Books with category 🐈‍⬛ Dark Humor
Displaying books 193-230 of 230 in total

Pornografia

Pornografia is a strange and bracing novel that delves into the divide between the young and the old, while providing a grotesque evocation of obsession. Set in the Polish countryside during wartime, the unnamed narrator and his friend, Fryderyk, engage in a bizarre game of manipulating two local youths, Karol and Henia, into a forced affection, turning their interactions into a sort of erotic chess game.

Frustration mounts as the youths show no interest in each other, leading to a momentary halt in their games due to a local murder and a complex directive to assassinate a rogue resistance member. Gombrowicz masterfully connects these threads in a tense climax, imbuing the novel with a deep sense of the absurd.

The prose is precise and forceful, with the narrator's attempts to understand his own pleasure in corrupting youth evoking a mix of pride and disgust. The novel's manic tone navigates between lengthy, comma-spliced sentences and sharp, declarative thrusts, enhancing its complexity and dark humor.

Death: The High Cost of Living

1994

by Neil Gaiman

From the pages of Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN comes the young, pale, perky, and genuinely likable Death. One day in every century, Death walks the Earth to better understand those to whom she will be the final visitor.

Today is that day. As a young mortal girl named Didi, Death befriends a teenager and helps a 250-year old homeless woman find her missing heart. What follows is a sincere musing on love, life and (of course) death.

Riotous Assembly

1994

by Tom Sharpe

Riotous Assembly is a blazing satire of South African apartheid, penned by the master of comic fiction, Tom Sharpe. This novel combines the slapstick comedy and extreme irony that Sharpe is renowned for, providing a lacerating account of the Hazelstone family's war against the police force of a provincial town in South Africa during apartheid.

The story unfolds with Miss Hazelstone of Jacaranda Park committing a sensational crime passionel by killing her Zulu cook. The gallant members of the South African police force are soon on the scene, including Kommandant van Heerden, whose secret longing for the heart of an English gentleman leads to the most memorable transplant operation yet recorded.
Luitenant Verkramp of the Security Branch is ever active in the pursuit of Communist cells, while Konstabel Els has a propensity for shooting first and not thinking later.

In the course of the strange events that follow, readers encounter some very esoteric perversions when the Kommandant is held captive in Miss Hazelstone's remarkable rubber room, and some even more amazing perversions of justice when Miss Hazelstone's brother, the Bishop of Barotseland, is sentenced to be hanged on the ancient gallows in the local prison.

This novel provides a completely fresh approach to the South African scene—an approach startling in its deadpan savagery and yet also outrageously funny.

Heart of a Dog

Mikhail Bulgakov's absurdist parable of the Russian Revolution. A world-famous Moscow professor -- rich, successful, and violently envied by his neighbors -- befriends a stray dog and resolves to achieve a daring scientific first by transplanting into it the testicles and pituitary gland of a dead man. But the results are wholly unexpected: a distinctly and worryingly human animal is on the loose, and the professor's hitherto respectable life becomes a nightmare beyond endurance.

As in The Master and Margarita, the masterpiece he completed shortly before his death, Mikhail Bulgakov's early novel, written in 1925, combines outrageously grotesque ideas with a narrative of deadpan naturalism. Heart of a Dog can be read as an absurd and wonderfully comic story; it can also be seen as a fierce parable of the Russian Revolution.

Endgame & Act Without Words

1994

by Samuel Beckett

Endgame & Act Without Words is a brilliant work by Samuel Beckett, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. This play is a pinnacle of Beckett's characteristic raw minimalism, offering a pure and devastating distillation of the human essence in the face of approaching death.

Originally written in French and translated into English by Beckett himself, Endgame is considered by many critics to be his greatest single work. Four characters engage in a game of life, concluding with the exit of one character and the immobility of the remaining three, in a profound study of man's relationship to his fellows.

The Visit

This is the first complete English translation of the play that many critics consider to be Dürrenmatt's finest work. Unlike an earlier version adapted for the English-language stage, this translation adheres faithfully to the author's original play as it was published and performed in German.

The action of The Visit takes place in the small town of Guellen, "somewhere in Central Europe." An elderly millionairess, Claire Zachanassian, returns to Guellen, her home town, after an absence of many years. Merely on the promise of her millions, she shortly turns what has been a depressed area into a boom town. But there is a condition attached to her largess, which the natives of Guellen realize only after they have become enmeshed in her vengeful plot: murder.

