He wears his temper like a badge of honor, would rather step over a homeless beggar than walk around him, and engages in petty warfare with his staff over expense receipts. He's also never been much bothered with monogamy, but when one morning he spontaneously seduces his temp in an office storeroom, he's definitely crossed a line in blatancy. Miller has made few friends and many enemies—not to mention the fact that the storeroom is a notorious trysting place and he and the temp both emerge covered in dust and airmail stickers—so the news doesn’t take long to reach his cold, beautiful wife. Conveniently, it just happens to be their anniversary. Imagine the celebratory dinner, capped by her returning her house keys and consummating her desire to sleep with the neighbor.Not a man to suffer rejection well, Miller heads for a London media hangout, where two employees introduce him to cocaine. By morning, his exploits are public (a photographer captured him snorting the cocaine in public), his career is over (thanks to a damning interview he gave a journalist from a rival paper), he's not only painted the word 'WANKER' on the cuckolding neighbor's car, but misspelled it, and his house is on fire (never leave a goodbye bonfire of wedding photos unattended). . . . Clearly, it’s time to leave town. Miller has an engagement to speak to the boys at his old prep school, but he can't seem to stop pouring gasoline on the fire that his life has become, showing up hungover after a night partying with an old school friend and a gaggle of Spanish flight attendants, and calling the headmaster by his behind-the-back nickname of "Stiffo" to the students, for a start. After the speech, he speaks with his doctor and learns that his father-in-law plans to kill him.Leigh, the old school friend, works for an English language school in Barcelona, and Miller wrangles its address out of him, for he clearly can't go home. He gets the job and adapts surprisingly well to a life of an underpaid teacher, despite the fact that some of his students will clearly never learn the language (there are hilarious scenes of their attempts in this section) and even starts up a romance with a tough-talking English girl who's one of his fellow teachers—but he doesn't tell her who he really is when he has the opportunity, and when she figures it out on her own she is livid and that bridge is burnt. To make matters worse, his father-in-law's goons have tracked him down.Miller flees again, winding up in Florida, in a town populated by ex-circus freaks and presided over by the Half Man, a criminal and sadist with no legs who welcomes Miller to town by shoving a gun barrel in his mouth and breaking his teeth. But ironically, it seems that despite the fleas in his trailer, the one-eyed albino hit man who seems to overhear every compromising conversation between Miller and the Half Man’s beautiful wife the Lizard Woman, and the fact that the Half Man’s stranglehold on the local police mean that Miller isn’t actually free to leave, it seems that Miller somehow belongs among the freaks. These misfits—among them a black dwarf, a gay clown with a penchant for altar boys, a heroin addict who is their unlicensed doctor, a biker hit man named Hollis after Grove’s erstwhile publicist, and the Lizard Woman’s wonderful eight-year-old daughter—unwittingly teach Miller what normal life never could—how to love, and how to stand up for something he truly believes in. When Miller's wife tracks him down and has him sign over the spoils of his old life to her, he gets enough money out of her to hire the albino to hit the Half Man. And though all certainly does not go smoothly with the hit—someone as vicious as the Half Man is unlikely to go quietly—Miller and the Lizard Woman are able to close that chapter and start a new life together.

    Suddenly with no place to hide from the reality we realize life is all cracked up. Through the lens of our pain everything seems broken, bruised, and battered. But, as best-selling author Patsy Clairmont points out, there's a redeemer of our pain--Jesus. The Redeemer of the broken and discarded who mends our hearts, and even gives us a reason to laugh again.Telling inspirational stories of women's brokenness and healing, with tenderness and her trademark humor, Patsy Clairmont helps us realize that we're not alone in our struggles. Jesus buoys our spirits and refreshes our tired minds. As Patsy says, "life is so much easier to bear when its shared.'

    In Delhi, he meets three guys who join his dramatic journey—they all want to change the country. They all aspire to become IAS officers. They all want to take the ‘never-seen-before-types dowry’! As expected, they mess up with a very proper college professor. There begins a chase, funnier than Tom and Jerry… Will the professor find them? Will their dreams ever come true? Find out in this laughathon full of clichés straight from the cow belt of India!Note: This book is in the Hindi language and has been made available for the Kindle, Kindle Fire HD, Kindle Paperwhite, iPhone and iPad, and for iOS, Windows Phone and Android devices.

