"The acclaimed bestselling author of Sandwich is back with a wonderful novel, full of laughter and heart, about marriage, family, and what happens when life doesn't go as planned. If you loved Rocky and her family on vacation on Cape Cod, wait until you join them at home two years later. (And if this is your first meeting with this crew, get ready to laugh and cry-and relate.) Rocky, still anxious, nostalgic, and funny, is living in Western Massachusetts with her husband Nick and their daughter Willa, who's back home after college. Their son, Jamie, has taken a new job in New York, and Mort, Rocky's widowed father, has moved in. It all couldn't be more ridiculously normal . . . until Rocky finds herself obsessed with a local accident that only tangentially affects them-and with a medical condition that, she hopes, won't affect them at all. With her signature wit and wisdom, Catherine Newman explores the hidden rules of family, the heavy weight of uncertainty, and the gnarly fact that people-no matter how much you love them-are not always exactly who you want them to be"--

"The Bradford-Shmulkin family is falling apart. A very modern blend of Russian, Jewish, Korean, and New England WASP, they love one another deeply but the pressures of life in an unstable America are fraying their bonds. There's Daddy, a struggling, cash-thirsty editor whose Russian heritage gives him a surprising new currency in the upside-down world of twenty-first-century geopolitics; his wife, Anne Mom, a progressive, underfunded blue blood from Boston who's barely holding the household together; their son, Dylan, whose blond hair and Mayflower lineage provide him pride of place in the newly forming American political order; and, above all, the young Vera, half-Jewish, half-Korean, and wholly original. Observant, sensitive, and always writing down new vocabulary words, Vera wants only three things in life: to make a friend at school; Daddy and Anne Mom to stay together; and to meet her birth mother, Mom Mom, who will at last tell Vera the secret of who she really is and how to ensure love's survival in this great, mad, imploding world"--

From Two Live Crew's controversial comedy to Ice Cube's gangsta styling and the battle rhymes of a streetcorner cypher, rap has always drawn on deep traditions of African American poetic word-play, In Talking 'Bout Your Mama, author Elijah Wald explores one of the most potent sources of rap: the viciously funny, outrageously inventive insult game known as "the dozens." So what is the dozens? At its simplest, it's a comic chain of "yo' mama" jokes. At its most complex, it's an intricate form of social interaction that reaches back to African ceremonial rituals. Wald traces the tradition of African American street rhyming and verbal combat that has ruled urban neighborhoods since the early 1900s. Whether considered vernacular poetry, aggressive dueling, a test of street cool, or just a mess of dirty insults, the dozens is a basic building block of African-American culture. A game which could inspire raucous laughter or escalate to violence, it provided a wellspring of rhymes, attitude, and raw humor that has influenced pop musicians from Jelly Roll Morton and Robert Johnson to Tupac Shakur and Jay Z. Wald goes back to the dozens' roots, looking at mother-insulting and verbal combat from Greenland to the sources of the Niger, and shows its breadth of influence in the seminal writings of Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston; the comedy of Richard Pryor and George Carlin; the dark humor of the blues; the hip slang and competitive jamming of jazz; and in its ultimate evolution into the improvisatory battling of rap. From schoolyard games and rural work songs to urban novels and nightclub comedy, and pop hits from ragtime to rap, Wald uses the dozens as a lens to provide new insight into over a century of African American culture. A groundbreaking work, Talking 'Bout Your Mama is an essential book for anyone interested in African American cultural studies, history and linguistics, and the origins of rap music.

A luckless thief’s wrong turn becomes a crooked cop’s fortune in a wild ride of a thriller by a New York Times bestselling author. Failed lawyer Robert Green has such a good plan: Crack three hundred safe-deposit boxes and sail off to South America with his brilliant, morally flexible sister, Penny. If it weren’t for the damned freezing rain. In the dying resort town of Granite Shores, cop Jack Biddle is self-appointed king―mostly of bad decisions. Between his family’s crumbling legacy, a wife who just joined the city council, and life-threatening gambling debts, Jack’s looking for a way out. Then he spots a van spinning off a mountain road into the valley below. In the wreckage, Jack finds a very dead Robert, millions in heisted loot…and opportunity. All Jack has to do is clean up the mess, disappear Robert’s body, make off with the fortune, and not get caught. One hitch is Penny. Another is Mitch Diamond, a wild card ex-con who knows more about the missing fortune than he lets on. Jack, Penny, and Mitch each have an endgame. But there’s only one way out, and they’re crashing headlong toward it.

