Life Satire

In her 50s, Cassie has already weathered more than most. She was orphaned at the age of two and has never fully understood why her DC-based parents were on a bridge in West Virginia that just so happened to collapse as they drove across it. Her search for answers prompted a failed career in journalism, and now she’s an aspiring novelist teaching at a local community college waiting for her literary dreams to finally come true.

A Harvard reunion prompts a Boston Brahmin’s search for meaning in this comedy of manners by the number-one New York Times best-selling author of Point of No Return.

Hey, would you like to be my friend? Great. You just need to follow all MY rules, and we'll get along just fine. Kids who read this funny book will see a bad friendship firsthand through the over-the-top satirical interactions with the main character. There are follow-up questions at the end of the book to help prompt discussions.

The spoiled son of a Spanish nobleman, Don Juan Belvidero cannot wait for the moment to claim the family wealth and title for himself. His father calls to his death-bed to inform him that he is in possession of a magic, death-defying potion. If the son will only rub the liquid on his dead body, the father will come back to life. Don Juan assures his father that he will resurrect him, but will he keep his promise or betray the old man?

In Lionel Shriver's entertaining send-up of today's cult of exercise - which not only encourages better health, but now like all religions also seems to promise meaning, social superiority, and eternal life - an aging husband's sudden obsession with extreme sport makes him unbearable.

Jenlena and her best friend Daphne are two humanities grads in their early 20s, trying to find their way in a society that has just eradicated all animals for the safety of humanity. In the post-fauna world, Jenlena transforms from an aspiring poet to a gig worker, capitalizing on other people’s grief by selling house plants that have come to replace pets and cosplaying as dogs for pay. Meanwhile Daphne, a once-promising student, flounders in a deep depression, smoking weed and ditching work to hang out with her once famous, now canceled boyfriend.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of On the Bright Side by Hendrik Groen, read by Patrick Ryecart. Everyone's favourite octogenarian is back and - together with the Old-But-Not-Dead Club - is more determined than ever to wreak havoc. After a year mourning the death of his beloved friend Eefje, Hendrik picks up his pen once again to chronicle the goings on both inside his care home and in the increasingly confusing world outside.

A captivating comedy about a man—rooted in the Sixties—who must choose between his career and the people he loves.

A dreamy Pisces with a love of romance novels. A drop-dead gorgeous new boss. A dysfunctional family without any clue of how horrible they are. A new dating agency startup with its share of teething problems – and the fun is only just beginning. When permanently distracted Kirsty suddenly loses her job, she realizes it's time to start being more serious about her life. Dreaming about The One while her personal band of angels croon love songs is all very well, but real life apparently requires a certain degree of concentration. However, as she juggles the demands of her new job (which ...

There's a whole world of Dahl still to discover in a newly collected audiobook of his deliciously dark tales for adults. In war, are we at our heroic best or our cowardly worst? Featuring the autobiographical stories from Roald Dahl's time as a fighter pilot in the Second World War as well as seven other tales of conflict and strife, Dahl reveals the human side of our most inhumane activity.

Welcome to Everywhere! This Satirical Survival Guide for Modern Life is the Most Hysterically Serious Field Manual Ever. Dive into the absurdity, hypocrisy, and chaos of modern society with How to Find Hookers & Dope Everywhere You Go. Equal parts scathing critique and laugh-out-loud satire, this book exposes the ridiculous systems we’re all trapped in—whether we like it or not. Just because it is funny does not mean it is not true. From the commodification of culture to the billion-dollar industries that profit from addiction, no stone is left unturned in this hilariously cynical ...

The Right Address sears through the upper crust of New York's glittering Park Avenue scene to dish the dirt on the ladies who lunch, the gents who club, and the desperate climbers who will stop at nothing to join the backstabbing, champagne-sipping, socialite-eat-socialite stratosphere.

Are you too busy to breathe, let alone meditate? Overwhelmed by the idea of self-care routines that require hours, expensive candles, or pretending to like kale smoothies? Self-Care(ish) Sanity Hacks is here to help. This hilarious and practical guide skips the fluff and gets straight to self-care hacks that actually fit into a busy life—because you deserve to feel human, even if your schedule disagrees.

From the author of "Every Mother's Fear" A British aunt and her niece set off to explore Massachusetts and Rhode Island. In this calamity-ridden travel tale their relationship is changed forever. For fans of Marian Keyes and Sophie Kinsella.It's a trip with an eclectic mix of history, culture and scenery. Seafood shacks. Postcard perfect lighthouses. Weather-boarded buildings. Stacks of pancakes dripping in syrup. Quaint boutiques. Walks along the cobblestone streets of Boston, America's oldest city––the city of revolution. Throw in plenty of disagreements and you have all the ...

POV: You built your whole personality around kindness, candles, and curated captions… and now the internet wants your head. Poppy Lennox has it all: a flawless feed, a soft life aesthetic, and a wellness brand built on empathy, affirmation, and artisanal candles. But when a well-meaning act of “performative kindness” spirals into a full-blown public meltdown, Poppy finds herself rebranded — not as an influencer, but as a walking warning sign. Welcome to the downfall era. 🕯️ A charity brand with no receipts. 🥂 A brunch that backfired. 📱 An intern with the receipts. 🔥 ...

The new book by the best-selling authors of Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar is a hilarious take on the philosophy, theology, and psychology of mortality and immortality. That is, Death. The authors pry open the coffin lid on this one, looking at the Big D and also its prequel, Life, and its sequel, the Hereafter.

A gritty, occasionally raunchy, darkly disturbing satire set in the green and leafy suburbs of the City of Sheffield and the Wybourn council housing estate. Freddie is the bigoted, misogynistic patriarch of the Robinson clan, and is twice married, twice divorced. He has been unemployed for almost thirty years and is still claiming incapacity benefits…but the winds of change are blowing through the Department of Work and Pensions, and the council estate too. Over the course of one weekend in April, skeletons are dragged from closed cupboards, dark secrets unearthed and this dysfunctional ...

Hard Times is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book surveys English society and satirizes the social and economic conditions of the era. Hard Times is unusual in several ways. It is by far the shortest of Dickens's novels, barely a quarter of the length of those written immediately before and after it. Moreover, it is his only novel not to have scenes set in London. Instead, the story is set in the fictitious Victorian industrial Coketown, a generic Northern English mill-town.

Mack McAllister has a $600 million idea. His mindfulness app, TakeOff, is already the hottest thing in tech, and he's about to launch a new and improved version that promises to bring investors running and may turn his brainchild into a $1 billion business. Katya Pasternack is hungry for a scoop that will drive traffic. An ambitious journalist at a gossipy tech blog, Katya knows that she needs more than another PR-friendly puff piece to make her the go-to byline for industry news.

A quirky and darkly comic take on domestic life in southern India. Ousep Chacko, journalist and failed novelist, prides himself on being "the last of the real men." This includes waking neighbors upon returning late from the pub. His wife Mariamma stretches their money, raises their two boys, and, in her spare time, gleefully fantasizes about Ousep dying. One day, their seemingly happy seventeen-year-old son Unni - an obsessed comic-book artist - falls from the balcony, leaving them to wonder whether it was an accident.