An “extremely funny...brilliantly alive” ( The New York Times Book Review ) social satire of the highest order from bestselling author Sam Lipsyte, centered around an unwitting mindfulness guru and the phenomenon he initiates. In an America convulsed by political upheaval, cultural discord, environmental catastrophe, and spiritual confusion, so many of us find ourselves anxious and distracted, searching desperately for peace, salvation, and—perhaps most immediately—just a little damn focus. Enter Hark Morner, a failed stand-up comic turned mindfulness guru whose revolutionary program is set to captivate the masses. But for Fraz and Tovah, a middle-aged couple slogging through a very rough patch, it may take more than the tenets of Hark’s “Mental Archery” to solve the riddles of love, lust, work, and parenthood on the eve of civilizational collapse. And given the sudden power of certain fringe players, including a renegade Ivy League ethicist, a gentle Swedish kidnapper, a social media tycoon with an empire on the skids, and a mysteriously influential (but undeniably slimy) catfish, it just might be too late. But what’s the point of a world, even a blasted-out post-apocalyptic world, if they don’t try with all their might to keep their marriage alive? In this “awfully funny...tartly effective sendup of 21st-century America” ( Star Tribune , Minneapolis) Sam Lipsyte reaches new peaks of daring in a novel that revels in contemporary absurdity and the wild poetry of everyday language while exploring the emotional truths of his characters. “Recommended reading” ( Vanity Fair ), in which “every line feels as thrillingly charged as a live wire” ( O, The Oprah Magazine ), Hark is a smart, incisive look at men, women, and children seeking meaning and dignity in a chaotic, ridiculous, and often dangerous world.

Hidden Talents is the first novel in a hit supernatural duology for young readers by award-winning author David Lubar. This hilarious coming-of-age-with-powers story starring the misfits at Edgeview Alternative School was shortlisted for the Printz Award and is now available in trade paperback. When thirteen-year-old Martin Anderson arrives at the Edgeview Alternative School, it's the end of the road. Literally. He's been expelled from every other school. Edgeview is the last stop. A warehouse for the system's rejects. Martin fits right in. Everyone has given up on Martin. Even Martin. But at Edgeview Martin falls in with a group of five outsiders who make the other Edgeview rejects appear gifted by comparison. He makes a remarkable discovery: each of his friends possesses a remarkable talent. One is telekinetic. Another is empathic. Others have psychic abilities. Martin thinks these talents make them special. They think it makes them freaks. Martin has one shot to convince them otherwise. " Hidden Talents provides us with a glimpse of David Lubar as a writer whose comic talent is matched by his ability to write with sensitivity and power about adolescents." — The Alan Review

In this witty novel--originally published as Whatever Makes You Happy --that inspired Netflix's major motion picture Otherhood , three mothers try to save their grown sons from themselves. Gillian, Helen, and Carol are three suburban mothers who have known each other since their respective sons were babies, and have met in a regular coffee group for years. These days, their sons are a bunch of thirty-four-year-old slackers: they have no wives and no children, never call, and seem unlikely to outgrow their post-adolescent lifestyles anytime soon. After yet another fruitless Mother's Day, Carol has an outlandish but irresistible idea: each woman will go drop in on her son for an unexpected weeklong visit and find out what's really keeping him from responsible adult life. Together, and with mixed success, the mothers set out to whip their sons into shape. Laugh-out-loud funny and remarkably insightful about family life, Otherhood will appeal to parents who yearn for a closer relationship with their adult children, and for the younger generation who seem to want the opposite, but will never quite relinquish the hope that their parents will swoop in and make everything better.

Aliens in all shapes and sizes--some fearsome, some outlandish, and some just plain fun--fill the pages of these hand-picked classic stories by sci-fi grand master Robert Silverberg, each featuring a new introduction by the acclaimed author. Every day we are discovering new worlds in far-reaching galaxies which may or may not sustain life as we know it. In Alien Archives: Eighteen Stories of Extraterrestrial Encounters , sci-fi Grand Master Robert Silverberg collects his finest short stories and novellas about one of the genre's most enduring themes. Spanning fifty years of writing from the Science Fiction Grand Master, this collection of alien encounters features new introductions to all fifteen stories, including the Hugo Award-nominated "Schwartz Between the Galaxies" and HBO adapted "Amanda and the Alien." In these pages lie tales of a young man venturing into the occupied territory of an alien conquered United States to rescue his brother, three visitors from a very strange alien world arriving on Earth and meeting a tragic fate, and a dangerous life-form from a far-off world finding that suburban California holds some beings that are even more dangerous than it is. With Alien Archives , Silverberg puts us in contact with extraterrestrial beings of all shapes, sizes, and personalities--some fearsome, some outlandish, and some just plain fun. The Associated Press says, "Done Silverberg's way, science fiction is a fine art." With sheer force of imagination and incredible storytelling skills, Alien Archives confirms that Silverberg's classic work continues to resonate for readers today.