Out of these elements, Dürrenmatt has fashioned a many-leveled play which is at once a macabre parable, a deeply moving tragedy, and a scathing indictment of the power of greed.

A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

This now classic book revealed Flannery O'Connor as one of the most original and provocative writers to emerge from the South. Her apocalyptic vision of life is expressed through grotesque, often comic situations in which the principal character faces a problem of salvation: the grandmother, in the title story, confronting the murderous Misfit; a neglected four-year-old boy looking for the Kingdom of Christ in the fast-flowing waters of the river; General Sash, about to meet the final enemy.

Stories include:
A Good Man Is Hard to Find
The River
The Life You Save May Be Your Own
A Stroke of Good Fortune
A Temple of the Holy Ghost
The Artificial Nigger
A Circle in the Fire
A Late Encounter with the Enemy
Good Country People
The Displaced Person

Suttree

1992

by Cormac McCarthy

This compelling novel has as its protagonist Cornelius Suttree, living alone and in exile in a disintegrating houseboat on the wrong side of the Tennessee River close by Knoxville. He stays at the edge of an outcast community inhabited by eccentrics, criminals, and the poverty-stricken. Rising above the physical and human squalor around him, his detachment and wry humor enable him to survive dereliction and destitution with dignity.

The Hard Goodbye

1991

by Frank Miller

The first volume of the crime-comic megahit that introduced the now-infamous character Marv and spawned a blockbuster film returns in a newly redesigned edition, with a brand-new cover by Frank Miller - some of his first comics art in years!


It's a lousy room in a lousy part of a lousy town. But Marv doesn't care. There's an angel in the room. She says her name is Goldie. A few hours later, Goldie's dead without a mark on her perfect body, and the cops are coming before anyone but Marv could know she's been killed. Somebody paid good money for this frame...


With a new look generating more excitement than ever before, this third edition is the perfect way to attract a whole new generation of readers to Frank Miller's masterpiece!

Mao II

1991

by Don DeLillo

"Mao II" is an extraordinary novel by Don DeLillo, exploring the complex interplay between words and images, novelists and terrorists, the mass mind and the arch-individualist.

At the heart of the book is Bill Gray, a famous reclusive writer who escapes the failed novel he has been working on for many years. He enters the world of political violence, a nightscape of Semtex explosives and hostages locked in basement rooms.

Bill's dangerous passage leaves two people stranded: his brilliant, fixated assistant, Scott, and the strange young woman who is Scott's lover—and Bill's.

This novel is a profound exploration of the interplay between art and terror, the individual and the collective, delivered with grim humor and sharp insight.

The General of the Dead Army

1991

by Ismail Kadare

The General of the Dead Army is a moving and timely meditation on war and its consequences. Twenty years after World War II, an Italian general—armed with maps, measurements, and dental records—is sent to Albania to recover the remains of his country’s fallen soldiers. A quarrelsome priest joins him, and in rain and sleet, they dig up the Albanian countryside—once a battlefield, now a graveyard—checking teeth and dog tags, assembling a dead army in pine-box uniforms.

In addition to the brutal weather, they also battle the hostility of the Albanians working for them. This may be an errand of mercy for the general, but the chance to humiliate their one-time conquerors offers the Albanians a welcome vengeance. Fighting the hopelessness of his undertaking, the general finds his movements shadowed by a German general on the same gruesome mission for his own country.

In a terrible crescendo at a wedding, the Italian general must answer for the crimes of his country and all countries that have invaded this land of eagles, seeking to destroy its people. Enthralling and poignant, The General of the Dead Army is an elegy for the young people of every country who are sent abroad to die in battle.

Tales of the Unexpected

1990

by Roald Dahl

A wine connoisseur with an infallible palate and a sinister taste in wagers. A decrepit old man with a masterpiece tattooed on his back. A voracious adventuress, a gentle cuckold, and a garden sculpture that becomes an instrument of sadistic vengeance. Social climbers who climb a bit too quickly. Philanderers whose deceptions are a trifle too ornate. Impeccable servants whose bland masks slip for one vertiginous instant.

In these deliciously nasty stories, an internationally acclaimed practitioner of the short narrative works his own brand of black magic: tantalizing, amusing, and sometimes terrifying readers into a new sense of what lurks beneath the ordinary.

Included in Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected are such notorious gems of the bizarre as "The Sound Machine," "Lamb to Slaughter," "Neck," and "The Landlady."

