Lloyd, our permanently pilled-up protagonist, pushes his weekends to breaking point and beyond in this frazzled trip through Scottish clubland. He experiences the vertiginous uppers and downers of the Second Summer of Love, dabbles in a spot of disc jockeying and closes in, gradually, on some kind of redemption…Selected from Irvine Welsh's novel Ecstasy.VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us humanAlso in the Vintage Minis series:Home by Salman RushdieDreams by Sigmund FreudEating by Nigella LawsonWork by Joseph Heller

    Then got out of bed and had a brisk rub down with the pumice stone. I opened the curtains and saw that the sun was shining brightly. (A suspicion is growing in my mind that the BBC is not to be trusted.)Margaret Hilda Roberts is a rather ambitious 14 � year old grocer's daughter from Grantham. She can't abide laziness, finds four hours of chemistry homework delightful and believes she is of royal birth - or at least destined for great things. But Margaret knows that good things never come to those who wait . . .These are the secret diary entries of a girl born into an ordinary life, yet who might just go on to become something really rather extraordinary, and she is brilliantly brought vividly to life by bestselling author Sue Townsend, Britain's favourite comic writer for over three decades.'Essential reading for Mole followers' Times Educational Supplement'Wonderfully funny and sharp as knives' Sunday TimesSue Townsend is Britain's favourite comic author. Her hugely successful novels include eight Adrian Mole books, The Public Confessions of a Middle-Aged Woman (Aged 55�), Number Ten, Ghost Children, The Queen and I, Queen Camilla and The Woman Who Went to Bed For a Year, all of which are highly acclaimed bestsellers. She has also written numerous well-received plays. She lives in Leicester, where she was born and grew up.

    She's also about six stone overweight. When she realises she can't cross her legs, has trouble bending over to tie her shoelaces without wheezing like an elderly chain-smoker, and discovers that even her hands and feet look fat, it's time to take action. But what action? She's tried every diet under the sun. This is the hysterical story of what happens when Mary joins 'Fat Club' where she meets a cast of funny characters and one particular man who catches her eye. The story is laugh-out-loud funny and will resonate with anyone who has dieted, tried to keep up with any sort of exercise programme or spent 10 minutes in a changing room trying to extricate herself from a way too-small garment that she ambitiously tried on and is now completely stuck in. Bernice Bloom is the big, new name in comedy writing...this is the first full-length novel after her series of laugh-out-loud mini books.

    "Trap of Gold" Wetherton has been three months out of Horsehead before he finds his first color. The gold is located at the head of a fan laying in a gigantic crack in a granite upthrust that resembles a fantastic ruin. This crumbling granite is slashed with a vein of quartz that is literally laced with gold! The problem is that the granite upthrust is unstable, and taking out the quartz might bring the whole thing tumbling down. "Trail to Pie Town" Dusty Barron rides his steel-dust stallion at full gallop out of town. Behind him, a man lies bleeding on the floor of a saloon. Dan Hickman had called him yellow and gone for a gun, but Dan was a mite slow. Maybe if Emmett Fisk and Gus Mattis hadn't appeared just as he was making a break from the saloon, he could have explained himself. But they reached for their guns when they saw him, and Dusty had hit the desert road. The dead man had relatives in the area, and now it looked like he was going to be facing a clan war.

