Biography Humor

Mindy Kaling has lived many lives: the obedient child of immigrant professionals, a timid chubster afraid of her own bike, a Ben Affleck–impersonating Off-Broadway performer and playwright, and, finally, a comedy writer and actress prone to starting fights with her friends and coworkers with the sentence “Can I just say one last thing about this, and then I swear I’ll shut up about it?”

“Because she was my mother, the death of zaftig good-time gal Renay Corren is newsworthy to me, and I treat it with the same respect and reverence she had for, well, nothing. A more disrespectful, trash talking woman was not to be found.” So began Andy Corren's unforgettable obituary for his mother, Renay Mandel Corren, in her hometown paper The Fayetteville Observer, a tribute that went on to touch the hearts of millions around the globe. In his brief telling of the life and legend that was Renay, Andy captured only a slice of his loving and fabulously unconventional mother.

In Big Beacon, Norwich's favourite son and best broadcaster, Alan Partridge, triumphs against the odds. TWICE. Using an innovative 'dual narrative' structure you sometimes see in films, Big Beacon tells the story of how Partridge heroically rebuilt his TV career, rising like a phoenix from the desolate wasteland of local radio to climb to the summit of Mount Primetime and regain the nationwide prominence his talent merits.

Anyone who saw an episode of Saturday Night Live between 1999 and 2006 knows Rachel Dratch. She was hilarious! So what happened to her? After a misbegotten part as Jenna on the pilot of 30 Rock, Dratch was only getting offered roles as "Lesbians. Secretaries. Sometimes secretaries who are lesbians." Her career at a low point, Dratch suddenly had time for yoga, dog- sitting, learning Spanish - and dating. After all, what did a forty-something single woman living in New York have to lose?

In a memoir by turns moving, tragic, and hilarious, Jerry Lewis recounts with crystal clarity every step of a 50-year friendship, from the springtime, 1945 afternoon when the two vibrant young performers destined to conquer the world together met on Broadway and 54th Street, to their tragic final encounter in the 1990s, when Lewis and his wife ran into Dean Martin, a broken and haunted old man.

Mike Epps is one of America’s favorite and funniest people, but the path to fame was paved with opportunities to mess it up. And mess it up he did. Growing up in “Naptown” - what people who live there really call rough-around-the-edges Indianapolis - Epps was drawn to a life of crime, but as he quickly discovered, stealing and dealing didn’t really fit his sweet sensibilities. Not to mention he wasn’t very good at it - take, for example, the day he had to call the cops on himself when a dog wouldn’t let him leave a house he was burgling.

If you've ever worked in customer service (or any job, really), you know that everyone else—the customer, the boss, the company—is always right, and never the employee. Well, lucky for you, the "Angry Retail Guy" is more furious—and funnier—than ever in this hilariously unhinged guide to all the things we wish we could say out loud at work . . . without getting fired. In The Customer Is Always Wrong, you'll laugh (and maybe cry) at this rant-filled, illustrated attack on all the frustrating things that suck about work.

Well hello to you dear audiobook browser. Now I have your attention it would be rude if I didn't tell you a little about my literary feast. So, here is the thing: is it just me or does anyone else find that adulthood offers no refuge from the unexpected horrors, peculiar lack of physical coordination and sometimes unexplained nudity, that accompanied childhood and adolescence? I am proud to say I have a wealth of awkward experiences - from school days to life as an office temp - and here I offer my 18-year-old self (and I hope you, too, dear listener) some much needed caution and guidance on how to navigate life's rocky path.

From her raucous musical numbers to turning upsetting news into laughs as the host of The Amber Ruffin Show or in her Late Night with Seth Meyers segments, Amber is no stranger to finding the funny wherever she looks. With equal parts heart and humor, she and her sister Lacey Lamar shared some of the eye-opening and outrageous experiences Lacey had faced in Nebraska in their first book. Now, the dynamic duo makes it clear—Lacey isn’t the only one in the family with ridiculous encounters to share!

