Dark Humor

It's a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall.

Trauma nurse Aly Cappellucci doesn’t need any more kinks. She likes the one she’s landed on just fine. To her, nothing could top the masked men she follows online. Unless one of those men was shirtless, heavily tattooed, and waiting for her in her bedroom.

Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she, her painter husband, Lenny, and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend’s luxurious home high in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides with Jane’s sabbatical....

Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once. I’m not trying to be dramatic, but it is the truth. Some of us are good, others are bad, and some just unfortunate....

Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him....

From author Rupert Holmes comes a devilish thriller with a killer concept: The McMasters Conservatory for the Applied Arts, a luxurious, clandestine college dedicated to the fine art of murder where earnest students study how best to “delete” their most deserving victim....

When the Australian Mystery Writers’ Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book....

Boy Parts is the incendiary debut novel from Eliza Clark, a pitch-black comedy both shocking and hilarious, fearlessly exploring the taboo regions of sexuality and gender roles in the 21st century....

The Vegetarian meets Heathers in this darkly funny, seductively strange novel about a lonely graduate student drawn into a clique of rich girls who seem to move and speak as one....

Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate; she works an easy job at a hip art gallery and lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side....

Bart is 30. He is bald. He is overweight. He wears glasses. He is a fry cook. He hates cats. And kids. Bart occasionally does very bad things. He is looking for his perfect match. He has done his research....

Professional underachiever Dan Foster is finally taking a vacation. Sure, his life has been average at best, and yeah, he’s never quite lived up to his potential. But after a few Miller Lites in paradise with his girlfriend, Mara, things are starting to look up. Then the sun explodes....

Jack is back to work, trying his best to keep out of trouble. But when his chain-smoking coworker discovers a mysterious radio signal revealing the guarded secrets of their town, Jack will learn that an annoying new dayshift manager is far from the worst of his problems....

Drunk customers. Shoplifting raccoons. Otherworldly visitors. As night-shift clerk at the 24-hour gas station at the edge of town, Jack has pretty much seen it all. That is, until his best friend reveals the body of a local politician hidden in the trunk of a car....

When Chaz Perron's wife discovers that he is running a scam (posing as a marine biologist to doctor water samples so that an agribusiness tycoon can continue illegally dumping fertilizer into the Everglades), he pushes her overboard from a cruise liner....

Conor O’Toole has never been anywhere like Cutters Neck, a gated community near Cape Cod. It’s a sweet deal for the summer: in exchange for tennis lessons, he receives free lodging in a luxurious guest cottage, far from the cramped Yonkers apartment he shares with his diabetic mother.

Meet Jim Carrey. Sure, he's an insanely successful and beloved movie star drowning in wealth and privilege — but he's also lonely. Maybe past his prime. Maybe even...getting fat? He's tried diets, gurus, and cuddling with his military-grade Israeli guard dogs....

Lenny Marks is excellent at not having a life. She bikes home from work at exactly 4pm each day, buys the same groceries for the same meals every week, and owns thirty-six copies of The Hobbit (currently arranged by height).

Jesse Braddock is trapped in a tiny cabin deep in the Everglades with her infant daughter and her ex-boyfriend, a wannabe reality TV star who turned out to be a lot prettier on the outside than on the inside....

The year is rapidly drawing to an end, Hettie the tortoise is hibernating and Agnes, Charlie, Marshall, and the other elderly residents of Sunset Hall are going stir-crazy at home. They’ve had enough of the broken boiler, drafty bedrooms, and Christmas jingles on the radio.

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Logic comes the highly anticipated second novel set in the far future as two friends uncover if the utopian planet Paradise lives up to its name.

For fans of Sorry to Bother You and The Wolf of Wall Street—a crackling, satirical debut novel about a young man given a shot at stardom as the lone Black salesman at a mysterious, cult-like, and wildly successful startup where nothing is as it seems....

American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal....

Splitting the party is never a good idea, but sometimes, that's just the hand fate deals you. On Nazere, the gang's plans are cast into the wind when a stubborn foe returns to settle a score....

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk is a novel made up of stories: 23 of them, to be precise. Twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales....

Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she, her painter husband, Lenny, and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend’s luxurious home high in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides magically with Jane’s sabbatical. If she can just finish her latest novel, Nusu Nusu, the centuries-spanning epic Lenny refers to as her “mulatto War and Peace,” she’ll have tenure and some semblance of stability and success within her grasp. But things don’t work out quite as hoped.

