Showing titles in Satire

Welcome to Hallmark, Vermont, the setting for every cliched Christmas dream. Idyllic and picturesque, it's where real Christmas magic happens. Here, a lonely librarian bumps into the man of her dreams and is swept away into a whirlwind romance. A big city girl runs into her high school sweetheart and rekindles a forgotten spark. A secret prince escapes the pressures of royalty - and finds his true love. Except this year, something sinister has infected Hallmark's Christmas magic, turning Christmas morning dreams into Christmas Eve nightmares.

A price on their heads has driven Jerry, the post-apocalyptic nomadic warrior, Erica, and their loyal mastiff west in search of a new beginning. But when their truck breaks down in what was once Southern Colorado, they are swept into an epic quest at the behest of King Elias, ruler of the Kingdom of the Five Peaks. On their quest, they will meet old friends and new foes, mutant cannibals, savage mountain men, fearsome knights, and much, much more.

Rose Well Holiday Park needs a hero. This once shining icon of the Great British Holiday Camp is dying and the last residents are more interested in preparing for a zombie apocalypse or fighting off imaginary UFOs than playing crazy golf or bingo. In addition, a foreign bottled water company is attempting to force a sale so they can seize the last asset of Rose Well Park, the Rose Well Spring. What Rose Well Park could probably do without is a hero whose belief in a better tomorrow far outweighs any of his past achievements. But William Fox is all they have.

A wonderful, warm novel from a major new American voice. In The Art of Fielding, we see young men who know that their four years on the baseball diamond at Westish College are all that remain of their sporting careers. Only their preternaturally gifted fielder, Henry Skrimshander, seems to have the chance to keep his dream – and theirs, vicariously – alive, until a routine throw goes disastrously off course, and the fates of five people are upended.

My husband is dead. I attended his funeral. I watched his casket be lowered six feet into the ground. (Actually, it may have been only five feet, but that still seems like more than enough.) And then we ate an array of finger sandwiches and deviled eggs and miniature beef wellingtons that cost more than my first car. My point is, Grant is gone. And so are all his many, many deep, dark secrets which I never really ever bothered to ask him about. He is never coming back.

'If I've learned one thing,' the late, great Father Fehily used to say, 'it's that life, families and rugby balls don't always behave the way you want them to!' Looking at my life, I'd have to say, the dude wasn't wrong. My old man had been caught rigging a general election. My old dear was about to become a 70-year-old mother of six. And Honor was walking around in a yellow rain mac, telling everyone that the end of the world was coming. It was enough to drive a man to the brink.

Gorm Ingerson knows the king is a fink. With the land’s insidious ruler hell-bent on his destruction, the axe-wielding Dwarf berserker is desperate to beat him to the punch. But when he discovers the rotten regent’s claim of a town razed by the world’s richest dragon is false, the gruff adventurer fears there’s more than a personal grudge at stake.

Fake spirit medium Gretchen Acorn is happy to help when her wealthiest client hires her to look into the unexplained phenomena preventing the sale of her bridge partner's struggling goat farm. Gretchen may be a complete fraud, but she's a beneficent one. So if 'cleansing' the historic property will help a nice old man get on with his retirement and put some much-needed cash in her pockets at the same time, who's she to say no? Of course, it turns out said bridge partner isn't quite who Gretchen imagined - Charlie Waybill is young, hot as hell, and extremely unconvinced by Gretchen.

Poet Ian McMillan is our host in this gleeful game of literary tomfoolery, outrageous parody and biting wit. Joining him for some lighthearted competitive wordplay are a quartet of writers and comedians, all ready and eager to run riot through the halls of great literature.

Imagine a world where your position in society depended on what bit of the colour spectrum you could see. This is the world inhabited by Eddie Russett (red, middle-level) and Jane Grey (monochromatic, lowest in society). Eddie and Jane must negotiate the delicate Chromatic politics of society to find out what the 'Something that Happened' actually was, how society got to be this way, and crucially, is there Somewhere Else beyond their borders?

