What if the murder you had to solve was your own?

Lou is a happily married mother of an adorable toddler. She's also the victim of a local serial killer. Recently brought back to life and returned to her grieving family by a government project, she is grateful for this second chance. But as the new Lou re-adapts to her old routines, and as she bonds with other female victims, she realizes that disturbing questions remain about what exactly preceded her death and how much she can really trust those around her.

Now it's not enough to care for her child, love her husband, and work the job she's always enjoyed--she must also figure out the circumstances of her death. Darkly comic, tautly paced, and full of surprises, My Murder is a devour-in-one-sitting, clever twist on the classic thriller.

The Day of the Locust is a novel about Hollywood and its corrupting touch, about the American dream turned into a sun-drenched California nightmare.

Nathanael West's Hollywood is not the glamorous "home of the stars" but a seedy world of little people, some hopeful, some despairing, all twisted by their own desires. From the ironically romantic artist narrator, to a macho movie cowboy, a middle-aged innocent from America's heartland, and the hard-as-nails call girl would-be-star whom they all lust after.

An unforgettable portrayal of a world that mocks the real and rewards the sham, turns its back on love to plunge into empty sex, and breeds a savage violence that is its own undoing, this novel stands as a classic indictment of all that is most extravagant and uncontrolled in American life.

Born Slippy is a globetrotting novel about the seductions of and resistance to toxic masculinity. Frank Baltimore is a bit of a loser, struggling by as a carpenter and handyman in rural New England when he gets his big break, building a mansion in the executive suburbs of Hartford. One of his workers is a charismatic eighteen-year-old kid from Liverpool, Dmitry, who is in the US in the summer before university.

Dmitry is a charming sociopath who develops a fascination with his autodidactic philosopher boss, perhaps thinking that, if he could figure out what made Frank tick, he could be less of a pig. Dmitry heads to Asia and makes a neo-imperialist fortune, with a trail of corpses in his wake. When Dmitry's office building in Taipei explodes in an enormous fireball, Frank heads to Asia, falls in love with Dmitry's wife, and things go from bad to worse.

Combining the best elements of literary thriller, noir, and political satire, Born Slippy is a darkly comic and honest meditation on modern life under global capitalism.

Set in rural southern Ohio and West Virginia, The Devil All the Time follows a cast of characters from the end of World War II to the 1960s.

There’s Willard Russell, a tormented veteran of the carnage in the South Pacific, who can’t save his beautiful wife, Charlotte, from an agonizing death by cancer, no matter how much sacrificial blood he pours on his “prayer log.”

There’s Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial killers, who troll America’s highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate.

There’s the spider-handling preacher Roy and his crippled virtuoso-guitar-playing sidekick, Theodore, running from the law.

Caught in the middle of all this is Arvin Eugene Russell, Willard and Charlotte’s orphaned son, who grows up to be a good but also violent man in his own right.

Museum of the Weird is a stunning collection of stories that reveal wondrous play and surreal humor.

A monogrammed cube appears in your town. Your landlord cheats you out of first place in the annual Christmas decorating contest. You need to learn how to love and care for your mate—a paring knife. These situations and more reveal the wondrous play and surreal humor that make up the stories in Amelia Gray’s stunning collection.

Acerbic wit and luminous prose mark these shorts, while sickness and death lurk amidst the humor. Characters find their footing in these bizarre scenarios and manage to fall into redemption and rebirth. Museum of the Weird invites you into its hallways, then beguiles, bewitches, and reveals a writer who has discovered a manner of storytelling all her own.

The Manchurian Candidate meets South Park—Chuck Palahniuk’s finest novel since the generation-defining Fight Club.

"Begins here first account of operative me, agent number 67 on arrival Midwestern American airport greater _____ area. Flight _____. Date _____. Priority mission top success to complete. Code name: Operation Havoc."

Thus speaks Pygmy, one of a handful of young adults from a totalitarian state sent to the United States, disguised as exchange students, to live with typical American families and blend in, all the while planning an unspecified act of massive terrorism.

Palahniuk depicts Midwestern life through the eyes of this thoroughly indoctrinated little killer, who hates Americans with a passion, in this cunning double-edged satire of an American xenophobia that might, in fact, be completely justified. For Pygmy and his fellow operatives are cooking up something big, something truly awful, that will bring this big dumb country and its fat dumb inhabitants to their knees.

