unsuccessful chicken farmer, finds himself at the center of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis when Europe’s economic elite convince him that his roofless henhouse needs to become too big to fail. What starts out as a simple roofing job quickly spirals into a hundred-billion euro project to cover Jude’s native Squanderland in solar panels. But when the latest Eurozone scheme plunges his homeland into darkness, Jude must decide whether listening to the experts or listening to his heart will ultimately save his homeland, himself, and his beloved hen, Enda.

Bryson Wilde, investigator for hire, lives in an edgy world where the dames are dangerous, cigarettes dangle from ruby-red lips, and the nights are hotter than whiskey-soaked jazz. In R. J. Jagger’s riveting noir thriller, A Way with Murder, Wilde finds himself entangled in two deadly assignments, one for a young, raven-haired attorney on the run after visiting an archeological site in Mexico, and the other for a pretty, little doll-face, who is too mysterious to trust and too hypnotic to resist.

Hailed in his lifetime as one of Latin America’s greatest writers, Machado de Assis (1839-1908) was a storyteller known for his wholly innovative narrative techniques and uncanny talent for unraveling the social and political milieu of nineteenth-century Brazil. These signature traits are on full display in Quincas Borba, a novel that sees Machado satirize a rapidly changing Rio de Janeiro. Originally published in 1891, the story begins with the death of its titular character, a mad philosopher infamous for spouting pessimistic theories of “Humanitism”.

Baba is a semi-literate man living a simple life centred on the local auto repair shop in Palemo, how he will find his next meal and an obsession with his disinterested, Nollywood star-wannabe wife, Munira, and her voluptuous body. Baba is acutely aware of the water corruption. One day on the news, a story about international humanitarian Bono flashes onscreen. Bono is in Africa to do good, and like a thunderbolt, Baba decides that Bono is the answer to all of his problems.

Four jackets of varying weights, enough socks for the entire Confederate Army, three umbrellas, most of the antacid aisle from the local pharmacy, and six pairs of old-people sneakers that all look exactly the same. Have you ever helped your parents pack for a weeklong cruise? No? I didn't think so. So shut it. So begins vacation for Summer Hartwell - 26 years old, living with her anxiety-ridden parents, and unwillingly booked by her brother on a weeklong cruise to Bermuda.

You said you'd listen to your favorite narrators read anything: Well, this ambrosial new audiobook brings together an acclaimed cast of narrators to read aloud the menus of some of our favorite local restaurants here at Audible headquarters in Newark, New Jersey, as only they know how. You haven't truly lived, or dined, until you've heard Cassandra Campbell capture the emotional nuances of Newark's best Indian-inflected burgers or let Nick Podehl extol the virtues of the pear arugula salad and then seductively steer you toward a plate of creamy mushroom linguini.

It’s impossible to go a full day without using snark, so why fight it? Snark is everywhere, from television to movies to everyday life. This lively collection provides hours of entertainment - better than an Etch A Sketch, and more fun than Silly Putty! At the heart of it, being in a state of snark can be one of the most useful tools at one’s disposal and hence (yes, I used “hence”), a powerful way to get what you want. With snark, you can catch people completely off-guard, and royally piss them off.

Le nouveau phénomène de l'humour vient de Berlin-Est... Et c'est un kangourou ! Un jour, Marc-Uwe Kling voit débarquer chez lui un kangourou sans gêne. Communiste et chômeur, le marsupial vide le réfrigérateur et refuse de payer un loyer. Surtout, il entraîne le narrateur - souvent contre son gré - dans des conversations à bâtons rompus brassant tous les sujets, du totalitarisme des marchands de soupe en sachet aux tatouages de Robbie Williams. Difficile à la lecture de savoir qui des deux protagonistes montre le plus de mauvais esprit.

Montese Crandall is a downtrodden writer whose rare collection of baseball cards won't sustain him, financially or emotionally, through the grave illness of his wife. Luckily, he swindles himself a job churning out a novelization of the 2025 remake of a 1963 horror classic, "The Crawling Hand." Crandall tells therein of the United States, in a bid to regain global eminence, launching at last its doomed manned mission to the desolation of Mars.

A steamy, best-selling tale of Long Island lust, written as a daring literary hoax by Newsday columnist Mike McGrady and two dozen of his colleagues. For talk show host Gillian Blake, the suburbs have long been a paradise. On the radio, she and her husband are Gilly and Billy, local media stars and "New York’s Sweethearts of the Air". At home they’re the envy of their neighbors. Only in the bedroom is their life less than perfect. When Gillian learns that her husband has a mistress, she takes revenge the only way she can. With each lover she takes, her lust multiplies.

Dark Horse is one of the most popular novels of this decade written in Hindi. Such a live and vivid portrayal of the life of candidates preparing for the civil services examination in the Hindi medium were not focused in any other book to date. A candidate preparing for the country's highest honored examination is not only an aspirant but also has a multifaceted lifestyle and struggles in his lap. This is the story of the same struggle.

Samaritans Medical Center, Washington, DC, can't seem to look after itself and its increasingly desperate doctors, let alone its patients. The chairman of the board, billionaire arms dealer and part-time philanthropist David Soper, decides that it's time to kill or cure. Business school alumnus and Las Vegas hotel genius Max Green is the perfect man for the job. A man of vision. A man with a mission. A man who knows that wealth care is smarter than health care. He's going to make Samaritans great again.

Tutto comincia al largo di Bali, con una mongolfiera e quattro bottiglie di champagne. Allan Karlsson si appresta a festeggiare il suo centunesimo compleanno con il fidato complice Julius, quando è costretto a un ammaraggio d'emergenza nel mezzo dell'oceano. Salvati da una nave nordcoreana che trasporta clandestinamente uranio per conto di Kim Jong-un, i due vengono fermati con l'accusa di spionaggio. Dopo lo sbarco, Allan si finge uno specialista di tecnologia nucleare per riuscire a fuggire con una valigetta dal contenuto esplosivo.