Rumpole of the Bailey


John Mortimer - 1978
    It stars Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole, an ageing London barrister who defends any and all clients. The original show has been spun off into a series of short stories, novels, and radio programmes.Contents:“Rumpole and the Younger Generation”;“Rumpole and the Alternative Society”;“Rumpole and the Honourable Member”;“Rumpole and the Married Lady”;“Rumpole and the Learned Friends”;“Rumpole and the Heavy Brigade”

Dumped, Actually


Nick Spalding - 2019
    While most would seek out the support of loved ones at such a torrid time, natural-born journalist Ollie asks the subscribers of his website: how did they get over their failed relationships?When Ollie follows some of their more extreme advice, chaos inevitably ensues, including accidentally exposing himself to some unsuspecting wildlife, jumping out of a perfectly serviceable aeroplane, and suffering from an extremely painful bottom, courtesy of a maniacal Scotsman.Of course, all of this goes down a storm with his online following, and Ollie soon finds himself the centre of everyone’s attention – whether he likes it or not!With his eclectic collection of supporters to guide him, can Ollie mend his broken heart, heal his broken bottom, and learn to find happiness again?

Company


Max Barry - 2006
    From the outside, Zephyr is just another bland corporate monolith, but behind its glass doors business is far from usual: the beautiful receptionist is paid twice as much as anybody else to do nothing, the sales reps use self help books as manuals, no one has seen the CEO, no one knows exactly what they are selling, and missing donuts are the cause of office intrigue. While Jones originally wanted to climb the corporate ladder, he now finds himself descending deeper into the irrational rationality of company policy. What he finds is hilarious, shocking, and utterly telling.

Crashed


Timothy Hallinan - 2012
    Since he first started breaking into houses when he was fourteen years old, he’s never once been caught. But now, after twenty-two years of an exemplary career, Junior has been blackmailed by Trey Annunziato, one of the most powerful crime bosses in LA, into acting as a private investigator on the set of Trey’s porn movie venture, which someone keeps sabotaging.The star Trey has lined up to do all that’s unwholesome on camera is Thistle Downing, America’s beloved child star, who now lives alone in a drug-induced stupor, destitute and uninsurable. Her starring role will be the scandalous fall-from-grace gossip of rubber-neckers across the country. No wonder Trey needs help keeping the production on track.Junior knows what that he should do — get Thistle out and find her help — but doing the right thing will land him on the wrong side of LA’s scariest mob boss. With the help of his precocious twelve-year-old daughter, Rina, and his criminal sidekick, Louie the Lost (an ex-getaway driver), Junior has to figure out a miracle solution.

The Dirty Parts of the Bible


Sam Torode - 2007
    Tobias is obsessed with two things: God and girls. Mostly girls, of course. But being a Baptist preacher's son, he can't escape God. When his father is blinded in a bizarre accident (involving hard cider and bird droppings), Tobias must ride the rails to Texas to recover a long-hidden stash of money. Along the way, he's initiated into the hobo brotherhood by Craw, a ribald vagabond-philosopher. Obstacles arise in the form of a saucy prostitute, a flaming boxcar, and a man-eating catfish. But when he meets Sarah, a tough farm girl under a dark curse, he finds out that the greatest challenge of all is love.

Gone With a Handsomer Man


Michael Lee West - 2011
    . . Teeny Templeton believes that her life is finally on track. She’s getting married, she’s baking her own wedding cake, and she’s leaving her troubled past behind. And then? She finds her fiancé playing naked badminton with a couple of gorgeous, skanky chicks. Add a whole lot of trouble . . . Needless to say, the wedding is off. Adding insult to injury, her fiancé slaps a restraining order on her. When he’s found dead a few days later, all fingers point to Teeny. And stir like crazy! Her only hope is through an old boyfriend-turned-lawyer, the guy who broke her heart a decade ago. But dredging up the past brings more than skeletons out of the closet, and Teeny doesn’t know who she can trust. With evidence mounting and the heat turning up, Teeny must also figure out where to live, how to support herself, how to clear her name, and how to protect her heart.

It's Raining Men


Milly Johnson - 2013
    They have been dreaming of a little cottage away from it all, long walks in the country and just a bit of time away from it all. But when they arrive in Ren Dullem, a small Yorkshire seaside town, it seems it is not the place they thought it was...May has never quite found her niche in life, or her Mr Right. Then in Dullem she falls hook line and sinker at first glance for one of the inhabitants - but he's already taken.Lara is living with James and his awful step-children who taunt her with tales of his younger, prettier ex whom they adored. The woman who Lara walks in to find James in bed with despite all his protestations that he wouldn't touch her again with a barge pole. Reeling from the hurt, she needs the sea air of Dullem to heal her. What she doesn't need is to be constantly in battle with the owner of the holiday cottage - a man who is every bit as bitter and resentful and untrusting of the other sex as she is. Clare's fiance Hugh wants her to go and live abroad with him for two years, but she's just been offered the promotion of a life-time. She needs some headspace to think about what she needs to do, but then she meets a very bad boy who is everything Hugh isn't - impulsive, wild and dangerous. Will this holiday be the break they all need? Or will it bring them all to breaking point...?