For years, Gary Gulman had been the comedian’s comedian, acclaimed for his delight in language and his bracing honesty. But after two stints in a psych ward, he found himself back in his mother’s house in Boston—living in his childhood bedroom at age forty-six, as he struggled to regain his mental health. That’s where Misfit begins. Then it goes way back. This is no ordinary book about growing older and growing up. Gulman has an astonishing memory and takes the listener through every year of his childhood education, with detailed stories that are in turn alarming and riotously funny.

From New York Times best-selling author Kathy Griffin, an A-Z compendium of the celebrities she's met over the years and the jaw-dropping, charming, and sometimes bizarre anecdotes only she can tell about them. Starting with Woody Allen and making pit stops with Demi Lovato, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Donald Trump, Kathy Griffin finally lifts the veil on her never-before-told run-ins with the famous and the infamous.

Pedro Martin has grown up hearing stories about his abuelito—his legendary crime-fighting, grandfather who was once a part of the Mexican Revolution! But that doesn't mean Pedro is excited at the news that Abuelito is coming to live with their family. After all, Pedro has 8 brothers and sisters and the house is crowded enough! Still, Pedro piles into the Winnebago with his family for a road trip to Mexico to bring Abuelito home, and what follows is the trip of a lifetime, one filled with laughs and heartache.

In these fresh and hilarious personal essays, Mindy Kaling gives the inside scoop on her new role as single mom, the perks of being her own husband, and how she deals with social anxiety even at the most glamorous A-list parties. In between, the beloved actress, writer, and Hollywood power-bruncher gets Kanye West’d at her best friend’s birthday, thwarts an “only in LA” crime, and learns what it means to have it all.

Part foreign affairs discourse, part humor, and part twisted self-help guide, The Geography of Bliss takes the listener from America to Iceland to India in search of happiness, or, in the crabby author's case, moments of "un-unhappiness". This uses a beguiling mixture of travel, psychology, science and humor to investigate not what happiness is, but where it is.

Randy Rainbow has a few things on his mind that he wants to talk about. As a savvy social commentator tuned into the public discourse, his unfailing intuition tells him that the perspective everyone in America is clamoring for is that of a privileged white male complaining about a bunch of shit. While writing his New York Times bestseller Playing With Myself, Randy saw an America in crisis. He knew that what the country needed to get back on its high heels was a hard-hitting gay agenda and here it is—Low Hanging Fruit.

This is a self help-book like no other. Because you are not helping yourself, James Acaster is helping you. When James quit all forms of social media in 2019 he felt like he'd been born anew, but he was worried he'd suffer withdrawal and get lured back online to compete in a never ending popularity contest with only one possible winner (f--king Zuckerberg). He knew that in order to stay clean he'd have to replace everything social media used to give him with three-dimensional real-life activities.

As one of America's preeminent comedic voices, George Carlin saw it all throughout his extraordinary 50-year career and made fun of most of it. Last Words is the story of the man behind some of the most seminal comedy of the last half century, blending his signature acer-bic humor with never-before-told stories from his own life.

Graham Norton has been entertaining audiences and having fun with some of the world's biggest stars for nearly 20 years. He is loved across the nation for his delight in the peculiar and for his ability to find humour and a common ground in all that life brings.

David Spade is best known for his harsh "Hollywood Minute" sketches on SNL, his starring roles in movies like Tommy Boy and Joe Dirt, and his seven-year stint as Dennis Finch on the series Just Shoot Me. Now, with a wit as dry as the weather in his home state of Arizona, the "comic brat extraordinaire" delivers a memoir.

Get a look into the mind of Cheech Marin - one half of the renowned Cheech and Chong comedic duo - and follow through the highs and lows of his personal and professional lives. An unborn baby with a fatal heart defect...a skier submerged for an hour in a frozen Norwegian lake...a comatose brain surgery patient whom doctors have declared a "vegetable". The long-awaited memoir from a counterculture legend. Cheech Marin came of age at an interesting time in America and became a self-made counterculture legend with his other half, Tommy Chong.