"In this Booker Prize-winning classic, a Casanova-esque young man searches for philosophical and sexual fulfillment as he seduces his way across Europe on the eve of World War I. John Berger's picaresque work, one of the author's best novels, is an inspired exploration of intimacy and loneliness set at the turn of the 20th century. In this luminous novel about a modern Don Juan, John Berger relates the story of G., a young man forging an energetic sexual career in Europe during the early years of the last century as Europe teeters on the brink of war. With profound compassion, Berger explores the hearts and minds of both men and women, and what happens during sex, to reveal the conditions of the libertine's success: his essential loneliness, the quiet cumulation in each of his sexual experiences of all of those that precede it, the tenderness that infuses even the briefest of his encounters, and the way women experience their own extraordinariness through their liaisons with him. Set against the turbulent backdrop of Garibaldi's attempt to unite Italy, the failed revolution of Milanese workers in 1898, the Boer War, and the dramatic first flight across the Alps, G. is a brilliant novel about the search for intimacy in the turmoil of history"-- Provided by publisher.

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.

The writers of the tremendously popular Web site CollegeHumor.com have prepared a hilarious, entertaining guide that dares young readers to make college the best and funniest four (or more) years of their lives. CollegeHumor.com is the National Lampoon of its generation. Since its creation in early 2000, the Web site has grown to become the nationÂ's most recognized comedy brand for young people. With eight million unique visitors a month, quarterly revenues surpassing $1.2 million, and a successful line of merchandise (from T-shirts to novelties)—not to mention a deal with Paramount to create and brand movies with CollegeHumorÂ's imprimatur—CollegeHumor is truly a franchise in the making. The CollegeHumor Guide to College is a laugh-out-loud depiction of the college experience. Written primarily by two of CollegeHumorÂ's most popular columnists, Ethan Trex and Streeter Seidell, this guide features all-new material not found on the Web site. It also includes helpful advice—the kind you probably wonÂ't hear from a college counselor—on an array of subjects, such as food, clothing, parents, dating, sex, drinking, and roommates. Filled with outrageous illustrations, this edgy and irreverent book will be indispensable to all present and future undergraduates.

Lara Vapnyar, author of the prizewinning story collection There Are Jews in My House, brings us a poignant and comic first novel about a delightfully sincere modern-day muse. We meet Tanya as a typical Russian girl, living with her bookish professor mother in a drab Soviet apartment. As a teenager, Tanya becomes obsessed with Dostoevsky and settles on her life’s she will be the companion to a great writer. Her memoirs tell of her immigration to New York after college, the stifling expectations of her Brighton Beach cousins, and the crucial moment in a bookshop on the Upper West Side, where Tanya attends a reading by Mark Schneider, a Significant New York Novelist. Tanya soon moves in with Mark, ready to dazzle in bed, to serve and inspire . . . if only he would spend a little more time writing and a little less time at the gym, the shrink, and the literary soirees where she feels hopelessly unglamorous and out of place. But as she gradually learns to read English—struggling to better understand Mark’s work and her true role as Muse—Tanya also learns more than she expected about the destiny she has imagined for herself. Animated by Vapnyar’s beguiling grace and vividness—with a narrative richness reflecting the great tradition of Russian realism to which she is a natural heir— Memoirs of a Muse is an altogether wonderful novel. It is a lively meditation on female capabilities and happiness, on the mysteries of artistic inspiration (and the absurdities of artistic life), and, perhaps most movingly, on the pain and wonder of the immigrant experience in New York City.