It’s a comedy. And a romance.

Detective Miles Jensen is called to the lawless town of Santa Mondega to investigate a spate of murders. This would all be quite ordinary in those rough streets, except that Jensen is the Chief Detective of Supernatural Investigations.

The breakneck plot centers around a mysterious blue stone—The Eye of the Moon—and the men and women who all want to get their hands on it: a mass murderer with a drinking problem, a hit man who thinks he's Elvis, and a pair of monks among them. Add in the local crime baron, an amnesiac woman who's just emerged from a five-year coma, a gypsy fortune teller, and a hapless hotel porter, and the plot thickens fast.

Most importantly, how do all these people come to be linked to the strange book with no name? This is the anonymous, ancient book that no one seems to have survived reading. Everyone who has ever read it has been murdered. What can this mean?

Ignorance is bliss, or so hopes Antoine, the lead character in Martin Page's stinging satire, How I Became Stupid—a modern day Candide with a Darwin Award-like sensibility. A twenty-five-year-old Aramaic scholar, Antoine has had it with being brilliant and deeply self-aware in today's culture.

So tortured is he by the depth of his perception and understanding of himself and the world around him that he vows to denounce his intelligence by any means necessary in order to become "stupid" enough to be a happy, functioning member of society.

What follows is a dark and hilarious odyssey as Antoine tries everything from alcoholism to stock-trading in order to lighten the burden of his brain on his soul.

The most disastrous family reunion in the history of fiction. The Drummond family, reunited for the first time in years, gathers near Cape Canaveral to watch the launch into space of their beloved daughter and sister, Sarah.

Against the Technicolor unreality of Florida's finest tourist attractions, the Drummonds stumble into every illicit activity under the tropical sun—kidnapping, blackmail, gunplay, and black market negotiations, to name a few. But even as their lives spin out of control, Coupland reminds us of their humanity at every turn.

He crafts a hilarious masterpiece with the keen eye of a cultural critic and the heart and soul of a gifted storyteller. Coupland tells not only the characters' stories but also the story of our times—thalidomide, AIDS, born-again Christianity, drugs, divorce, the Internet—all bound together with the familiar glue of family love and madness.

The Prince of Darkness has been given one last shot at redemption, provided he can live out a reasonably blameless life on Earth. Highly sceptical, naturally, the Old Dealmaker negotiates a trial period - a summer holiday in a human body, with all the delights of the flesh.

The body, however, turns out to be that of Declan Gunn, a depressed writer living in Clerkenwell, interrupted in his bath mid-suicide. Ever the opportunist, and with his main scheme bubbling in the background, Luce takes the chance to tap out a few thoughts - to straighten the biblical record, to celebrate his favourite achievements, to let us know just what it's like being him.

Neither living nor explaining turns out to be as easy as it looks. Beset by distractions, miscalculations and all the natural shocks that flesh is heir to, the Father of Lies slowly begins to learn what it's like being us.

Glen Duncan's brilliantly written novel is an investigation of the world of the senses - the seductiveness of evil, and the affection which keeps us human.

Dr. Tom More has created a unique invention: a stethoscope of the human spirit. With this remarkable device, he embarks on an unforgettable odyssey to cure mankind's spiritual flu.

This novel confronts the value of life and its susceptibility to chance and ruin. Set amid the decadence and polarization of a future American society, it is a journey through the complexities of the human psyche, highlighting both its potential and its pitfalls.

When Pushkin first read some of the stories in this collection, he declared himself amazed. "Here is real gaiety," he wrote, "honest, unconstrained, without mincing, without primness. And in places what poetry! . . . I still haven't recovered."

More than a century and a half later, Nikolai Gogol's stories continue to delight readers the world over. Now a stunning new translation presents these stories in all their inventive, exuberant glory to English-speaking readers.

For the first time, the best of Gogol's short fiction is brought together in a single volume: from the colorful Ukrainian tales that led some critics to call him "the Russian Dickens" to the Petersburg stories, with their black humor and wonderfully demented attitude toward the powers that be.

All of Gogol's most memorable creations are here: the minor official who misplaces his nose, the downtrodden clerk whose life is changed by the acquisition of a splendid new overcoat, the wily madman who becomes convinced that a dog can tell him everything he needs to know.

