Showing titles in Literature & Fiction

Stephanie Plum might not be the world's greatest bounty hunter, but she knows when she's being played. Ken Globovic (aka Gobbles), hailed as the Supreme Exalted Zookeeper of the animal house known as Zeta fraternity, has been arrested for beating up the dean of students at Kiltman College. Gobbles has missed his court date and gone into hiding. People have seen him on campus, but no one will talk. Things just aren't adding up.

Doug wasn’t sure whether he should trust Satan. The red flag was that he said he was Satan. But the deal was good: Listen to Satan’s story in exchange for some donuts. And Doug only half-fulfilled his part of the bargain. But maybe he should have listened better, because during his friend Bryce’s next scheme (theft with light to moderate treason - the usual), Doug and the rest of his friends - Lulu (the fun one) and Charlene (the not fun one) - end up with a powerful artifact, a small metal cube with world-ending power that Lulu decorated with bunnies.

Franz Kafka is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most enigmatic geniuses of European literature. He’s been hailed a profit and a diagnostician, and a century after his death, his unique perspective on the anxieties, injustices, and rapidly shifting belief systems of the modern world continues to speak to our contemporary moment.

They call him the Anaconda, and I'm pretty sure it isn't because he likes snakes. Nick Jenson is my neighbor. My hot, oh-so-sexy, very-well-equipped neighbor that I'd spend hours watching from the safety of my bedroom window. I saw lots of things I probably shouldn't have. Sometimes I'd touch myself, imagining it were his hands roaming over my body instead of my own. I had just one mission - to find out if the rumors were true.

Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut's shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, what these superb stories share is Vonnegut's audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision.

The ladies of Butternut Creek Christian Church known as the Widows have always taken pride in their infallible matchmaking. They've succeeded again, and having found the perfect wife for Pastor Adam, they're ready to start planning the wedding. The one problem is that Adam has yet to propose. Clearly he still needs their help. Meanwhile, Adam's sister Hannah, a doctor, has returned from work in refugee camps, exhausted from the horrors she's seen.

Of all Somerset Maugham’s novels this is the most entertaining and arguably his best ever. Rosie is a barmaid with a heart of gold and a skeleton in her closet. Maugham’s portrait of her makes his novel fairly glow with witty observations of the contemporary literary scene. Features Willie Ashenden, who resurfaces in Maugham’s Ashenden.

I've always been her shelter in the storm. Hockey players. MMA fighters. Rock stars. The boys in blue. Even sexy SEALs have all offered to slay my dragon - or in my case, my stalker. Why can't they get it through their thick, stubborn heads that I can take care of myself? I'm no damsel! But...what if the real villain in this story is me? Now the one person I've never been able to resist has appointed himself as my protector.

A dance club full of bodies. Cause of death - a mystery. The lone survivor - a man, raving like a lunatic, wearing only a deerstalker hat. Now, the man who calls himself Sherman Holmes is being studied like a lab rat by a top-secret government agency. How is it he can be barely clinging to reality one minute - yet be a seeming genius the next? Within his brain might just be the greatest scientific breakthrough of the millennium, if anyone can figure out how to access it. Enter the agent code named Watson.

As the 2020s dawn, Keith Diamond, the self-styled ‘Diamond Geezer’, works as a shock jock presenter at controversial radio station, ChatFM. When the station comes under new management, Keith finds himself surplus to requirements. His employment prospects look bleak until a stranger gives him a bracelet that catapults him forty years back in time to when he was a young journalist. Soaking up the culture, Keith immerses himself in the music scene, going to see legendary bands like The Clash, Blondie, and The Specials, but soon there are more important tasks at hand.

Lisa Edwards, top London magazine editor, has been fantasizing about promotion to New York. Instead, she's asked to launch a new women's magazine in Dublin. She thinks nothing could be worse - until she meets her new staff. They're friendly, helpful, and enthusiastic - in other words, they wouldn't last two minutes in London!