What happens if the President-elect of the United States dies before the Electoral College has a chance to officially vote him in? What happens if the Vice President-elect is a man who nobody dreams could be President? What happens if the highest office in the land is suddenly up for grabs—and the most ruthless pols, the smoothest power brokers, the minions of the media, and just plain ordinary citizens get into the wildest act in the three-ring circus of American politics? You don’t have to wonder. A four-time Emmy winner and veteran of CNN and ABC News, Jeff Greenfield has written a novel that does for politics what Catch-22 did for war. Read it and weep—with sidesplitting laughter. “A juicy, laugh-out-loud novel written with biting wit and piercing satire . . . hilariously plausible.”— Washington Post Book World “This year’s meanest, funniest, liveliest political novel!”— Philadelphia Inquirer

“[A] rollicking farce about the things we do for love...A perfect book for this moment.” — People “The genuinely hilarious Paul Rudnick” (Gary Shteyngart, New York Times bestselling author) returns with a witty, insightful new novel about the joy, delight, pain, and absurdity of love in an age of cynicism, divorce, and digital madness. A tech billionaire and the flight attendant he’s marrying. A TV superhero who used to be married to the flight attendant. A Manhattan book editor and the sensitivity associate who got him fired. A twenty-three-year-old wild child prodigy who’s perhaps the savior of American literature. A vengeful Arkansas sheriff who sells a vitamin-enriched, ten-pounds-off-today demulsifier. A Wall Street bro who raps on TikTok. Two dentists—possibly stalking each other. What do these people have in common? Invited or not, they’re all headed to the most anticipated destination wedding ever, on the billionaire’s private island, to seek romance, to cause mayhem, and to figure out everyone else’s futures and maybe even their own. Find out what happens in Paul Rudnick’s heartfelt new novel, which dares to pose the question essential to anyone who’s ever been in love: What Is Wrong with You?

The actors in James Franco's brilliant debut novel include a McDonald's drive-thru operator who spends his shift trying on accents; an ex-child star recalling a massive beachside bacchanal; hospital volunteers and Midwestern transplants; a vampire flick starlet who discovers a cryptic book written by a famous actor gone AWOL; and the ghost of River Phoenix. Then there's Franco himself, who prowls backstage, peering out between the lines--before taking the stage with fascinating meditations on his art, along with nightmarish tales of excess. "Hollywood has always been a private club," he writes. "I open the gates. I say welcome. I say, Look inside." Told in a dizzying array of styles--from lyric essays and disarming testimonials to hilariously rambling text messages and ghostly footnotes--and loosely modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous's Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions , Actors Anonymous is an intense, wild ride into the dark heart of celebrity.

"A darkly comic mystery by the author of Hark and The Ask set in the vibrant music scene of early 1990s New York City"--

"Enthralling...A hymn to the sacred connection among all species."— O , The Oprah Magazine An unforgettable woman proves that a person's eccentricities can also be her greatest gifts. When Isabelle Nieto comes to Mexico to take over the family business, a failing tuna cannery on the coast, she finds a wild young girl wandering the beaches near her family's home. So begins a miraculous journey for autistic savant Karen Nieto, who finds freedom not only in the love and patient instruction of her aunt Isabelle, but eventually at the bottom of the ocean swimming among the creatures of the sea. Her gifts with animals are finally put to good use at the family's fishery, and her plan to revolutionize the company is brilliant: Consolation Tuna will become the first humane tuna fishery on the planet. Greenpeace approves and fame and fortune follow, and Karen is swept on a global journey that defies even her wildest expectations. As intimate as it is profound, as clear-eyed as it is warmhearted, Sabina Berman's Me, Who Dove into the Heart of the World plunges us to inspiring depths, and we resurface with a new wonder for our world —and for all the creatures living in it.

Bestselling author Jonathan Lethem delivers a hilarious novel about love, art, and what it's like to be young in Los Angeles. Lucinda Hoekke's daytime gig as a telephone operator at the Complaint Line—an art gallery's high-minded installation piece—is about as exciting as listening to dead air. Her real passion is playing bass in her forever struggling, forever unnamed band. But recently a frequent caller, the Complainer, as Lucinda dubs him, has captivated her with his philosophical musings. When Lucinda's band begins to incorporate the Complainer's catchy, existential phrases into their song lyrics, they are suddenly on the cusp of their big break. There is only one problem: the Complainer wants in.