Calamity Jayne


Kathleen Bacus - 2006
    Crowned "Calamity Jayne" by Iowa Department of Natural Resources officer Rick Townsend, Tressa's out to gain a little hometown respect --or die trying. Unfortunately for Tressa, that may be the case. She's just been handed the perfect opportunity to get "Ranger Rick," the doubting Don Juan of the DNR, and a skeptical citizenry to finally take her seriously. How? By solving a murder no one else believes happened...No one, that is, except the killer.Yup, Calamity Jayne is in it up to her hot pink snakeskin cowgirl boots and matching rhinestone belt. Tressa would tell you her momma never raised no dummies, but the jury's still out on that one.

Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse


Victor Gischler - 2008
    Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse begins nine years later, when he emerges into a bizarre landscape filled with hollow reminders of an America that no longer exists. The highways are lined with abandoned automobiles; electricity is generated by indentured servants pedaling stationary bicycles. What little civilization remains revolves around Joey Armageddon's Sassy A-Go-Go strip clubs, where the beer is cold, the lap dancers are hot, and the bouncers are armed with M16s. Accompanied by his cowboy sidekick Buffalo Bill, the gorgeous stripper Sheila, and the mountain man Ted, Mortimer journeys to the lost city of Atlanta -- and a showdown that might determine the fate of humanity.

Kill Your Friends


John Niven - 2008
    Twenty-seven-year-old A&R man Stelfox is slashing and burning his way through the music industry, a world where 'no one knows anything' and where careers are made and broken by chance and the fickle tastes of the general public - 'Yeah, those animals'.Fuelled by greed and inhuman quantities of cocaine Stelfox blithely criss-crosses the globe ('New York, Cologne, Texas, Miami, Cannes: you shout at waiters and sign credit card slips and all that really changes is the quality of the porn') searching for the next hit record amid a relentless orgy of self-gratification.But as the hits dry up and the industry begins to change, Stelfox must take the notion of cutthroat business practices to murderous new levels in a desperate attempt to salvage his career.Kill Your Friends is a dark, satirical and hysterically funny evisceration of the record business, a place populated by frauds, charlatans and bluffers, where ambition is a higher currency than talent, and where it seems anything can be achieved - as long as you want it badly enough.

Angelmaker


Nick Harkaway - 2012
    The son of infamous London criminal Mathew “Tommy Gun” Spork, he has turned his back on his family’s mobster history and aims to live a quiet life. That orderly existence is suddenly upended when Joe activates a particularly unusual clockwork mechanism. His client, Edie Banister, is more than the kindly old lady she appears to be—she’s a retired international secret agent. And the device? It’s a 1950s doomsday machine. Having triggered it, Joe now faces the wrath of both the British government and a diabolical South Asian dictator who is also Edie’s old arch-nemesis. On the upside, Joe’s got a girl: a bold receptionist named Polly whose smarts, savvy and sex appeal may be just what he needs. With Joe’s once-quiet world suddenly overrun by mad monks, psychopathic serial killers, scientific geniuses and threats to the future of conscious life in the universe, he realizes that the only way to survive is to muster the courage to fight, help Edie complete a mission she abandoned years ago and pick up his father’s old gun...

The Chupacabra: A Borderline Crazy Tale of Coyotes, Cash & Cartels


Stephen Randel - 2012
    He makes his trade along the border, smuggling guns and killing without remorse. As he faces his one last mission, his perfect plan is unwittingly foiled by Avery, a paranoid loner obsessed with global conspiracy theories who spends most of his time crafting absurd and threatening letters to anyone who offends him. That means pretty much everyone. What unfolds is a laugh out loud dark comedy of madcap adventure stretching from Austin to the West Texas border featuring a lunatic band of civilian border militia, a group of bingo-crazed elderly ladies (one packing a pistol nearly as long as her arm), a murderous and double-crossing cartel boss, a burned-out hippy, and a crotchety retired doctor and his pugnacious French bulldog. Read it to believe it.

Village Books


Craig McLay - 2012
    Will the store survive? Will it be bought over by its evil corporate competition? All questions will be answered (but not necessarily in that order) in this hilarious debut novel.

Hazardous Duty


Christy Barritt - 2006
    Claire dropped out of school and started her own crime scene cleaning business. Now, when a routine cleaning job leads her to a murder weapon the police overlooked, she realizes that the wrong man is in jail. With the help of her new and attractively single neighbor, Riley Thomas, Gabby plays the detective to make sure the right man is put behind bars.

Divorcing Jack


Colin Bateman - 1995
    The plot is set around the Northern Irish reporter Dan Starkey who gets entangled into a web of political intrigue and Irish sectarian violence, at the same time as Northern Ireland is set to elect a new Prime Minister.