The Best of Roald Dahl

1990

by Roald Dahl

The Best of Roald Dahl is a collection of 25 of Roald Dahl's short stories. This collection brings together Dahl’s finest work, illustrating his genius for the horrific and grotesque which is unparalleled.

Contents:

- Madame Rosette
- Man from the South
- The Sound Machine
- Taste
- Dip in the Pool
- Skin
- Edward the Conqueror
- Lamb to the Slaughter
- Galloping Foxley
- The Way Up to Heaven
- Parson's Pleasure
- The Landlady
- William and Mary
- Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat
- Royal Jelly
- Georgy Porgy
- Genesis and Catastrophe
- Pig
- The Visitor
- Claud's Dog (The Ratcatcher, Rummins, Mr. Hoddy, Mr. Feasey, Champion of the World)
- The Great Switcheroo
- The Boy Who Talked with Animals
- The Hitchhiker
- The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
- The Bookseller

Despair

Despair is the wickedly inventive and richly derisive story of Hermann Karlovich, a man who undertakes the perfect crime—his own murder.

Extensively revised by Nabokov in 1965, the novel offers a masterly portrait of Hermann, who is rapt in his own reality, incapable of escaping or explicating it. Hermann is a compelling character in the fascinating gallery of living characters Vladimir Nabokov has given to world literature.

In his pseudo-worldliness and odd genius, Hermann stands alongside other neurotic Nabokovian creations. Despair is illuminated throughout by the virtuosity and cunning wit that are Nabokov’s hallmarks.

Geek Love

1989

by Katherine Dunn

Geek Love is the story of the Binewskis, a carny family whose mater- and paterfamilias set out—with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes—to breed their own exhibit of human oddities. There’s Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan... Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins... albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family’s most precious—and dangerous—asset.

As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. Family values will never be the same.

Le Grand Cahier

1986

by Ágota Kristóf

Dans la Grande Ville qu’occupent les Armées étrangères, la disette menace. Une mère conduit donc ses enfants à la campagne, chez leur grand-mère. Analphabète, avare, méchante et même meurtrière, celle-ci mène la vie dure aux jumeaux.

Loin de se laisser abattre, ceux-ci apprennent seuls les lois de la vie, de l’écriture et de la cruauté. Abandonnés à eux-mêmes, dénués du moindre sens moral, ils s’appliquent à dresser, chaque jour, dans un grand cahier, le bilan de leurs progrès et la liste de leurs forfaits.

Le Grand Cahier nous livre une fable incisive sur les malheurs de la guerre et du totalitarisme, mais aussi un véritable roman d’apprentissage dominé par l’humour noir.

Equus

1984

by Peter Shaffer

Equus is a powerful exploration of the way modern society has destroyed our ability to feel passion. The story follows Alan Strang, a disturbed youth whose dangerous obsession with horses leads him to commit an unspeakable act of violence.

As psychiatrist Martin Dysart struggles to understand the motivation for Alan's brutality, he is increasingly drawn into Alan's web and eventually forced to question his own sanity.

Peter Shaffer creates a chilling portrait of how materialism and convenience have killed our capacity for worship and passion, and, consequently, our capacity for pain. Rarely has a playwright created an atmosphere and situation that so harshly pinpoint the spiritual and mental decay of modern man.

Equus is a timeless classic and a cornerstone of contemporary drama that delves into the darkest recesses of human existence.

Tales of Ordinary Madness

Inspired by D.H. Lawrence, Chekhov and Hemingway, Bukowski's writing is passionate, extreme and has attracted a cult following. His life was as weird and wild as the tales he wrote.

This collection of short stories gives an insight into the dark, dangerous lowlife of Los Angeles that Bukowski inhabited. From prostitutes to classical music, Bukowski ingeniously mixes high and low culture in his 'tales of ordinary madness'.

These are angry yet tender, humorous and haunting portrayals of life in the underbelly of Los Angeles.

Hot Water Music

With his characteristic raw and minimalist style, Charles Bukowski takes us on a walk through his side of town in Hot Water Music. He gives us little vignettes of depravity and lasciviousness, bite-sized pieces of what is both beautiful and grotesque.

The stories in Hot Water Music dash around the worst parts of town – a motel room stinking of sick, a decrepit apartment housing a perpetually arguing couple, a bar tended by a skeleton – and depict the darkest parts of human existence. Bukowski talks simply and profoundly about the underbelly of the working class without raising judgement.

