Showing titles in Satire

To say that Augusten Burroughs has lived an unusual life is an understatement. From having no formal education past third grade and being raised by his mother’s psychiatrist in the seventies to enjoying one of the most successful advertising careers of the eighties to experiencing a spectacular downfall and rehab stint in the nineties to having a number one bestselling writing career in the new millennium, Burroughs has faced humiliation, transformation and everything in between.

We've all been there. One minute, you're sprawled out on your bed, minding our own business, and the next, you're lying in the back seat of your best friend's car as she races you to the ER. And not the closest one either. No. You're headed to the one 50 miles farther out, because the one five minutes away is where you start your residency next week. So there you are, lying in cubicle nine, hoping like hell that the doctor about to examine you isn't young, sexy, or male. Of course, he's all three.

Kill for Love is a searing satirical thriller about Tiffany, a privileged Los Angeles sorority sister who is struggling to keep her sadistic impulses-and haunting nightmares of fire and destruction-at bay. After a frat party hookup devolves into a bloody, fatal affair, Tiffany realizes something within her has awoken: the insatiable desire to kill attractive young men.

Barnabas Jack lived a simple life as an ordinary Japanese salaryman. Life was good in his suburban utopia, until he died, of course. Imagine his surprise when he opened his eyes to a middle-aged male goddess who had given him the gift of reincarnation to new worlds. But there was one catch: Whatever killed him the past life is what he became in the next. With this knowledge, Barnabas Jack embarks on a personal journey to die at the hands of a cute girl or a handsome man. But for now, he'll just have to settle with being a car.

Getting our hands on this source material was dangerous, legally questionable, and career-threatening, but I felt it was worth the risk–these aren’t just Hollywood outtakes, folks, these are far-out-takes. Did Duke and JFK have a reckoning in the Oval Office? Did Yoda have anger issues? Did Sean Connery struggle with crappy dentures? The answers to these–and many more unanswered questions–lay within the treasure trove of The Lost Recordings, Vol. 1: Hollywood.

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?

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.

Escape into this hugely enjoyable, big-hearted, and beautifully written novel set in Vallerosa, a European country you've never heard of before. Find yourself in Vallerosa, a place lost in time. Vallerosa is every tourist's dream - a tiny, picturesque country surrounded by lush valleys and verdant mountains; a place sheltered from modern life and the rampant march of capitalism. But in isolation the locals have grown cranky, unfulfilled, and disaffected.

In a lush meadow, bounded by dense forest and a sparkling river, the flags of several tents flutter in the breeze, rich with the promise of halcyon days. Yet all is not as tranquil as it may seem: The balance of power wrought between the occupants of The Great Field, as it is properly known, is a delicate one, and relationships are stretched to breaking point when a new, large and disciplined group offers to share its surplus of milk pudding.

The thrilling debut from comedy writer and stand-up star Will Smith - a novel about loneliness, about not belonging, and about the corroding effects of keeping secrets. It's Jersey in 1987, and the storm clouds are gathering over Colin Bygate. Sitting on a headland, stewing over the discovery that his wife used to date Rob de la Haye, a brash hotelier who is everything that Colin is not, he spots a pupil near the edge of the cliff.

Imagine a world where everyone knows everything about everybody. Where what a person "feels" and "truly believes" is protected under the law, while what is rational, even provable is condemned as heresy. A world where to question ignorance and intolerance is to commit a Crime against Faith. Imagine it. Or just wait until After the Flood.

Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman, and Renaissance humanist. Utopia is a work of fiction and socio-political satire. He wrote Utopia, published in 1516, about an imaginary island society and its religious, social, and political customs. While imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1534, he wrote A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation. It is a fictional dialogue focusing on the comfort of God in distress, the benefits of suffering, atonement for evil acts, faintheartedness and the temptation to suicide.

George Horace Lorimer (1867-1937) was an American journalist, author, and publisher. He is best known as the editor of The Saturday Evening Post, which he led from 1899 to 1936. This work contains the correspondence between the fictional self-made Chicago millionaire "Gorgon" Graham and his son Pierrepont who is coming of age and about to enter the family business. The letters are witty and filled with sound advice, like “I remember reading once that some fellows use language to conceal thought; but it's been my experience that a good many more use it instead of thought.”

"The Red Room" (Swedish: "Röda rummet") is a satire of Stockholm society, it has frequently been described as the first modern Swedish novel. While receiving mixed reviews in Sweden, it was acclaimed in Denmark, where Strindberg was hailed as a genius. As a result of "The Red Room", Strindberg became famous throughout Scandinavia. Edvard Brandes wrote that it "makes the reader want to join the fight against hypocrisy and reaction".

Ever meet a hot billionaire while your hand's in a toilet in the men's room of one of his stores? No? So it really is just me. Hmm. When you're a mystery shopper, you get paid to humiliate yourself, all in the name of improving customer service. Romance isn't in my job description. But the day I met Declan McCormick it was love at first flush. Until I nearly castrated him with my EpiPen. How Hot Guy and Toilet Girl became an item involves my crazy mom, a trip to the ER, my homicidal cat, my fake wife, and true love.

Gen-X computer hacker Toby is a classic American: impulsive, irreverent, intelligent, and inventive. And, after a silly accident in 2008, he can add “inanimate” to the list—because Toby is dead. But only for a while. Eighty years later, medical science has advanced enough to bring Toby back to life.

Big Time is set in a not-too-distant future Australia, where the eastern states have become the world's newest autocracy—a place where pop music is propaganda, science is the enemy, nationalism trumps all, and moral indecency is punishable by indefinite detention. The novel opens as Julian Ferryman, bass player for the Acceptables, returns to Melbourne after a year overseas. He reconnects with his band as they prepare to record and tour their second album, and is given his first taste of a new designer drug, F, a powerful synthetic hallucinogen that gives users a glimpse of their own future.

An affectionate but take-no-prisoners send-up of the massive literary and television franchise, Lame of Thrones offers fans a way of reentering the fictional world they have come to love and merrily explodes all of its conventions - as well as their expectations of the characters - to hilarious ends. It may even leave you more satisfied than the actual TV ending of Game of Thrones. In fact, if it doesn't the Lampoon has really dropped the ball.

Award-winning comedian Alan Davies stars in his own BBC Radio sitcom. Meet Alan. He's a struggling actor trying to cope with life in the 90s - the friends, the work, the romance... Meet the friends: Murray is a local journalist, who's given a crash course in tabloid sensationalism when the entire staff comes down with Peruvian flu. Kate is a primary school art teacher, who tussles daily with the obnoxious seven-year-old Tamara and tries to save time by getting the children to write their own reports.

In Villainy Victorious The Death Battalion from the planet Voltar is sent by Apparatus Chief Lombar Hisst, who refuses to give up his maniacal plan to take over the throne from Emperor Cling the Lofty. Caught up in a power-crazed frenzy, Hisst holds the fate of the world and the entire Voltar Confederacy in his greedy, grasping hands. Can Fleet Combat Engineer Jettero Heller, the beautiful Countess Krak, and the dying Emperor survive?