Presenting a masterpiece from one of America's great satirists. Jules Feiffer has had one of the most varied and illustrious careers of any 20th century cartoonist. For over 40 years he contributed strips to The Village Voice, and has long been a regular contributor to the London Observer and Playboy. An animated cartoon based on his story Munro received an Academy Award in 1961. In the '60s, he branched into theater, writing several plays now regarded as classics: Little Murders; Knock, Knock; The White House Murder Case; Elliot Loves; and The Grown-Ups, to name a few. Originally conceived for the stage, his Carnal Knowledge became one of the landmark films of the '70s. He has written two prose novels, Harry the Rat with Women and Ackroyd, as well as a cartoon novel, Tantrum. In the 1990s, Feiffer embarked on yet another career, this time as a children's book author. He has over a half-dozen to his credit, including modern classics like The Man and the Ceiling. Passionella and Other Stories collects Feiffer's finest extended graphic narratives of the late '50s and early '60s. It opens in full-color with "Excalibur and Rose," the fable of a village comedian who embarks on a crusade in search of his serious side, which he finds in spades when he encounters his true love, the pathologically depressed Rose. The volume's centerpiece, "Passionella," a retelling of Cinderella set in modern Hollywood, concerns a chimney sweep whose fairy godmother transforms her into the "mysterious exotic bewitching temptress" and movie star Passionella. Other stories include "The Lonely Machine," an account of one man's attempt to find the perfect relationship through robot love, and "Harold Swerg," the predicament of the world's greatest athlete who'd rather stay at his mundane job than compete against others, despite his country's desperate pleas to enter the Olympics. Three more classic graphic tales and several entertaining one-act plays round out this handsomely designed hardcover edition.

It is time to elect a new abbess at the Convent of Crewe. There are two contenders: nuns Alexandra and Felicity. Alexandra is busy bugging the convent while Felicity calls the police when her love letters (to a young Jesuit priest) are stolen. A brilliant laugh-out-loud satire on the Watergate scandal.This is one of the 22 novels written by Muriel Spark in her lifetime. All are being published by Polygon in hardback Centenary Editions between November 2017 and September 2018.

In You Never Call, You Never Write, Joyce Antler provides an illuminating and often amusing history of one of the best-known figures in popular culture--the Jewish Mother. Whether drawn as self-sacrificing or manipulative, in countless films, novels, radio and television programs, stand-up comedy, and psychological and historical studies, she appears as a colossal figure, intensely involved in the lives of her children. Antler traces the odyssey of this compelling personality through decades of American culture. She reminds us of a time when Jewish mothers were admired for their tenacity and nurturance, as in the early twentieth-century image of the "Yiddishe Mama," a sentimental figure popularized by entertainers such as George Jessel, Al Jolson, and Sophie Tucker, and especially by Gertrude Berg, whose amazingly successful "Molly Goldberg" ruled American radio and television for over 25 years. Antler explains the transformation of this Jewish Mother into a "brassy-voiced, smothering, and shrewish" scourge (in Irving Howe's words), detailing many variations on this negative theme, from Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint and Woody Allen's Oedipus Wrecks to television shows such as "The Nanny," "Seinfeld," and "Will and Grace." But she also uncovers a new counter-narrative, leading feminist scholars and stand-up comediennes to see the Jewish Mother in positive terms. Continually revised and reinvented, the Jewish Mother becomes in Antler's expert hands a unique lens with which to examine vital concerns of American Jews and the culture at large. A joy to read, You Never Call, You Never Write will delight anyone who has ever known or been nurtured by a "Jewish Mother," and it will be a special source of insight for modern parents. As Antler suggests, in many ways "we are all Jewish Mothers" today.

In You Never Call, You Never Write, Joyce Antler provides an illuminating and often amusing history of one of the best-known figures in popular culture--the Jewish Mother. Whether drawn as self-sacrificing or manipulative, in countless films, novels, radio and television programs, stand-up comedy, and psychological and historical studies, she appears as a colossal figure, intensely involved in the lives of her children.Antler traces the odyssey of this compelling personality through decades of American culture. She reminds us of a time when Jewish mothers were admired for their tenacity and nurturance, as in the early twentieth-century image of the "Yiddishe Mama," a sentimental figure popularized by entertainers such as George Jessel, Al Jolson, and Sophie Tucker, and especially by Gertrude Berg, whose amazingly successful "Molly Goldberg" ruled American radio and television for over 25 years. Antler explains the transformation of this Jewish Mother into a "brassy-voiced, smothering, and shrewish" scourge (in Irving Howe's words), detailing many variations on this negative theme, from Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint and Woody Allen's Oedipus Wrecks to television shows such as "The Nanny," "Seinfeld," and "Will and Grace." But she also uncovers a new counter-narrative, leading feminist scholars and stand-up comediennes to see the Jewish Mother in positive terms. Continually revised and reinvented, the Jewish Mother becomes in Antler's expert hands a unique lens with which to examine vital concerns of American Jews and the culture at large.A joy to read, You Never Call, You Never Write will delight anyone who has ever known or been nurtured by a "Jewish Mother," and it will be a special source of insight for modern parents. As Antler suggests, in many ways "we are all Jewish Mothers" today.