In the way he writes about sex, relationships, writing, and inebriation, Bukowski sets the bar for irreverent art – his work inhabits the basest part of the mind and the most extreme absurdity of the everyday.

The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories

The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories is a collection of mad immortal stories that have emerged from the literary underground, captivating legions of American readers. Despite being ignored by the high literary establishment, these tales have found critical acclaim in Europe, particularly in Germany, Italy, and France, where Bukowski is published by some of the great publishing houses.

This collection propels the reader into the lowlife of America's underworld, a world teeming with drunks, bums, and gamblers. Here, sex and violence are omnipresent, and the most beautiful woman in town drinks and fights, embodying the raw, gritty realism that Bukowski is renowned for.

The Boys from Brazil

1977

by Ira Levin

Alive and hiding in South America, the fiendish Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele gathers a group of former colleagues for a horrifying project—the creation of the Fourth Reich. Barry Kohler, a young investigative journalist, gets wind of the project and informs famed Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman, but before he can relay the evidence, Kohler is killed.

Thus Ira Levin opens one of the strangest and most masterful novels of his career. Why has Mengele marked a number of harmless aging men for murder? What is the hidden link that binds them? What interest can they possibly hold for their killers: six former SS men dispatched from South America by the most wanted Nazi still alive, the notorious "Angel of Death"?

One man alone must answer these questions and stop the killings—Lieberman, himself aging and thought by some to be losing his grip on reality. At the heart of The Boys from Brazil lies a frightening contemporary nightmare, chilling and all too possible.

This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

Tadeusz Borowski's concentration camp stories are based on his own harrowing experiences surviving Auschwitz and Dachau. In spare, brutal prose, he describes a world where the will to survive overrides compassion. Here, prisoners eat, work, and sleep just a few yards from where others are murdered. The difference between human beings is reduced to a second bowl of soup, an extra blanket, or the luxury of a pair of shoes with thick soles. In this world, the line between normality and abnormality completely vanishes.

Published in Poland after the Second World War, these stories constitute a masterwork of world literature.

Diary of a Madman and Other Stories

1973

by Nikolai Gogol

Hailed by Nabokov as "the greatest artist that Russia has yet produced," Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) left his mark as a playwright, novelist, and writer of short stories. Gogol's works remain popular with both writers and readers, who prize his originality, imaginative gifts, and sheer exuberance.

This collection offers an excellent introduction to the author's works. Opening a door to his bizarre world of broad comedy, fantasy, and social commentary, the title story portrays a petty official's mental disintegration as he struggles for the attention of the woman he loves. Set during the repressive rule of Nicholas I, it satirizes the bureaucratic excesses of the era. Additional tales include "The Nevski Prospect," a portrayal of the feverish pace of St. Petersburg street life, and "The Portrait," a gripping depiction of a soul's perdition.

The Satanic Bible

The Satanic Bible was first published by Anton LaVey in 1969. It is a collection of essays, observations, and rituals that outlines LaVey's Satanic ideology. The book contains the core principles of the Church of Satan and is considered the foundation of the philosophy and dogma that constitute LaVeyan Satanism.

Far from a manual for conquering the realms of earth, air, fire, and water, The Satanic Bible is LaVey's manifesto of a new religion, separate from the traditional Judeo-Christian definitions of Satanism. While LaVey rails against the deceit of the Christian church and white magicians, he weaves his own philosophy centered around self-indulgence.

The book claims the heritage of various ancient deities categorized by Christianity as "evil," and attempts to shatter the classical depiction of Satanism as a cult of black mass and child sacrifice. Instead, it presents a surprisingly logical argument in favor of a life focused on self-indulgence.

Ultimately, The Satanic Bible is less of a "bible" and more of a philosophy, with rituals included for entertainment, forming the backbone of a religion that LaVey brought into the public eye as a legitimate belief system.

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

1967

by Harlan Ellison

First published in 1967 and re-issued in 1983, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream contains seven stories with copyrights ranging from 1958 through 1967. This edition contains the original introduction by Theodore Sturgeon and the original foreword by Harlan Ellison, along with a brief update comment by Ellison that was added in the 1983 edition.

Among Ellison's more famous stories, two consistently noted as among his very best ever are the title story and the volume's concluding one, Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes.

Since Ellison himself strongly resists categorization of his work, we won't call them science fiction, or SF, or speculative fiction or horror or anything else except compelling reading experiences that are sui generis. They could only have been written by Harlan Ellison and they are incomparably original.

