Humorous fiction Books

Like Louis-Ferdinand Cline meets Larry DavidThe nights were terrible, during the day we were occupied, but at night we got to thinking, picturing food, our houses, food again, painful memories from our childhoods-that abominable era-would mix with images...

Loss and rediscovery occupy the heart of this adventurous collection. The characters in Eternal Night at the Nature Museum find refuge in strange, repurposed spaces: a middle-aged addict emcees a demolition derby, which transforms into a hostel, then a...

Darryl Cook is a man who seems to have everything: a quiet home in Western Oregon, a beautiful wife, and a lot of friends to fuck her while he watches.But as he explores the cuckolding lifestyle, he finds himself tugging at threads that threaten to...

"Trainspotting set against a grim post-Soviet backdrop." - NewsweekWorld Literature Today's Recommended Summer Reads 2016A city-dwelling executive heads home to take over his brother's gas station after his mysterious disappearance, but all he finds at...

Noir meets diverse voices and transforms the genre into an over-the-top, transcendental psychedelic thriller ride of pulpy goodness in THE OBAMA INHERITANCE, a collection of fifteen stories of conspiracy noir curated by editor and award-winning...

"A kaleidoscopic, open-hearted, shamelessly polymathic storyteller, the kind who brings a blast of oxygen into the room."-Jonathan LethemAn aging writer, disillusioned with the state of literary culture, attempts to disappear in the most cosmically...

"The interconnected works of Volodine-think Faulkner, but after an apocalypse-constitute the most exciting project in contemporary French literature."-Maria ClementiThat is what we had called post-exoticism. It was a construction connected to...

This collection acts as compendium of George Singleton'swork forboth devoteess and readers who may not have encountered his stories before.These are deeply funny stories that will make you laugh out loud, butalso hit on sad, human truths. Singleton is a...

A new story collection focused on the Heartland from Michael Martone, one of America's most prolific and important contemporary authors.In Plain Air: Sketches from Winesburg, Indiana, Michael Martone places steady fingers on the arrhythmic pulse of the...

Meet Vanessa Salomon, a privileged and misanthropic French-American translator hailing from a wealthy Parisian family. Her twin sister is a famous movie star, which Vanessa resents deeply and daily. The only man Vanessa ever loved recently killed himself...

Never before available in the United States, Robert Aickman's bizarre and timeless masterpiece!Completed by Robert Aickman in 1975, but never before published in the US and not widely in the UK, Go Back at Once is a delicious, delirious comic fantasy...

A teacher asked me a question, and I opened my mouth as a sort of formality but closed it softly, knowing with perfect certainty that nothing would ever come out again.Ruby gives up talking at a young age. Her mother isn't always there to notice; she...

The Caravaners (1909) is a devastating comedy about an Edwardian caravan holiday in Kent, narrated by the pompous and self-important Baron, a Prussian Major in the German army. Elizabeth von Arnim's eighth novel is a sharp contrast to the sunny optimism...

A love story in the slow lane, a road novel from Stoke-on-Trent to Wales, a stolen caravan, and a salesman who kidnaps the love of his life - this is a journey of self-discovery for an odd couple of 60-somethings: childhood sweethearts reunited in later...

An underemployed chef is pulled into the escalating violence of his neighbour's makeshift porn channel. An elderly piano student is forced to flee her home village when word gets out that she's had sex with her thirty-something teacher. A hose pumping...

'Kings, lords, liars, usherettes, goal-hangers, gun-men and prostitutes. Whether or not these stories bear any relation to life as it is lived in Endland (sic) is not my problem and good riddance to all those who prefer to read about truly good, lucky...

'I don't expect anyone to believe me,' warns the narrator of this novel, a Mexican student called Juan Pablo Villalobos. He is about to fly to Barcelona on a scholarship when he's kidnapped in a bookshop and whisked away by thugs to a basement...

How to Build a Girl meets Fleabag in this sparkling novel about coming of age and the agony of modern relationshipsMeet Tabitha Gray, a delusional girl from Topanga, California, who redefines what it means to be a truly hopeless romantic. Tabby suffers...

Aldous Huxley's lifelong concern with the dichotomy between passion and reason finds its fullest expression both thematically and formally in his masterpiece Point Counter Point. By presenting a vision of life in which diverse aspects of...

First (authorised) publication (in any language) of a wildly popular, anonymously written serial novel that started life as a blog during the US invasion of IraqPopulated by a cast of imagined con artists, holy fools, drag queens, and partisans - as well...

Ann Quin's wildest, funniest, freakiest, kinkiest, and best novel - a road-trip novel, a graphic novel, a spy novel, a Beat novel, an anti-novel - is available again, to inspire a new generation of mavericks.First published in 1972, Ann Quin's fourth and...

Finalist for the 2024 Governor General's Literary Award in Translation AGlobe and Mail Most Anticipated Spring Title Don Quixote meets Who Framed Roger Rabbit in this slapstick epic about destiny, family demons, and revenge.1911. A hockey game in...

Winner of the 2023 City of Victoria Butler Book Prize An outrageously comic novel documents a middle-aged writer and mother's grappling with mid-life crisis-her husband's and her own.Preoccupied with her fledgling literary career, intent on the...