“Brilliant . . . The dean of American comic writers showcases his varied talents mocking the public and private lives of politicians, average citizens and himself.”— The Star-Ledger Calvin Trillin has committed blatant acts of funniness all over the place—in The New Yorker, in one-man off-Broadway shows, in his “deadline poetry” for The Nation, in comic novels, and in what USA Today called “simply the funniest regular column in journalism.” Now Trillin selects the best of his funny stuff and organizes it into topics like high finance (“My long-term investment strategy has been criticized as being entirely too dependent on Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes”) and the literary life (“The average shelf life of a book is somewhere between milk and yogurt”). He addresses the horrors of witnessing a voodoo economics ceremony and the mystery of how his mother managed for thirty years to feed her family nothing but leftovers (“We have a team of anthropologists in there now looking for the original meal”). He even skewers deserving political figures in poetry. In this, the definitive collection of his humor, Calvin Trillin is prescient, insightful, and invariably hilarious. “A literary treasure . . . There is only one Calvin Trillin, and if he didn’t exist we would have to invent him.”— The Washington Times “Funny is to Trillin what drinking is to Uncle Jed in Annie Get Your Gun —it’s what he does ‘natur’lly.’ He’s also a lot more than funny. Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin is the twenty-eighth book he’s published over not far short of a half-century, and their range of subjects is remarkable.”—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post “Trillin made his reputation over four decades as the author of ‘U.S. Journal’ in the New Yorker [but he] is incapable of resisting the temptation of comedy. The jokes kept on welling up and Mr. Trillin made a parallel reputation as a writer of funny stuff.”— The Economist “Wry, whip-smart, understated, and entertaining.”— The Miami Herald

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.

Calvin Trillin uses his wit and humour to enlighten readers with his intimacies as a father and husband in his poignantly funny nonfiction novel Family man. Trillin touches every subject under his family's sky, beginning with some child-rearing advice: "Try to get one that doesn't spit up. Otherwise, you're on your own." On children he simple states: "Your children are either the center of your life or they're not." His charming ruminations on fatherhood clearly prove that he has reveled in the role of father - writing songs for family movie musicals.

Illustrated by the Author: Now in Black & White Mandela Was Late traverses the inner universe of a satiric genius who maybe should be getting out of the house a little more often. Wrapped in his cocoon of Hollywood residuals, battling his own (mounting?) foibles day by day, former Seinfeld writer/producer Peter Mehlman somehow manages to see the world a little more clearly than the rest of us. Ride along through the arc of time drawn by six separate moving violations; only in L.A. can you mark life’s mileposts by the traffic citations you receive. Share the thrill of being nominated for an Emmy, and the agony of not winning… early in the evening. Meet a fictive pundit who becomes famous for publishing blank space; a detective who is ready to reopen the O.J. Simpson case and bust it wide open; a parole officer responsible for the newly won freedom of Nelson Mandela; and a Philip Roth who lengthens his literary career by resorting to ‘roids. Go “star trekking” across the urban wilds of Manhattan, hunting celebrity big game; dodge potholes along a memory lane that feels very familiar in spots and bizarrely antic in others; and remember where you were the first time you heard that infamous number… 69. Read and laugh and shake your head. Nothing is sacrosanct, including other people’s kids. “Mandela Was Late will make you laugh and you will find more than once you can relate to his stories in a “yeah that happened to me” or “yeah I feel the same” kind of way. It was a true pleasure to get a firsthand glimpse into the mind of this master of satire. Keep writing Mr. Mehlman; we are waiting for more.”–Jaime Martinetion, TheCelebrityCafe.com “It turns out that not only can Peter Mehlman write funny television, he can write a funny book. Who knew?” ―Julia Louis-Dreyfus, star of Veep and Seinfeld “American humor would not be the same without Peter Mehlman, a former co-executive producer of Seinfeld and leading television writer and producer.” ―The Wrap “Thanks to Peter Mehlman, former Seinfeld writer and producer, the terms ‘shrinkage’ and ‘yada-yada’ became a part of the popular vernacular.” ―NPR’s Fresh Air “Anyone who writes for television gets frustrated that they can’t write like Peter Mehlman. Now he’s going to make novelists mad too. Mehlman’s writing style is completely unique and creates an intimate bond between the narrator and the reader. You finish the book feeling as though you’ve made a new friend.” ― Aaron Sorkin, Academy and Emmy-award winning screenwriter, producer, and playwright, whose works include A Few Good Men, The West Wing, The Social Network, and The Newsroom “Peter Mehlman worked in sports for Howard Cosell, wrote legendary episodes of Seinfeld, and now he’s written an amazingly funny and heartfelt novel. Unstoppable!” ―Marv Albert, Hall of Fame Sports Broadcaster