Willkommen in QualityLand! In der Zukunft ist alles durch Algorithmen optimiert: QualityPartner weiß, wer am besten zu dir passt. Das selbstfahrende Auto weiß, wo du hinwillst. Und wer bei TheShop angemeldet ist, bekommt alle Produkte, die er bewusst oder unbewusst haben will, automatisch zugeschickt. Kein Mensch ist mehr gezwungen, schwierige Entscheidungen zu treffen - denn in QualityLand lautet die Antwort auf alle Fragen: o.k.

After a botched Halloween ritual, Madison Spencer, the snarkiest dead girl in the universe, finds herself trapped in Purgatory, otherwise known as Earth. The upside: She is no longer subject to physical limitations (she can pass through doors and walls). The downside: Well, she’s still dead.

Modern technology is terrifying. The average smartphone carries out 3.36 billion instructions per second. The average person can carry out only one instruction in that time. Stop and think about that for a second. Sorry, that's two instructions; you won't be able to do that. But what if modern technology was... literally terrifying? What if there really was a ghost in the machine? Prepare to travel through the bad gateway as acclaimed actor, writer and comedian Tom Neenan (The Mash Report) finds out what horrors may be lurking in our apps and gadgets.

The fire is on, sherry poured, presents wrapped, and claws are being sharpened. In a seaside cottage perched on a cliff, one family reunites for Christmas. While snow falls, a tyrannical widowed matriarch presides over her unruly brood. Her niece tends to her whims, but fantasises about eloping; and as more guests arrive, each bringing their secret truths and dreams, the Christmas tree explodes, a brawl erupts, an escape occurs - and their 'midwinter madness' climaxes.

The year is 1969. In a housing project in south Brooklyn, a shambling old church deacon called Sportscoat shoots - for no apparent reason - the local drug-dealer who used to be part of the church's baseball team. The repercussions of that moment draw in the whole community, from Sportscoat's best friend - Hot Sausage - to the local Italian mobsters, the police (corrupt and otherwise), and the stalwart ladies of the Five Ends Baptist Church.

Lane Moore is a rare performer who is as impressive onstage - whether hosting her iconic show Tinder Live or being the enigmatic front woman of It Was Romance - as she is on the page, as both a former writer for The Onion and an award-winning sex and relationships editor for Cosmopolitan. But her story has had its obstacles, including being her own parent, living in her car as a teenager, and moving to New York City to pursue her dreams. Through it all, she looked to movies, TV, and music as the family and support systems she never had.

When Shadeys Bank loses another CEO to a scandal, they are desperate to show they’ve reformed. Who better to present their redemption than a country Vicar? Reverend Tom Goodman is ousted from his job as a country Vicar for allowing a homeless family to stay in the church hall. Meanwhile, a major bank is trying to rescue its image after the latest in a long string of financial scandals. It seems like the perfect match, and Goodman is hastily appointed as the bank’s new CEO.

What’s a white knight to do when his princess is causing utter havoc, leading in mass murder? Go to the famous Black Sorcerer of Grimslock for help, apparently. What’s a black sorcerer to do when the white knight comes to him for help? Keep him, naturally.

I was a rugby player with a great future behind me. A 35-year-old father of five with an expanding waistline who was trying to survive the bloody battlefield we call life. My son was locked in a violent turf war with a rival Love/Hate tour operator, my daughter was in love with a boy who looked like Justin Bieber and my old dear was about to walk up the aisle with a 92-year-old billionaire who thought it was still 1936.

Meet Otto and Cecil. Two brothers who grew up privileged in the Welsh countryside. They enjoyed watching nature shows, playing with their pet pony, impersonating their Grandfather…and killing the help. Murder is the family business after all. Downton Abbey, this is not. However, it’s not so easy to continue the family legacy with the constant stream of threats and distractions seemingly leaping from the hedgerow.

A successful writer accidentally sends her new (and super-dreamy) editor the wrong manuscript. Instead of the full-length paranormal novel she promised Longstrand Publishing, she sends the fan fiction she’s written about her crush…on him—including every detail of the hot, steamy “physical activity” she’s fantasized about happening between them.