Content:
"I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream"
"Big Sam Was My Friend"
"Eyes of Dust"
"World of the Myth"
"Lonelyache"
"Delusion for Dragonslayer"
"Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes"

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Second only to Slaughterhouse-Five of Vonnegut's canon in its prominence and influence, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) presents Eliot Rosewater, an itinerant, semi-crazed millionaire wandering the country in search of heritage and philanthropic outcome, introducing the science fiction writer Kilgore Trout to the world and Vonnegut to the collegiate audience which would soon make him a cult writer.

Trout, modeled according to Vonnegut on the science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon (with whom Vonnegut had an occasional relationship) is a desperate, impoverished but visionary hack writer who functions for Eliot Rosewater as both conscience and horrid example. Rosewater, seeking to put his inheritance to some meaningful use (his father was an entrepreneur), tries to do good within the context of almost illimitable cynicism and corruption.

It is in this novel that Rosewater wanders into a science fiction conference--an actual annual event in Milford, Pennsylvania--and at the motel delivers his famous monologue evoked by science fiction writers and critics for almost half a century: "None of you can write for sour apples... but you're the only people trying to come to terms with the really terrific things which are happening today." Money does not drive Mr. Rosewater (or the corrupt lawyer who tries to shape the Rosewater fortune) so much as outrage at the human condition.

The novel was adapted for a 1979 Alan Menken musical. The novel is told mostly through a collection of short stories dealing with Eliot's interactions with the citizens of Rosewater County, usually with the last sentence serving as a punch line. The antagonist's tale, Mushari's, is told in a similar short essay fashion. The stories reveal different hypocrisies of humankind in a darkly humorous fashion.

Asylum: A Hidden Tale - Sinister Tales

Maria has been caught and sent to the home of the mentally ill after killing her parents. Everybody is keeping her from going home, and Maria doesn't want to be here. She's had enough of these games and meeting new people as bad as her.

She wants the voices back. And she'll do anything to get them back and go home.

But will she ever get home?

Demented (Sinister Tales Book 1)

Sometimes it's best to stay out where you're not welcome.

Demented will chill you to the bone, for these are not your usual bedtime stories. From a son who wants to teach his mother a lesson, a deadly myth on Kingly Road, people who have a certain bizarre diet, and more terrifying things than you have ever imagined—these stories will give you goosebumps, shivers, and more.

There are also stories about a vengeful unborn baby, a psychotic babysitter, and a creepy bus that leads you to hell. These tales will torment your head with eerie echoes and haunting screams, and compel you to turn and check what's lurking behind... every few minutes.

With twisted scenarios that will make you second-guess who you can and cannot trust, these are stories that may tell you what could actually be hiding under your bed... or perhaps make you realize that they're not under the bed... and that maybe you're the monster.

Home: A Hidden Tale - Sinister Tales

I am Maria. My only desire in this world is to have a real family, to have a mother and father that I could call my own. So why did I kill the people who gave me home? They did nothing wrong to me. But I have to do it, Mom and Dad aren't real.

The stench of the blood from my father is invading my nostrils. I need to close my eyes again, the blackness comforts me better than the view of the dead bodies in the living room. I should feel no guilt, my real family is waiting for me...

Kinyas ve Kayra

Hiç uykum yok. Hiç uyuyamıyorum. Domuz gibi içiyorum. Ama gözlerimi kapalı bile tutamıyorum. Sabaha beş saat var. Annemi düşünüyorum. Nerededir şimdi? Aynada kendime bakıyorum bazen. Ve tek kelime etmesem bile vücudum yaşadıklarımı, hayattan ne anladığımı anlatmaya yetiyor.

Sağ omzuma kendi çizdiğim kelebek, beğenmediğim için üzerine attığım çarpı işareti ve altında aynı kelebeğin bir Japon tarafından çok daha iyi işlenmişi. Sol dirseğimin iki parmak yukarısındaki kurşun yarası. Bileklerimdeki otuz dört dikiş. Medeniyeti bir aralar, herkes gibi yaladığımı kanıtlayan apandisit ameliyatımın izi. Ve sırtımı kaplayan, Tanrı'nın yüzü. Bilmiyorum... Hızlı yaşadım. Ama genç ölmekten çok, hızlı yaşadım! Ancak hayattayım.

Kayra, bir gün bana 'Mutsuzluğuna hiçbir çare aramıyorsun' demişti.