Recently dumped and stuck with a mortgage, artist Esther Ray wants to burn the world, but instead, she reluctantly accepts a scrapbooking job from the deliriously wealthy Naomi Duncan. The scrapbooks, a secret birthday gift for Naomi’s husband, Bryce, trace the Duncan’s 25-year marriage.

Things are going well for Jane Murphy, or so it seems. She’s making it in New York, a sort of wunderkind at the social media marketing startup where she works. She’s put an experimental writer, Jeremy Miller, on the map by helping him concoct a viral internet novel, told in fragments through various fake social media accounts. But privately, Jane feels trapped, ruled by her routines and her compulsions, caught up in an endless cycle of soothing and punishing herself.

When Varg Veum reads the newspaper headline 'YOUNG MAN MISSING', he realises he saw the youth just a few days earlier - en route to a demonstration against a commercial fish-farming facility in the tiny village of Solvik, north of Bergen. Varg heads to Solvik, initially out of curiosity, but when he chances upon a dead body in the sea, he's pulled into a dark and complex web of secrets, feuds and jealousies.

Natasha has screwed up royally. Her mistake isn’t just embarrassing, it's a breach of journalistic ethics that makes headlines and costs her a plum job reporting from London. Back in New York at thirty-five and single, divorced from a kind man she loved, she finds herself at the bottom of the media food chain—a junior reporter at a clickbait factory, rewriting sensational tabloid stories to make them just different enough to avoid lawsuits.

Beyond A Disappointment by Isley Adams is an entertaining and sardonic novel that is both dark and hilarious. The book follows a man who attempts to win his wife back by creating a congregation of senior citizens who worship his dog, hoping to prove that he is a leader, which his wife finds attractive. However, chaos ensues as he tries to execute his plan, affecting both his and others' lives. This unique and unusual story is unlike anything you have listened to before.

Zur Belohnung meiner Standfestigkeit ging ich ebenfalls zu Selma in die Küche und ließ mir ein extra großes Stück Mandarinentorte geben. Eine Entschädigung für meine entgangene Detektivarbeit musste sein... Die Ostfriesin Tilda Holthusen, die robuste Geschäftsführerin der Firma Fischgroßhandel Holthusen in Neuharlingersiel, vermisst ihren zehn Jahre jüngeren Verlobten, einen smarten Immobilienmakler aus Hannover. Auf Drängen ihrer Freundin Teelse, bittet sie Emely Petersen, Inhaberin des Café Kluntje am Hafen des Küstenortes um Unterstützung.

Ellen is tired of being overshadowed at work. Tired of watching less competent, entitled suits take the promotions she’s earned. But when one of them pushes her too far, things take a murderous turn. And it turns out the darker Ellen goes, the shinier her future starts to look. Business can be murder, but it turns out murder can also be good business for Ellen.

El circo y La Mariposa es una novela colectiva escrita por 13 autores de Rosario, en pandemia, “encerrados con un solo juguete”, como diría Juan Marsé. Al producirse el 20 de marzo de 2020 el primer confinamiento nacional dispuesto por el gobierno con motivo de la pandemia Covid-19, quedaron varados en el territorio argentino, cuarenta (40) circos, situación que no se ha modificado mucho en el momento que escribo estas líneas, un año y medio después.

Valerian hat sich aus seiner Wohnung ausgesperrt und bittet seinen Nachbarn Niko um Hilfe. Das wäre an sich nichts Außergewöhnliches, hätte dieser nicht gerade seine Frau erschossen. Niko zwingt ihn, ihm bei der Entsorgung der Leiche zu helfen, doch trotz akribischer Planung läuft die Aktion nicht so geschmiert wie erhofft. Und so folgen - mehr oder weniger unabsichtlich - noch zwei weitere Morde, und es sollten nicht die letzten sein.

Weil Mephy einst vergeblich versuchte, einen himmlischen Betriebsrat zu gründen, hat Gott ihn zu seinem neuen Job verdonnert: Als Fürst der Finsternis kümmert er sich um das ordnungsgemäße und formvollendete Quälen der verdammten Seelen. Trotz Schwefelduft und Überstunden ist Mephy seit Jahrtausenden hochmotiviert bei der Sache - doch so langsam dämmert ihm, dass es im Leben noch etwas anderes geben muss als immer nur Arbeit.