    She is addicted to the feeling of being on stage, looking out at expectant, up-turned mouths, waiting for the first laugh to hit. A first laugh that will not happen unless she creates it. But Brenda is clueless. The on-off girlfriend of a prolific comedian, it is only after she realises his best stage material consists of recycled versions of her own restless, smart-arsed energy that she begins to wonder whether she might be better off keeping her jokes for herself - and so she finds herself making her very first walk to the mark on stage in front of a bare brick wall, with just a spotlight and a PA system for cover, wondering what we all wonder from time to time: am I funny? A book as much about the thrill of performance as it is about what goes on when the microphone is switched off, Brenda Monk is Funny is a blackly humourous and devastatingly candid snapshot of the reality, the brutality and fragility of the comedy industry from an exciting new voice in fiction.

    Make way for Charlie Smithers.The time is the nineteenth century. The place, the Serengeti Plain, where one Charlie Smithers – faithful manservant to the arrogant bone-head, Lord Brampton (with five lines in Debrett, and a hopeless shot to boot) – becomes separated from his master during an unfortunate episode with an angry rhinoceros, thereby launching Charlie on an odyssey into Deepest Darkest Africa, and subsequently into the arms of the beautiful Loiyan…and that’s where the trouble really begins.Maasai warriors, xenophobic locals, or evil Arab slavers, the two forbidden lovers encounter everything that the unforgiving jungle can throw at them."A truly engaging read that will keep anyone’s attention from the hilarious beginning until the last word. I highly recommend this 5 star novel." ~ Chapters & Chats

    It's a far cry from the heady days when he led his band, The Shooting Tsars, to the top of the charts and sell-out tours and festivals around the world.An unwelcome phone call from his deceitful ex-manager, Chas Dupont, sets in motion a chain of events that seems unstoppable.Can Will get his fractured band back together and rediscover his mojo? Are Chas Dupont's motives purely altruistic? Who are the musical mafia? And are the legendary rumours about the lost "Bloom Tape" true?

    He is a fat man. A fat man with thin limbs, like an egg with tentacles. And life is not going well. He’s alone, idle, and on the brink of a medical crisis when a childhood acquaintance makes him an offer he can’t understand, can’t talk about, but ultimately can’t refuse. A week later, he finds himself in the wilds of Scotland, plunged into an eccentric community at war over a wind farm. He’s supposed to be a backer, but he has no idea what side he’s on, even though it may bag him a lot of money. All he wants is to look like a hero in front of the woman with the bright blue eyes who brought him here. To do so he must run the gauntlet of a family with many dark secrets, some dangerous hippies and their hallucinogenic potions, and the wilderness itself with all its threats and dangers. Whirligig is a raucous, joyous, often poignant comedy about the redemptive power of the countryside. Written with peerless wit, it’s a timely fable that takes its place within the tradition of the Great English Comic Novel. It’s The Wicker Man as told by P.G. Wodehouse.

    That is what troubles animal-phobic, robotics engineer Smith who just got married. He learns that his bride’s dream is to have a farm where there are lots of animals and she can rescue ex-race horses to retrain and find them new homes. But according to a Meyers-Briggs Personality Test that they took for fun, their marriage is doomed. There is only one problem: the newlyweds took the test after the wedding. Whether Smith is chasing a cow named Pork Chop through the woods with a rope, getting locked in a tack room by the family pony, being snubbed by his wife’s dog, or unsuccessfully trying to modernize their barn using the latest technology, the odds are stacked against him. It seems like everything with four legs is out to get him. Will the animals win, forcing Smith to admit defeat, or will he fight to keep his family and the farm together? Enjoy the true, warm, and frequently hilarious stories of Smith’s journey along the bumpy road from his urban robotics lab to a new life on a rural Virginia farm.

    This wasn't always the case, but years in the soul-shattering world of retail have made Wade a bitter, cynical young man. Impeded by a lack of direction and nearly infinite levels apathy, Wade idles through his days avoiding waves of annoying customers, his obtrusive boss and any kind of work in general. When a management opportunity makes itself available Wade finds himself facing an unprecedented weekend of opportunity and distraction, a gauntlet of women he can't begin to understand, and a potential mental breakdown that could destroy his personal and professional life at once.