Lick the Razor - the Definitive Collection

18 dark stories from the twisted mind of the master of the bizarre, D.B. Tarpley. Lick the Razor is a foray into the world of dark fiction, or "splatterpunk". A miscellany of the macabre, Lick the Razor conjures up a mood of insidious disquiet, foreboding, and inevitability.

Not only is it creepy, haunting, and smart, it also digs deep into the twisted state of the human mind. A classic of its kind. For the first time, enjoy The Definitive Collection, complete with bonus material including a new forward and an additional story.

Mortal

It is one of the world’s great ironies, that mortals spend their lives worrying about their immortal souls while immortals spend their eternity worrying about their mortals.

Emma wanted a normal life, her father more than anything wanted it for her. Of course, life seldom turns out the way you want. Especially when a mentally deranged shade is trying to steal your very blood for his own demonic purposes.

Throw in some feelings for a pair of vampires old enough to be your great-great-great grandfathers and it makes for one messed up ‘mortal’ life.

Night of the Rat

There are just some men you can’t send from the house at midnight with a live rat in a trap and expect them not to somehow get the police involved. Granted, it sounds like an exaggeration, but Silas was more panicked about leaving the house than even the rat. Neither wanted to go. One had a family, the other had social anxiety. Before sunrise, one was going to be freed in a field, the other from custody. One would see worlds he could never dream, the other would have all his worst fears confirmed.

Night of the Rat tells the dark and comedic lengths one couple will go to rid their neighborhood of unwanted guests.

Saga of Darren Shan Box Set

Step into the world of Darren Shan with this exhilarating box set, which includes the first six books of the Cirque du Freak series. Join Darren as he navigates a life turned upside down by a chance encounter with a vampire, leading him into a world filled with dark secrets and supernatural challenges.

From the eerie halls of the Cirque du Freak to the sinister Vampire Mountain, each book is a journey of friendship, bravery, and self-discovery. Thrilling and darkly humorous, this series is perfect for readers who love a mix of adventure, horror, and heartfelt moments.

Stonemouth

Stewart Gilmour is back in Stonemouth, Scotland. After five years in exile, his presence is required at the funeral of patriarch Joe Murston. Even though the last time Stu saw the Murstons he was running for his life, staying away might be even more dangerous than turning up.

Stonemouth is an estuary town north of Aberdeen, with a beach that can be beautiful on a sunny day. But on a bleak day, it seems to offer little more than fog, cheap drugs, and gangsters—plus a suspension bridge that promises a permanent way out.

Although there's supposed to be a temporary truce between Stewart and the town's biggest crime family, it's soon clear that only Stewart is taking this promise of peace seriously. As he steps back into the minefield of his past to confront his guilt and all that it has lost him, Stu uncovers ever darker stories. His homecoming takes a more lethal turn than even he had anticipated.

Tough, funny, fast-paced, and touching, Stonemouth cracks open adolescence, love, brotherhood, and vengeance in a rite of passage novel like no other.

The Austere Academy

Dear Reader, If you are looking for a story about cheerful youngsters spending a jolly time at boarding school, look elsewhere. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire are intelligent and resourceful children, and you might expect that they would do very well at school. Don't. For the Baudelaires, school turns out to be another miserable episode in their unlucky lives. Truth be told, within the chapters that make up this dreadful story, the children will face snapping crabs, strict punishments, dripping fungus, comprehensive exams, violin recitals, S.O.R.E., and the metric system. It is my solemn duty to stay up all night researching and writing the history of these three hapless youngsters, but you may be more comfortable getting a good night's sleep. In that case, you should probably choose some other book. With all due respect,Lemony Snicket

The Death of Bunny Munro

Set adrift by his wife's sudden death and struggling to keep a grip on reality, Bunny Munro does the only thing he can think of - with his young son in tow, he hits the road. An epic chronicle of one man's judgement and death, The Death of Bunny Munro is an achingly tender portrait of the relationship between father and son.

The Sweetest Death: The Sweetest Kill Bonus Chapter

"Because killing you now would ruin all my fun, and believe me, love, I have plans for you."

Feeling more alive than she ever did before, Shoshanna is having the time of her life being with Tobias. But one night, she is grabbed and confronted by a familiar face, someone who has a serious bone to pick with her… someone who thinks she’s still the pathetic girl she used to be. Will she prove him wrong or is she still the same girl?

Are you sure you want to delete this?