Lady Diana Huxley is a Brontë heroine lost in a Jane Austen fever-dream. Haunted, heartbroken, and abruptly sent to live with her newly-married cousin in a palatial country estate, Diana just wants to blend in. Utterly unfamiliar with the customs and culture of Regency Era high society, Diana is more than content to play the role of silent companion to her chatty cousin, Maggie. She certainly didn’t come to New Glenbury to fall in love.

There's a whole world of Dahl still to discover in a newly collected audiobook of his deliciously dark tales for adults. In war, are we at our heroic best or our cowardly worst? Featuring the autobiographical stories from Roald Dahl's time as a fighter pilot in the Second World War as well as seven other tales of conflict and strife, Dahl reveals the human side of our most inhumane activity.

A wealthy and depressed man (thanks to the economy, he's not quite rich enough to expand his cache of paintings by Vincent Van Guy, the famed Dutch realist) bound for Christmas in the tropics is abruptly summoned home to North Dakota to visit an ailing aunt. He arrives just in time to be trapped there by a blizzard. The electricity goes out, and when it does, figures from his childhood appear, and historical figures too, for a festive candlelit holiday.

Bruce Chatwin's best-selling novel traces the fortunes of the enigmatic and unconventional hero, Kaspar Utz. Despite the restrictions of Cold War Czechoslovakia, Utz asserts his individuality through his devotion to his precious collection of Meissen porcelain. Although Utz is permitted to leave the country each year, and considers defecting each time, he is not allowed to take his porcelain with him and so he always returns to his Czech home, a prisoner both of the Communist state and of his collection.

Victor Alderheim has a lot to answer for. Not only has he heartlessly tricked his young ex-wife, Jenny, out of her art gallery inheritance, but he has also abandoned his son, Kevin, to die in the middle of the Kenyan savanna. It doesn’t occur to Victor that Kevin might be rescued and adopted by a Maasai medicine man, or that he might be expected to undergo the rituals expected of all new Maasai warriors - which have him running back to Stockholm as fast as you can say circumcision without anaesthetic.

In the title story, we meet Maya, who is torn between her wryly funny boyfriend and the allure of her veterinarian. In "Andorra," a woman's lover calls her every Thursday as he drives to meet his wife at marriage counselling. "How to Give the Wrong Impression" shows us a woman pining for her roommate, a man who will hold her hand but then tell her that her palm is sweaty.

Sensation, Sensation: Archäologen haben in einem Geheimfach in Marc-Uwes Schreibtisch neue Geschichten vom Känguru und seinem Kleinkünstler gefunden! Dies ist nicht die Fortsetzung der Fortsetzung der Fortsetzung der "Känguru-Chroniken". Trilogie bleibt Trilogie. Aber ein anständiger Kleinkünstler hat natürlich eine Zugabe vorbereitet. "Die Känguru-Apokryphen" versammeln zum ersten Mal alle weniger bekannten Eskapaden des dynamischen Duos: Episoden, die zwar nicht im allgemein gültigen Hochkanon der "Känguru"-Trilogie vertreten, aber ebenso witzig sind. Geschichten aus Anthologien, Live-Programmen ... und aus besagtem Geheimfach.

'There once was a man who, one night between the main course and the sweet at a dinner party, went upstairs and locked himself in one of the bedrooms of the house of the people who were giving the dinner party....' As time passes by and the consequences of this stranger's actions ripple outwards, touching the owners, the guests, the neighbours and the whole country, so Ali Smith draws us into a beautiful, strange place where everyone is so much more than they first appear....

The year is 2108, and the North American Commonwealth is bursting at the seams. For welfare rats like Andrew Grayson, there are only two ways out of the crime-ridden and filthy welfare tenements: You can hope to win the lottery and draw a ticket on a colony ship settling off-world...or you can join the service. With the colony lottery a pipe dream, Andrew chooses to enlist in the armed forces for a shot at real food, a retirement bonus, and maybe a ticket off Earth.