    Legend. Role model. He’s none of those.Blunt Yorkshireman and reality TV show winner, Flint Dugdale, has used his large frame and ‘persuasive personality’ to take charge of Britain’s first mission to Mars. Little does he know that the base, built by an advance party of inept robots, is far from ready, with no food, water or doors. And the ship’s scanners are picking up strange signals. There is life down there. But will it be pleased to see him?

    Her spirit is surprising, given all the pain she has endured, and that's the counterpoint this story offers—while she sees pain and suffering all around her, Yslea overcomes in her own quiet way. What Yslea struggles with is expressing her thoughts. And she wonders if she will have something of substance to say to her baby. It's the baby growing inside her that begins to wake her up, that causes her to start thinking about things in a different way. Yslea drifts into the lives of four people who occupy three dilapidated row houses along the train tracks outside of Memphis: "The way their three little row houses sort of leaned in toward each other and the way the paint peeled and some of the windows were covered with cardboard, the row might as easily have been empty."

    The woman you see at the bus stop every morning; the man who reaches for the last newspaper just before you get to it. Everyone you meet, and some you nearly meet, will have an impact on the way your day goes.Small World is the story of a group of men and women, living and working in a city, who are connected through love, work, friendship, or simply by virtue of proximity. We connect with the hearts and minds of characters including an all-coping housewife, a stressed out working mother, a put-upon nanny, a long-suffering journalist, an Indian waiter who dreams of stardom, a grieving shop assistant, a stand-up comic and a psychotic policeman - all of whom speak directly to us about their innermost thoughts, fears and desires in a series of interwoven first-person narratives.

    Eleanor is a health nut of the first stripe, and when in 1907 she journeys to Dr. John Harvey Kellogg's infamous Battle Creek Spa to live out the vegetarian ethos, poor Will goes too. So begins T. Coraghessan Boyle's wickedly comic look at turn-of-the-century fanatics in search of the magic pill to prolong their lives - or the profit to be had from manufacturing it. Brimming with a Dickensian cast of characters and laced with wildly wonderful plot twists, Jane Smiley in The New York Times Book Review called The Road to Wellville "a marvel, enjoyable from beginning to end."

    By arranging their histories like the index entries in a biography, the sequences of cause and effect that have led to their particular neuroses are cunningly revealed. His technique gains him a modicum of success: a thriving practice in Chicago with a client list of thriving stars.But by concentrating on his rival Richard he is blind to the other factors which put both his life and the lives of others at risk...

    It had cracked 100 the day before, and the old weatherman on channel four, the guy who Joyce had said was the most accurate but heard was a pervert, had said today would be hotter by a few degrees."The summer heat in Tucson makes some people dry up and some people boil over. In the dusty, gated desert community of Rancho Sin Vacas (Ranch Without Cattle), a handful of residents are finding that neighborhood life is becoming increasingly bizarre among the crumbling swimming pools, overwatered lawns, and disaffected children.Sixteen-year-old Kendra obsessively hones her body into a perfectly muscled machine, even as she struggles to master a mounting violent streak. Thomas, her increasingly misanthropic brother, rarely leaves the house, all the while cultivating a disturbing little obsession of his own under the front porch. Down the street, Merv is stuck in a rut, thirty years old and still living at home. Lonely and looking for a way out, he's reaching his breaking point over his insomniac mother, whose oddly compulsive behavior with household appliances threatens to wreak havoc on his life.When a strung-out, magic marker sniffing teenager disappears from the neighborhood and rumors of murder surface, these malcontents find themselves in an unlikely alliance that will alter the course of one long, sun-baked summerand perhaps their lives.Funny and disturbing, Modern Ranch Living probes the emptiness of modern American culture, the strange things people do to satisfy their twin hungers for pleasure and oblivion, and the unexpected small acts of kindness they can sometimes perform to ease one another's pain. This delicately deadpan comedy makes brilliantly clear why Mark Jude Poirier was named "the young American writer to watch" by the Times Literary Supplement.