Showing titles in Satire

Return to America’s most beloved fictional hometown! Lake Wobegon is having a boom year thanks to millennial entrepreneurship—AuntMildred’s.com Gourmet Meatloaf, for example, or Universal Fire, makers of artisanal firewood seasoned with sea salt. Meanwhile, the author flies in to give eulogies at the funerals of five classmates, including a couple whom he disliked, and he finds a wave of narcissism crashing on the rocks of Lutheran stoicism.

How does a man addicted to routine - a man who flosses his teeth before love-making - cope with the chaos of everyday life? With the loss of his son, the departure of his wife and the arrival of Muriel, a dog trainer from the Meow-Bow dog clinic, Macon's attempts at ordinary life are tragically...

George, Harris, and J. decide to take a cycling trip through the Black Forest - to be accomplished on a tandem plus one. Whether it is Harris's harrowing experience with a Hanoverian road-waterer or George's valiant attempt to buy a cushion for his aunt, their experiences are hilarious - - and they may even offer some important lessons to all who may be contemplating a cycling trip in the U.S.

Football has come to the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork - not the old fashioned, grubby pushing and shoving, but the new, fast football with pointy hats for goalposts and balls that go gloing when you drop them. And now, the wizards of Unseen University must win a football match, without using...

Anthony Trollope's series of witty, gently satirical stories of provincial life are set in the fictional town of Barchester and the surrounding county of Barsetshire. With a focus on the lives, loves and tribulations of the local clergy and rural gentry, the canvas is broad and colourful, with a set of iconic characters in whose lives we become intimately involved as they grow up, grow old, and fall in or out of love and friendship across the years.

Clive Hapgood is feeling stuck. The private school he teaches at is consuming his life, no thanks to wretched headteacher Julian Crouch. The gentle country life Clive envisaged has stifled him and left his marriage on the brink. What he needs is a holiday - something to remind him and Helen what life used to be like. But when things don't go to plan, and an incident at school begins to weigh heavy on his head, Clive's life starts to unravel in front of him. Has he got it in him to turn things around, whatever the cost? After all, it's his own time he's wasting.... 

Brought to you by Penguin. THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK From the winner of a National Book Award and author of The Good Lord Bird, soon to be a TV series starring Ethan Hawke The year is 1969. In a housing project in south Brooklyn, a shambling old church deacon...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Fear by Roald Dahl, read by Julian Rhind-Tutt, Kevin Eldon, Tom Felton and Rory Kinnear. Do you enjoy being scared? Featuring fourteen classic spine-chilling stories chosen by Roald Dahl, these terrible tales of ghostly goings-on will have you shivering...

Although the scythe isn't pre-eminent among the weapons of war, anyone who has been on the wrong end of, say, a peasants' revolt will know that in skilled hands it is fearsome. For Mort however, it is about to become one of the tools of his trade. From henceforth, Death is no longer going to be...

Possibly the only drawback about the best-selling How to Be a Woman was that its author, Caitlin Moran, was limited to pretty much one subject: being a woman. Moranthology is proof that Caitlin can actually be ‘quite chatty’ about many other things, including cultural, social and political issues which are usually the province of learned professors, or hot-shot wonks – and not a woman who once, as an experiment, put a wasp in a jar, and got it stoned.

"The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov is a captivating masterpiece that weaves together a satirical critique of Soviet society, a poignant love story, and a profound exploration of morality and redemption. Set in 1930s Moscow, this novel masterfully blends the mundane with the supernatural, offering a rich tapestry of themes and unforgettable characters.

Top Gear's James May is back with his hilarious and controversial opinions on . . . just about everything. As well as writing about his first love, cars, James has a go at political correctness, the endless rules and regulations of daily life, the internal combustion engine and traffic wardens...

'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....

Marina is a divorced mother of three preschoolers. Lilah is a shy and lonely librarian. Opal is a broke post-menopausal fitness guru. These three strangers have nothing in common-except for the man who's been lying to all of them. And who they are now holding hostage in a basement. EAT, SLAY, LOVE is a book about making friends, finding joy, and discovering the woman you really are . . . though sometimes, becoming your best self involves committing abduction and murder.

The debut standalone novel from author Edward Ashton, author of Mickey7, THREE DAYS IN APRIL is a near-future speculative thriller that marks the entry of a bright new voice into the genre. Anders Jensen is having a bad month. His roommate is a data thief, his girlfriend picks fights in bars...

‘A gutsy, heartfelt novel’ Sunday Times ‘[Shriver’s] best novel yet’ Independent on Sunday ‘A surprising sledgehammer of a novel’ The Times ‘Shriver is brilliant on the novel shock that is hunger… glorious, fearless, almost fanatically hard-working prose’ Guardian ‘Lionel...

Jimmy Edwards stars as the irascible Headmaster in this vintage BBC Radio comedy series set in a boys’ public school Starting life on BBC TV, Whack-O! transferred to radio in 1961 and ran for three series on the Light Programme until 1963. Not all of the radio episodes survive, but many from...

Tender Branson - last surviving member of the so-called "Creedish Death Cult" - is dictating his incredible life story into the flight recorder of Flight 2039, cruising on autopilot at 39,000 feet somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. He is all alone in the plane, which will shortly reach terminal velocity and crash into the vast Australian outback.

The daughter of a narcissistic film star and a billionaire, Madison is abandoned at her Swiss boarding school over Christmas, while her parents are off touting their new projects and adopting more orphans. She dies over the holiday of a mari­juana overdose - and the next thing she knows, she’s in Hell. 

Cat's Cradle is Vonnegut's satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet's ultimate fate, it features a little person as the protagonist; a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer; and a vision of the future that is at once blackly...