These fantastic, comic, utterly Russian characters have dazzled generations of readers and had a profound influence on writers such as Dostoevsky and Nabokov. Now they are brilliantly rendered in the first new translation in twenty-five years—one that is destined to become the definitive edition of Gogol's most important stories.

Deadeye Dick is Kurt Vonnegut’s funny, chillingly satirical look at the death of innocence. Amid a true Vonnegutian host of horrors—a double murder, a fatal dose of radioactivity, a decapitation, an annihilation of a city by a neutron bomb—Rudy Waltz, aka Deadeye Dick, takes us along on a zany search for absolution and happiness.

Here is a tale of crime and punishment that makes us rethink what we believe and who we say we are. It's a darkly comedic narrative that challenges our perceptions and invites us to explore the chaotic dance of fate and consequence.

Slapstick presents an apocalyptic vision as seen through the eyes of the current King of Manhattan (and last President of the United States). It's a wickedly irreverent look at the all-too-possible results of today’s follies.

But even the end of life-as-we-know-it is transformed by Kurt Vonnegut’s pen into hilarious farce—a final slapstick that may be the Almighty’s joke on us all.

The Public Burning is a groundbreaking novel that emerged as a controversial best-seller in 1977. It has since become one of the most influential novels of our time. This work of contemporary fiction is unique as it uses living historical figures as characters.

The novel reimagines the three fateful days in 1953 that culminated with the execution of alleged atomic spies, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The story is dominantly narrated by Vice-President Richard Nixon — the voraciously ambitious bad boy of the Eisenhower regime.

The novel features an enormous cast including Betty Crocker, Joe McCarthy, the Marx Brothers, Walter Winchell, Uncle Sam, his adversary The Phantom, and Time magazine incarnated as the National Poet Laureate.

All these characters, along with thousands more, converge in Times Square for the carnivalesque auto-da-fe at which the Rosenbergs are put to death. Not a single person present escapes implication in Cold War America's ruthless public spectacle.

Bob Slocum was living the American dream. He had a beautiful wife, three lovely children, a nice house... and all the mistresses he desired. He had it all — all, that is, but happiness. Slocum was discontent. Inevitably, inexorably, his discontent deteriorated into desolation until... something happened.

Something Happened is Joseph Heller's wonderfully inventive and controversial second novel satirizing business life and American culture. The story is told as if the reader was overhearing the patter of Bob Slocum's brain — recording what is going on at the office, as well as his fantasies and memories that complete the story of his life. The result is a novel as original and memorable as his Catch-22.

Marabou Stork Nightmares is a daring and audacious novel by the acclaimed author Irvine Welsh, known for his cult classics like Trainspotting and The Acid House. This novel plunges readers into the mind of Roy Strang, a man trapped in a coma, whose hallucinatory adventures unravel the path that led him there.

Roy's surreal quest involves eradicating the malevolent marabou stork, a predator-scavenger, in an imaginary South Africa, while being constantly interrupted by vivid and disturbing memories of his dysfunctional family and tumultuous upbringing in a Scottish housing scheme.

As the boundaries between reality and hallucination blur, Welsh crafts a lethally funny cocktail of pathos, violence, and outrageous hilarity, showcasing his unique ability to blend dark humor with deep psychological insights.

Mickey Sabbath is a comic creation of epic proportions, and at sixty-four, he is still defiantly antagonistic and exceedingly libidinous. Sex is both an obsession and a principle, serving as an instrument of perpetual misrule in his daily existence.

Following the death of his long-time mistress—a free-spirited woman with a taste for the impermissible that matches his own—Sabbath embarks on a turbulent journey into his past. Bereft and grieving, tormented by the ghosts of those who loved and hated him, he contrives a series of farcical disasters that take him to the brink of madness and extinction.

Sabbath's Theater is Philip Roth at the peak of his powers, delivering a narrative that is both hilarious and profoundly moving.

Jody never asked to become a vampire. But when she wakes up under an alley Dumpster with a badly burned arm, an aching neck, superhuman strength, and a distinctly Nosferatuan thirst, she realizes the decision has been made for her.