“A case study in elegant, honest tragicomedy…by the genuinely hilarious Paul Rudnick” (Gary Shteyngart, New York Times bestselling author) that follows the decades-long, rule-breaking romance between the son of one of America’s wealthiest families and a middle-class aspiring author. Devastatingly handsome and insanely rich, Farrell Covington is capable of anything and impossible to resist. He’s a clear-eyed romantic, an aesthete but not a snob, self-indulgent yet wildly generous. As the son of one of the country’s most powerful and deeply conservative families, the world could be his. But when he falls for Nate Reminger, an aspiring writer from a nice Jewish family in Piscataway, New Jersey, the results are passionate and catastrophic. Together, the two embark on a unique romance that spans half a century. They are inseparable—except for the many years when they are apart. Moving from the ivy-covered bastion of Yale to New York City, Los Angeles, and eventually all over the world, Farrell and Nate experience the tremendous upheaval and social change of the last fifty years. From the freedom of gay life in 1970s Manhattan to the Hollywood closet, the AIDS epidemic, and the profound strides of the LGBTQ+ movement, this witty and moving novel shows how the world changes around us while we’re busy doing other things. Written with “engaging wit, side-eyed perceptiveness, and barbed elan” (Michael Chabon), this modern classic proves that style has its limits, love does not.

Ready to follow Nick Hornsby and Helen Fielding as the next big thing from Cool Britannia to hit America is Ben Elton. Already known to a wide public television audience as the funnyman behind Blackadder, The Young Ones, and The Thin Blue Line, Elton, author of Popcorn , lights up the literary sky with Blast from the Past . Part noir thriller, part hilarious send-up of the politics of extremism, Blast from the Past is the new novel from English comedy phenomenon (stand-up, playwright, television writer, and author) Ben Elton--a name soon to be known in all circles once Joel Schumacher's film of his book Popcorn reaches the silver screen. In the early 80s, when Polly was a seventeen-year-old ideological peace protestor and Jack was a U.S. Army captain stationed at England's Greenham Common, the two had a secret and very unlikely affair. No two people could have had more to argue about, save that they couldn't live without each other, yet one day Jack came to the conclusion that he loved soldiering more than Polly and sacrificed their love to be a career army man. Now, sixteen years later, Polly is a lonely thirty-something social services employee and Jack is a four-star general who has returned to Britain to find her, his only true love. With only one night to resolve their differences, and a knife-wielding stalker lurking in the shadows, for everyone concerned this will be a night like no other. From the Hardcover edition.

Read Visible City . Tova Mirvis s graceful yet vigorous New York novel is about the half-inadvertent window-peeping that city life enables, and where it can lead. New York Magazine After chaotic days of wrangling and soothing her young children, Nina spends her evenings spying on the quiet, contented older couple across the street. But one night, through her same window, she spies a young couple in the throes of passion. Who are these people, and what happened to her symbol of domestic happiness? Soon, Nina crosses paths with both couples on the streets of her Upper West Side neighborhood and, as anonymity gives way to different forms of intimacy, all begin to confront their own desires and disappointments. Shrewdly and artfully, Mirvis explores the boundaries between our own lives and the lives of others. From its lavish ghost subway stations to its hidden stained-glass windows, Visible City conjures a New York City teeming with buried treasures. An utterly perfect, deeply moving evocation of contemporary Manhattan [that] reminded me of Paula Fox and Laurie Colwin, and also those master chroniclers of the privileged classes, Wharton and Fitzgerald . . . Brilliant. Joanna Smith Rakoff, Salon.com Mirvis s meticulously choreographed novel surprises and moves us. New York Times Book Review TOVA MIRVIS is the author of The Outside World and The Ladies Auxiliary , a national bestseller. Her essays have appeared in various anthologies and newspapers, and her fiction has been broadcast on NPR. She is a recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fiction Fellowship and lives in Newton, Massachusetts, with her three children. Author photograph (c) Nina Subin"

Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction "A hilarious, richly imagined bear's eye view of love, music, alienation, manhood and humanity…that recalls Pynchon at his most controlled." —Publishers Weekly (starred review) The hero of this sensational debut novel is an alto-sax virtuoso trying to evolve a personal style out of Coltrane and Rollins. He also happens to be a walking, talking, Blake- and Shakespeare-quoting bear whose musical, spiritual, and romantic adventures add up to perhaps the best novel, ursine or human, ever written about jazz.