Milton Frederick was arguably the best player of Crowned Lieges of Destiny in the entire world. As the strategy coordinator for one of the top guilds, he was beginning to actually make a living from it. That was, until he was abducted by aliens. Severely damaged and confused about what happened to him, he woke up to find himself trapped inside a massive chicken egg on a strange, primitive world filled with curious - and deadly - creatures. Now, in order to survive, Milton has to rely on a snarky, foul-mouthed AI guide to show him what it means to be a Station Core.

If you can count on one thing from "Madea" Mabel Simmons, star of Diary of a Mad Black Woman and Madea's Family Reunion, it's that she's got something to say. She's the beloved, hilarious, sharp-witted, pistol-packing grandmother who's watching out and speaking her mind. Now Madea is telling her own story, dishing her memoirs and hard-won, hilarious wisdom in her own inimitable voice (with a little help from her friend Tyler Perry).

In her best-selling debut, Commencement, J. Courtney Sullivan explored the complicated and contradictory landscape of female friendship. Now, in her highly anticipated second novel, Sullivan takes us into even richer territory. For the Kellehers, Maine is a place where children run in packs, showers are taken outdoors, and old Irish songs are sung around a piano. By turns wickedly funny and achingly sad, Maine unveils the sibling rivalry, alcoholism, social climbing, and Catholic guilt at the center of one family, along with the abiding, often irrational love that keeps them coming back....

Miss Julia has promised her husband, Sam, to mind her own business. What a relief! She doesn't have to spring into action when a dead body is found in a toolshed six blocks from her house. Instead, she can concentrate on what's really important-like figuring out who's been passing bad checks in her name and, most important, preparing for Hazel Marie's impending due date. Then again, who else can figure out why that awful Thurlow Jones is trying to cast suspicion on someone Miss Julia feels certain is innocent? And, after all, what Sam doesn't know won't hurt him, right?

Click your heels three times and say, "There's no place like Bloomies!" Katie Chandler's life is pure magic - literally. As an executive assistant at Magic, Spells, and Illusions, Inc., she's seen more than her share of fantastical occurrences. A mere Manhattan mortal, Katie is no wizard, but she's a wiz at exposing "hokum" pocus, cloaked lies, and deceptive enchantments. And she's fallen under the all-too-human spell of attraction to Owen, a hunky wizard and coworker. Owen, however, is preoccupied. Someone has broken into his office and disrupted top-secret files, and it reeks of an inside job.

In this 11th entry, America’s favorite senior citizen wants to stay hidden under the bed covers. It’s bad enough her husband Sam wants them to attend marriage enrichment classes. But when she hears Dr. Fred Fowler will lead the sessions, she’s mortified. Yet she can’t hide forever, especially when someone knocks Francie Pitts in the noggin and sends her to the hospital.

Guy Crouchback, determined to get into the war, takes a commission in the Royal Corps of Halberdiers. His spirits high, he sees all the trimmings but none of the action. And his first campaign, an abortive affair on the West African coastline, ends with an escapade that seriously blots his Halberdier copybook. Men at Arms is the first novel in Waugh's brilliant Sword of Honor trilogy recording the tumultuous wartime adventures of Guy Crouchback.

Skeeve needs more than magic to solve a matter of Murder and Myth-tery. He’s in a real pickle this time. His green, scaly partner, Aahz, has disappeared, and it looks like foul play. Finding Aahz ought to be a snap for a talented magician like Skeeve, especially with a sassy apprentice and a dumb-but-brawny bodyguard along for the ride. The trouble is, they're sleuthing in another dimension that makes the Bazaar on Deva look tame!

Yes, George Carlin is here with more of what he did better than any other comic: uproarious observations, laser-targeted crankiness, linguistic legerdemain, and inspired weirdness. ("If the shoe fits, get another just like it." "When you sneeze, all the numbers in your head go up by one.") Napalm & Silly Putty is just what his fans have been waiting for—another generous helping of notions, nonsense, assertions, assumptions, mockery, merriment, silliness, sarcasm, and, to be sure, plenty of disturbing references and toxic alienation.