Megan Chernoff is a talented but unemployed copywriter in an identity crisis after the birth of her second child. Seeking a fresh start, she and her family move to New York City, where she meets Daphne Cole - a gorgeous, stylish, well-known mom fluencer...

*Named a Best SFF Book of 2022 by Book Riot*They're underemployed. Underpaid. And trying to survive the end of the world while trapped inside an office complex. Who knew temp work could be this dangerous? Jacob Elliot doesn't want a temporary job in the...

When the Persimmon tree adjacent to his back porch begins talking, Mike questions his sanity. Is this really a talking tree? Is it a higher power? Or is it his imagination? What ensues is a delightful bargain. Tree leads Mike on a journey toward an...

Zoe, a lone wolf who separated from her pack long ago, wants a home and is jealous of dogs who belong to a group where they are loved. On her journey to finding a home, Zoe learns exciting things and makes new friends who help her find love and discover...

A suspenseful tale of university sophomores struggling to come to terms with their individual and collective identities.

The Free Lunch Bunch, a semi-fictional memoir, is humorous and offers life and investment advice. John Maynard is a finalist in a big buy-in poker tournament that he desperately needs to win. After going all in and awaiting his opponent's decision, he...

Punk rock legend Blag Dahlia returns with his third transgressive novel Highland FallsNina West is a deceptively petite young trickster who works at a funeral home in the suburban Illinois town of Highland Falls. Her short-term boyfriend Ace fronts the...

Fowl Eulogiesis an absurd fairy tale for the ethical carnivore, fiction of perfect madness, of brutal and unprecedented humour. From the meadow to the supermarket, this dazzling first novel of mischief and feathers, brings to life the singular poetry of...

The narrator's long-term girlfriend has just broken things off, forcing her to move back in with her father, a Pink Floydloving priest. While she desperately tries to convince her girlfriend to reconsider, the rest of the world bombards her with advice:...

After nine years in a Dutch asylum center, an Iraqi refugee tries to start a new life as a European citizen and discovers that to make friends in the western world, you need a dog.After nine years in a Dutch asylum center, Samir finally has the chance to...

A young mother follows her partner to a rural community in West Jutland, Denmark, where he teaches at the local school for adult education. Isolated, she is forced to find her way in a bewildering community and in the inscrutable conversational forms of...

Just shy of his fiftieth birthday, bestselling French author Frederic and his ten-year-old daughter travel the globe in search of immortality.What does the man who has everything fame, fortune, a new love, and a new baby want for his fiftieth birthday?...

Amsterdam Airport, 1998. Samir Karim steps off a plane from Vietnam, flushes his fake passport down the toilet, and requests asylum. Fleeing Iraq to avoid conscription into Saddam Hussein's army, he has spent seven years anonymously wandering...

Wild rabies runs rampant through the woods. The foxes are gaining ground, boldlymaking their way into the village. In Dichtersruhe, an insular yet charming havenstifled by the Swiss mountains, these omens go unnoticed by all but the new parishpriest. The...

A campy dark comedy for the angry and the disenchanted.Last November, I found a dead body inside the freezer that my roommate keeps inside the garage. My first thought was to call the police, but Jignesh hadn't paid his share of the rent just yet. It...

A gorgeously produced, bilingual edition of Nobel Prize laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer's canonical story-one of the most influential of the 20th century-about a hapless yet charmingly resilient baker named Gimpl, who resists taking revenge on the town...

Jack Proctor, a celebrated older writer and curmudgeon, goes off to residency where he is to be an honored part of teaching and giving public readings, he soon finds the atmosphere of the literary world has changed since his last foray into the public...

The Gory Guide to the Walking Dead While most people know what zombies look like, do they actually know how they act? What they do during their spare time? What their work ethic is? Probably not. Enter The Ultimate Book of Zombie Warfare and...

From the author of Nightwood, Djuna Barnes has written a book that is all that she was, and must still be vulgar, beautiful, defiant, witty, poetic, and a little mad.Told as through a kaleidoscope, the chronicle of the Ryder family is a bawdy tale of...

A Gogolian nightmare from the point of view of a small-town English professor.The Mad Diary of Malcolm Malarkey is a kind of post-modern May-December black comedy about the 60ish, cancer-stricken Oxford educated, Irish English literature professor,...

An Evening of Romantic Lovemaking is the tale of a would-be standup comedian/terrorist as he hilariously and heart-wrenchingly performs his last act in front of an audience who may or may not be there. Curtis White calls it "both the funniest and one of...

Evil Readers, as ye partake of Encyclopaedia of Hell, rejoice! The hateful sequel written by Satan has arrived! After Hell's army conquers Insignificant Earth and devours the human race in a celebratory feast, Lord Satan reveals that he will now journey...

An American student in 1970s Kyoto rambles among the city's beauties and traditions, learning as he goes. Don Ascher is a young American living in Kyoto in the 1970s.He is a studentof Japanese. He also teaches English, works at...

As the editor of London's revolutionary New Worlds magazine in the swinging sixties, Michael Moorcock has been credited with virtually inventing modern Science Fiction: publishing such figures as Norman Spinrad, Samuel R. Delany, Brian Aldiss and J.G...

"What I wanted more than anything was to be standing beside Schmidt, in concert with Schmidt, at the foot of Saint Sebastian's Abyss along with Schmidt, hands cupped to the sides of our faces, debating art, transcendence, and the glory of the apocalypse...