A middle-aged Jewish man who fantasizes about being a cowboy goes on an eccentric quest across Europe after the 1941 Nazi invasion of Lithuania in this wild and witty yet heartrending novel from the bestselling author of Yiddish for Pirates , shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Motl is middle-aged, poor, nerdy, Jewish and in desperate need of a shave. Since having his balls shot cleanly off as a youth in WWI, he's lived a quiet life at home in Vilnius with his shrewd and shrewish mom, Gitl, losing himself in the masculine fantasy world of cowboy novels by writers like Karl May--novels equally loved by Hitler, whose troops have just invaded Lithuania and are out to exterminate people like Motl. In his dreams, Motl is a fast-talking, rugged, expert gunslinger capable of dealing with the Nazi threat. But only in his dreams. As friends and neighbours are killed around them, Motl and Gitl escape from Vilnius, saving their own skins. But they immediately risk everything to try rescue relatives they hope are still alive. With death all around him, Motl decides that a Jew's best revenge is not only to live, but to procreate. In order to achieve this, though, he must relocate those most crucial pieces of his anatomy lost to him in a glacier in the Swiss Alps in the previous war. It's an absurd yet life-affirming mission, made even more urgent when he's separated from his mother, and isn't sure whether she's alive or dead. Joining forces, and eventually hearts, with Esther, a Jewish woman whose family has been killed, Motl ventures across Europe, a kaleidoscope of narrow escapes and close encounters with everyone from Himmler, to circus performers, double agents, quislings, fake "Indians" and real ones. Motl at last figures out that he has more connection to the Indigenous characters in western novels than the cowboys. An imaginative and deeply felt exploration of genocide, persecution, colonialism and masculinity--saturated in Gary Barwin's sharp wit and perfect pun-play-- Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy is a one-of-a-kind novel of sheer genius.

First published in 1941, No Bed for Bacon is a comic classic. Out of print since 1985, but much-discussed in the press following the release of the Oscar-showered film Shakespeare in Love, the novel fizzes with wit, warmth and the occasional custard pie. It is a festive celebration of 'The Great Bard' par excellence. Five o'clock and all's well in Merrie England. But not for long. Good Queen Bess is stirring in her four-poster and is feeling neither happy nor glorious. Down at the Globe, Will Shakespeare is chewing the end of his quill: something's amiss with Love's Labours Wunne. And Walter Raleigh, boiling his new potato in the depths of the regal kitchens, is getting very hot under the collar of his latest cloak - will his spud achieve the perfect fluffiness for The Royal Tasting? Heads are sure to roll before the day is out.

A collection of short stories by the author of the novellas Cock and Bull and the novel My Idea of Fun. The book won the 1993 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize.

One of SF's most beloved rogues: the Stainless Steel Rat! Slippery Jim DiGriz is the Stainless Steel Rat: the galaxy's greatest interstellar thief and con artist. For novel upon novel, the Rat has outfoxed the forces of conventionality, cutting a stylish swathe through dozens of star systems-and stealing the hearts of thousands of readers. Now three of the Rat's greatest exploits are collected in a single volume. In A Stainless Steel Rat Is Born , we see the origin and early days of Jim DiGriz's brilliant criminal career, as our underworld hero is forced to work for the Good Guys. Conscripted again in The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted , this time into a planetary army, the Rat must avenge the murder of his mentor-in-crime. And in The Stainless Steel Rat Sings the Blues , Slippery Jim must retrieve a missing alien artifact, while disguised as a futuristic rock-and-roller...or forfeit his life.

"A brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella."--James Joyce, Ulysses 1918 Audrey Death--feminist, socialist and munitions worker at Woolwich Arsenal--falls ill with encephalitis lethargica as the epidemic rages across Europe, killing a third of its victims and condemning a further third to living death. 1971 Under the curious eyes of psychiatrist Dr. Zack Busner, assumed mental patient Audrey Death lies supine in bed above a spring grotto that she has made every one of the forty-nine years she has resided in Friern Mental Hospital. 2010 Now retired, Dr. Busner travels waywardly across North London in search of the truth about that tumultuous summer when he awoke the post-encephalitic patients under his care using a new and powerful drug. Weaving together a dense tapestry of consciousness and lived life across an entire century, in his latest and most ambitious novel, Will Self takes up the challenge of Modernism and reveals how it--and it alone--can unravel new and unsettling truths about our world and how it came to be.

New Page 1 "Its official title is Town House, but in Hollywood they're already calling Tish Cohen's novel About a Girl." --The Globe and Mail. Jack Madigan should be leading an enviable life. He's the sole heir of a '70s rock icon. He lives with his retro-obsessed teenage son, Harlan, in a once-magnificent Boston town house. But now 36, Jack's painting career is buckling under a raging case of agoraphobia. And when the foreclosure notice arrives, Jack must face losing the only home he's ever known--and his only safe zone. When Jack's ex-wife announces that Harlan would be better off living with her and her vitamin-enriched fiancé, Jack has to figure out how to deter the perky, inexperienced real-estate agent, hold on to his house, keep his son at home, and--through the tenacity of the little girl next door--finally step out onto the sidewalk. Fox 2000 swooped in to pre-empt the film rights while Town House was still on submission to publishers. Ridley Scott's Scott Free Productions is set to produce the movie and Pulitzer Prize- winning screenwriter Doug Wright (Memoirs of a Geisha) is adapting the screenplay. A book with the ability to both entertain and move us, Town House is a smart, acerbic novel bursting with heart and quirky charm.