Showing titles in Dark Humour

Tom McCaffrey presents book three in the Claire Trilogy.

An urgent and unforgettable collection of stories, Show Them a Good Time explores types - men and women, their assigned roles and meanings - in modern society. A young, broke Irish woman narrates her relationship with a successful comedian in New York; two hapless university students take to the stage in a bid to assert their autonomy; a school teacher makes her way through a series of dead-end dates, gamely searching for love or distraction as the world teeters towards ruin.

There is something wrong with Mathilda. She's still reeling from the blow of a gut-punch break up and grieving the death of a loved one. But that's not it. She's cried all her tears, mastered her crow pose and thrown out every last reminder of him. But that's not helping. Concerned that she isn't moving on, Mathilda's friends push her towards a series of increasingly unorthodox remedies. Until the seams of herself begin to come undone.

Joe Dobson left his wife and kids when his young girlfriend, Nina, discovered she was pregnant. Now he feels like a cliche and Nina feels like a drudge, swapping her wild nights out with friends for mild nights in wiping baby sick off the carpet. So when Joe announces that he's booked a week's luxury holiday in Italy, Nina is thrilled - until she realises Joe's kids, Saul and Tabitha, are coming along for the ride.

In The End of The World Running Club Edgar Hill ran 550 miles after an apocalypse to try and find his family. He had it easy. This is his wife’s story. Beth Hill has survived the apocalypse with a baby and toddler in tow. And what’s more she’s done it alone - without her husband’s help. He’s never been any help. But when disaster strikes and someone steals her kids, she knows what she has to do.

Thea has a secret. She can tell how long someone has left to live just by touching them. Not only that, but she can transfer life from one person to another – something she finds out the hard way when her best friend Ruth suffers a fatal head injury on a night out. Desperate to save her, Thea touches the arm of the man responsible when he comes to check if Ruth is all right. As Ruth comes to, the man quietly slumps to the ground, dead. Thea realises that she has a godlike power: but despite deciding to use her ability for good, she can’t help but sometimes use it for her own benefit.

The family that decays together, stays together. On a hot summer weekend in San Antonio, Texas, a father and son bond after discovering three impossible corpses buried in their backyard. From the author and screenwriter of We Need to Do Something comes a new novel of body horror and existential crises.

È un venerdì sera come tanti alla Vecchia Bologna: ci sono le coppie che chiacchierano bevendo Lambrusco, c'è la food blogger che mangia con la forchetta in una mano e il telefonino nell'altra e ci sono i soliti turisti che osano chiedere al padrone di casa eresie come gli "spaghetti alla bolognese". Emilio Zucchini li corregge bonariamente e dirige il traffico tra sala e cucina con piglio esperto e gioviale, quando d'un tratto una ragazza alle prese con un piatto di tagliatelle comincia a gridare e contorcersi in preda a una crisi allergica.

A clever but obnoxious teen (think Youth in Revolt's Nick Twisp) is stuck in his parents' basement during a uniquely literary yet crowd-pleasing apocalypse. It involves not zombies but a breakdown in general logic and order. Lloyd's mother, a William Blake scholar, goes mad in a flurry of Blakean invective. Lloyd's neighbor clips toenails on her lawn. An acting group believes a tribute to Dennis Hopper might save the world.

So ein mieser Schuft! Als Carina entdeckt, dass Ehemann Sven sie betrügt, bricht ihre heile kleine Welt zusammen. Klar, Lust und Leidenschaft sind nach zehn Jahren Ehe und zwei Kindern auf der Strecke geblieben. Doch dass Sven mit seiner Neuen all die romantischen Highlights genießt, die sich Carina immer gewünscht hat, ist zu viel. Sie beschließt, ihn direkt in die Scheidungshölle zu schicken. Und die Neue gleich dazu.

Molly Gray has risen through the ranks to become Head Maid at the esteemed Regency Grand Hotel. She owes her penchant for polishing to her beloved Gran – a maid who passed on every cleaning tip she knew. But there’s more to Gran’s story than Molly once thought. In the pages of a diary, kept under lock and key, Molly discovers a past blotted with secrets. Why does it feel like something’s hidden in the family history? What happened to make Gran cut ties? Why didn’t Molly have a clue?

Maddie Sanderson would be proud to honour her older brother's dying wish, that she scatters his ashes over eight destinations that the adventurous 29-year-old never got to visit before he died from cancer. But in his will, Josh assigned her an impossible partner to help complete the mission - Dominic Perry. Seriously, if Maddie weren't already at his funeral, she would have killed him for this.

Enter the wonderfully weird, always uncomfortable, side-splittingly funny world of The Terrifying Realm of the Possible, where your worst fears of who you are or might become are always just around the corner. In these masterful short stories from the singular mind of the actor and comedian Brett Gelman, you’ll meet five individuals, each navigating a uniquely strange stage of life.

Dove Connolly is dead. That’s not good for anyone in Tullyanna, never mind Dove. Now his best friend, Sharkey, is home asking awkward questions about Dove’s death, about the strange graphic novel he left behind and, most of all, about Sandra. Sandra Mohan. Missing now for more than a decade, whereabouts unknown. This, however, is a town dead-set on keeping its secrets. And Sharkey is already drawing attention from all the wrong quarters.

Detective Roger LeCarre. Scourge of crime. Guardian of Exeter. Amateur squash player. And now, party guest at Powderham, the manor house owned by mysterious billionaire tech genius Eli Quartz. It is a small and unconventional gathering: the Bishop, a fading radio star, a desperate aristocrat, the ageing butler and his absurdly beautiful daughter—and Detective Roger LeCarre. Then a snowstorm blows in and the group realise they are trapped. And when, completely against expectations for this kind of situation, someone winds up dead, it's obvious who must solve the crime.

Lifelong New Yorker Ronnie Khan never thought she’d leave Queens. She’s not an “aim high, dream big” person - until she meets socialite wellness guru Marley Dewhurst. Marley isn’t just a visionary; she’s a revelation. Seduced by the fever dream of finding her best self, Ronnie makes for the desert mountains of Sedona, Arizona. Healing yoga, transcendent hikes, epic juice cleanses...Ronnie consumes her new bougie existence like a fine wine. But is it, really? Or is this whole self-care business a little sour?

Jack had two dying wishes: that his wife scatter his ashes somewhere "exotic", and that she not give up on life once he was gone. He intended to spur her on to new adventures, but despite clinging to her red suitcase, Geraldine Verne hasn’t left the house for three months. It takes an accident for Geri to accept help from her friends, but when Meals on Wheels arrive she is mortified. Yet heartbroken volunteer Lottie brings with her more than cottage pie and custard. Like Geri, she too is struggling to cut loose.

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.

This is the story of the infamous 19th-century Scottish grave robbers who weren't Scottish and didn't rob graves. They were actually Irish, and as robbing graves to supply the needs of Edinburgh's anatomists proved to be rather hard work, they just took to murdering people - usually their neighbors - for profit. In collaboration with their common-law wives, they set about supplying corpses for Dr. John Knox, an eminent Scottish surgeon, with considerable enthusiasm and gusto.

When I wrote Money Talks back in 2007, neither I nor anyone else imagined that the White House would soon be occupied by a man who bears such a striking and in fact uncanny resemblance to my villain, Robert Maxx. I wasn't trying to write a predictive dystopia; all I wanted to do was to tell an engaging story that would let me think my way into the mind of a real-estate mogul with a bullying manner, a head of hair flamboyant enough to match his ego, and a somewhat childish fixation to see his name on very tall buildings.