Midnight Rider Productions is a dark-web nightmare machine, headed by the one man who years ago drove Darby to hide in the seamy environs of Old Town and make his life there. But Darby left his own mark back in the day, and the shadowy head of production has a grudge to settle. Rider has found him at long last and plans to make an example of him.

This is the conclusion of How to End up in HR.

All Bunny McGarry wants is a spot of breakfast and a decent cup of tea. So imagine how annoyed he gets when two masked men attempt to rob the New York diner he is in. Unfortunately, dealing with that problem just leads to a whole lot more. One of the diner’s other customers isn’t who she appears to be, and the odds aren’t great that she is going to live to see another breakfast.

When we return to Curmudgeon Avenue in Book Two, Harold and Edith jump on the rollercoaster of romantic comedy. Ricky Ricketts continues his on/off entanglement with Wantha Rose, Edna is missing presumed living in France, and the house itself is still exasperated - but wait! Who is this mysterious man driving his expensive car up and down Curmudgeon Avenue?

Twin brothers—polar opposites—are on a collision course and only one of them will survive. As Hurricane Katrina bears down on New Orleans, older brother Mickey—of the cover band "Mickey Finn and the Fireballs”—is drinking his way from gig to gig while younger brother Elliott has become a millionaire through the family business. But then it dawns on Mickey that he could easily assume his brother’s life if only…

Rebecca is a wife, mother and the author of an unmanageable number of to do lists. Her attempts to coerce her life into something she has any hope of controlling are failing. Her family can’t manage without her but she’s starting to think they should. So she makes a decision. Only it doesn’t quite go to plan. Rebecca finds herself in therapy with a doctor poking around in her brain, asking questions about her childhood. She wants to get better but that means telling someone how she feels. How she really feels. She’s gone to pieces. Can she put herself back together?

A darkly comic tale about how winning the lottery can ruin your life. And it’s only downhill from there.... A support group for lottery winners? It shouldn’t exist. It was just a PR exercise. An afterthought. Nobody was actually supposed to turn up. Why, after all, would millionaires need support? But turn up they do, every Wednesday in a tired church hall in North London, among them an ex-builder, a model train fanatic, a well-spoken conman and now, downtrodden lawyer, Mark Jones.

This is not your ordinary fall weekend in Charlotte, North Carolina. Vampire private detectives Jimmy Black and Greg Knightwood have been hired to save a client from being cursed for all eternity, but end up in a bigger mess than they ever imagined. Suddenly trapped in the middle of a serial kidnapping case, Jimmy and Greg uncover a plot to bring forth an ancient evil. Soon, they've enlisted the help of a police detective, a priest, a witch, a fallen angel, and a strip club proprietor to save the world.

In his eagerly awaited fourth novel, New York Times best-selling author Nick Hornby mines the hearts and psyches of four lost souls who connect just when they've reached the end of the line.

After the hurricane, Reggie and Betsy discover a portion of their backyard has begun to sink. Fearing the ground will open up and swallow their house sooner rather than later Reggie calls the city to come fix it, but pushback from the local Sheriff slows the process down by a day. Come nightfall the power goes out, the sinkhole opens, and a busload of ghoulish children crawl to the surface for their first meal in 52 years.

Shane Moxie: A washed-up 80s action star who refuses to believe his best days are behind him.... Duke: A hyper-intelligent chimpanzee, and arguably the greatest animal actor of his generation.... Reunited for an anniversary movie screening, when Moxie and Duke are targeted by assassins, the feuding co-stars reluctantly join forces to smash an organized crime syndicate headed by an iconic German action star dealing death from his movie-themed fast food franchise....

Everybody hates their homeowner’s association, and nobody likes a zombie apocalypse. Put the two together, and Withrow Surrett is having a truly craptastic night. Not to mention the fact that he’s got one big secret to keep from the idiots in his home - Withrow is a vampire.

In his new writing project, Donkey, Joey Truman manifests a bizarro literary sitcom as sexy romp, as meditation on being trapped in the working class with no way out.

Los personajes de Bestiaria vida van configurando el laberinto en el que vive nuestro personaje: una mujer que se enfrenta a sus propios demonios personales y que en un momento determinado hace un ejercicio de reflexión para contarnos su historia. Su objetivo no es otro que analizar por qué ha llegado a la situación en la que se encuentra. Los vínculos entre el sujeto y su entorno familiar se explican a través de personajes que, mediante analogías, son identificados con el bestiario literario.