Making the transition from the nine-to-five grind to an eternity of nocturnal prowlings is going to take some doing, however, and that's where C. Thomas Flood fits in. A would-be Kerouac from Incontinence, Indiana, Tommy (to his friends) is biding his time night-clerking and frozen-turkey bowling in a San Francisco Safeway. But all that changes when a beautiful undead redhead walks through the door... and proceeds to rock Tommy's life—and afterlife—in ways he never imagined possible.

So begins the zany and wildly different love story that is at the heart of Bloodsucking Fiends, a romance novel like none you've ever read before, and a bloodcurdlingly funny vampire story about passion, bloodlust, and blood loss.

The Butcher Boy is a precisely crafted, often lyrical portrait of the descent into madness of a young killer in small-town Ireland. The story follows Francis "Francie" Brady, a schoolboy whose life slowly becomes macabre. Set in Ireland in the early 1960s, the novel encapsulates the grim and troubled realities of the time.

Francie is the "pig boy," the only child of an alcoholic father and a mother driven mad by despair. Growing up in a soul-stifling Irish town, Francie is bright, love-starved, and unhinged, his speech filled with street talk, his heart filled with pain...his actions perfectly monstrous. Held up for scorn by Mrs. Nugent, a paragon of middle-class values, and dropped by his best friend, Joe, in favor of her mamby-pamby son, Francie finally has a target for his rage—and a focus for his twisted, horrific plan.

Dark, haunting, and often screamingly funny, The Butcher Boy chronicles the pig boy's ominous loss of innocence and chilling descent into madness. No writer since James Joyce has had such marvelous control of rhythm and language... and no novel since The Silence Of The Lambs has stunned us with such a macabre, dangerous mind.

Kenzaburō Ōe, internationally acclaimed as one of the most important and influential post-World War II writers, is known for his powerful accounts of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and his own struggle to come to terms with a mentally handicapped son.

His most personal book, A Personal Matter, is the story of Bird, a frustrated intellectual in a failing marriage. His utopian dream is shattered when his wife gives birth to a brain-damaged child. Bird is left with a disconcerting picture of the human predicament as he navigates shame, disgrace, and self-discovery.

This novel is a profound exploration of personal crisis and the search for meaning in the chaos of life.

Stephen King cranks up the suspense in a different kind of bedtime story. A game of seduction between a husband and wife goes horribly awry when the husband dies. But the nightmare has just begun...

Gerald and Jessie Burlingame have gone to their summer home on a warm weekday in October for a romantic interlude. After being handcuffed to her bedposts, Jessie tires of her husband's games, but when Gerald refuses to stop, she lashes out at him with deadly consequences. Still handcuffed, she is trapped and alone. Painful memories from her childhood bedevil her. Her only company is a hungry stray dog and the sundry voices that populate her mind.

As night comes, she is unsure whether it is her imagination or if she has another companion: someone watching her from the corner of her dark bedroom.

If the Marquis de Sade were to crash one of P.G. Wodehouse's house parties, the chaos might resemble the nightmarishly funny goings-on in this novel by the author of London Fields.

The residents of Appleseed Rectory have primed themselves both for a visit from a triad of Americans and a weekend of copious drug taking and sexual gymnastics. There's even a heifer to be slugged and a pair of doddering tenants to be ingeniously harassed.

But none of these variously bright and dull young things has counted on the intrusion of "dead babies" — dreary spasms of reality. Or on the uninvited presence of a mysterious prankster named Johnny, whose sinister idea of fun makes theirs look like a game of backgammon.

Angels tells the story of two born losers. Jamie has ditched her husband and is running away with her two baby girls. Bill is dreaming of making it big in a life of crime. They meet on a Greyhound bus and decide to team up.

So begins a stunning, tragic odyssey through the dark underbelly of America – the bars, bus stations, mental wards, and prisons that play host to Jamie and Bill as they find themselves trapped in a downward spiral through rape, alcohol, drugs, and crime, to madness and death.

From the author of Tree of Smoke, this novel offers a vivid portrayal of America's dispossessed, lighting the trek with wit and a personal metaphysics that defiantly takes on the world.

Huey Lambert is miserable. Huey Lambert is tired of living the same horrible life as everyone. Huey Lambert is ready to stop. Armed with a nuclear device under his jacket, the now undeniable anti-hero takes charge of his life, but is it really even a life worth living?

Read as Huey becomes a cultural phenomena, an enemy of the state, and so much more in this controversial dark comedy.