By national best-selling author, Robert Littell, whose most recent novel The Company received rave reviews across the nation, The Once and Future Spy is finally back in print. This is Littell at the top of his form, constructing a tale of espionage and counterespionage revealing the dirty tricks and dangerous secrets about the subjects he knows intimately the CIA and American history, past and present. Littell proves beyond all doubt that he is a storyteller of inimitable caliber. As Stephen Coonts put it, “Eric Ambler invented the modern spy novel. Robert Littell perfected it. The Once and Future Spy is a classic spy story.” At the center of Littell’s plot is an elite plan, so secret and so dangerous that its existence is known only to a tiny group of specialists within CIA headquarters. There is virtually no paper trail but, somehow, the plan has sprung a leak. The plotters must urgently trace it or face deadly consequences. Meanwhile, at work elsewhere on another highly sensitive project for "the Company" is an operative known as “the Weeder” a man obsessed with American history and one of its heroes. When the Weeder's and Washington's clandestine worlds collide, the present faces the past and disturbing moral choices are weighed against a shining patriotic dream. What is the truth? Whose truth should be believed?

How can you tell your Faulkner from your Franzen if you haven't actually read either? Schwartz expounds on the most important (aka white male) writers of western literature. From Shakespeare's greatest mystery to the true meaning of Kafkaesque, she tests your knowledge of which Jonathan-- Franzen, Lethem, or Safran Foer-- hates Twitter and lives in Brooklyn. So instead of politely nodding along next time you make an acquaintance at a housewarming party in Brooklyn, you can roll up your sleeves and get to work schooling them in character arcs and the experimental form of your next great American novel. -- adapted from back cover

"A blistering, brilliant novel from the Booker-shortlisted author, elegantly reflecting his Geoffrey Faber Memorial award-winning story collection The Quantity Theory of Insanity. In The Quantity Theory of Morality, Will Self 's unconventional new novel, his pen remains dipped in vitriol and elegance as ever. In this dark yet hilariously satirical "state-of-an-era novel," Self 's target is a collective morality that is nothing more or less than pure sociability. His middle-class, middle-English characters appear trapped in a timeless go-round of polite chitchat in dinner parties that refract like a hall of mirrors as the novel progresses, until one day someone says something to the effect of, "This way to the gas chamber, please, ladies and gentlemen." The Quantity Theory of Morality finally solves the equation of time and money that dominates our lives, in a way that is simultaneously deranging, destabilizing, and hilarious. With recurring-if defeated-appearances from now-canonical characters like Zack Busner, the repetition of each chapter, or "Proposition," shows Will Self to be both a master of satire and slapstick humor and a sublime and thoughtful critic of the alienation of modern life. With The Quantity Theory of Morality, Self provides the sequel to his award-winning debut of thirty-four years ago: The Quantity Theory of Insanity. That literary psycho-surgery proved there wasn't enough sanity to go around-now he's established what many of us fear to be the absolute truth: there isn't enough good to go around, either"-- Provided by publisher.

On the surface, David Baddiel's childhood was fairly standard: a lower-middle-class Jewish family living in an ordinary house in Dollis Hill, north-west London. But David came to realise that his mother was in fact not ordinary at all. Having escaped extermination by fleeing Nazi Germany as a child, she was desperate to make her life count, which took the form of a passionate, decades-long affair with a golfing memorabilia salesman. Meanwhile, as Baddiel investigates his family's past, his father's memories are fading; dementia is making him moodier and more disinhibited, with an even greater penchant for obscenity. As with his mother's affair, there is both comedy and poignancy to be found: laughter is a constant presence, capable of transforming the darkest of experiences into something redemptive.