    Now I know why my dog likes her better. 2. I wish this were the worst thing she’d ever told me. About the book In “The Warlizard Chronicles”, Warlizard tells the tales of a misspent youth, from the story of his “dog-gasmic” ex-fiancée to the logic of serving as a German linguist in Iraq. The stories are light, fast-paced, graphic, and not remotely safe for work. You have been warned. Reader feedback: - “You tell all women that story? You should wash out your mouth!” - “I think I could listen to your stories for hours.” - “So you owe your marriage to the people who brought down the world trade center?” - “I have nothing else I can add or ask, except MORE STORIES.” - “Holy s**t. I wish I was you.” - “You slept with another man's wife and then lied to him about it, and can say with a straight face it was the right thing to do?” - “Godda***t, I spewed out laughter too loud at work, now I have to leave because everyone knows I'm not doing s**t. F*** this is hilarious, and disconcerting, at the same time.” - “He is the most interesting man in the world.” - “I feel like a failure reading these stories, they're awesome.” - “Your life experience makes me feel good. You good sir are somewhat of a new idol of mine. Nothing much you can do about that. Have a good day sir.” - “Warlizard doesn't always drink beer, but when he does, he prefers Dos Equis.” - “I just can't wrap my mind around the fact that not only a story like this exists but that a Reddit regular would be living it. And it kinda has this enthusiastic ‘and then it happened...’ moments in it that kinda style like you'd write fiction on the go.” - “This guy is either the most creative man in the world or the most interesting man in the world. Either way...”

    He’s taken to hospital for treatment. Then people start trying to assassinate him.The man has to find out why, how to get them to stop, and what the CIA has to do with all this. There’s also the little problem of working out who he used to be, and why that changed. Meanwhile, his girlfriend Piper and best friend Lance are trying to find him…Jonathon Fairfax – still the world’s most socially awkward hero – is back. If only he knew.‘A hugely entertaining novel … a surprising, yet strangely fitting, progression to the Jonathon Fairfax story.’ Scott Pack (former head buyer for Waterstones)Pick up the latest Jonathon Fairfax novel – sequel to two Amazon bestsellers: The Perpetual Astonishment of Jonathon Fairfax (‘A comic gem’ Stylist, ‘You can’t help being tickled’ The Guardian, Bath Novel Award shortlist) and Jonathon Fairfax Must Be Destroyed (‘A funny, daft-yet-relatable, nerve-jangly thriller’ Emerald Street).*That’s a trashcan or dumpster, for American readers.The Jonathon Fairfax novels can be read in any order.

    Unfortunately, due to an exercise allergy, and an eating obsession, it isn’t going to be as easy as he first thought. Throw in a battle of wits with his neighbour’s cat over toilet rights to his garden, a son who lives in the shed and dreams of being discovered on The X Factor, a stroppy teenage daughter with a Wayne Rooney fixation, a wife who doesn’t want to sleep with him anymore, and an amorous work colleague who does, and you have all the ingredients to Sex, Lies and Chocolate Cakes: The Secret Eater’s Diary.

    Jarvis may be an all-round irritant, but he's harmless & deep down he's got a heart of gold. As his oldest (& only) friend reflects on his life with Jarvis Ham, he wonders what it would have been like if they had never met.

    After graduating from Cambridge in 1903, he contributed humourous verse and whimsical essays to the British humour magazine Punch, joining the staff in 1906 and becoming an assistant editor. During this period he published 18 plays and 3 novels, including the murder mystery The Red House Mystery (1922). In 1924, he produced a collection of children[s poems When We Were Very Young. However he is most famous for his two Pooh books Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928), about a boy named Christopher Robin and various characters inspired by his son[s stuffed animals. Amongst his other works are Once a Week (1914), The Sunny Side (1921) and The Dover Road (1922).

    A short story on forbidden love

    Men and films, and the dreams that films embody, form the background to the stories.

    "This drowsy denison of the realms of the Pharaohs will do us no harm." And he remained by the tank. What is more, he took his glove and began tickling the crocodile's nose with it, wishing, as he said afterwards, to induce him to snort.Fyodor Mikhailovitch Dostoyevsky is best known for his exploration of the human dark side of the psyche, but this collection shows he is equally adept at sarcastic and absurdist commentary.

    M. Forster's most celebrated works. Forster explores love among a cast of eccentric characters gathered in an Italian pension and in a corner of Surrey, England. Caught up in a world of social snobbery, Lucy Honeychurch must make a decision that will decide the course of her future: She is forced to choose between convention and passion.

    His work has been seen by millions—no, hundreds of millions—in the pages of Playboy, The New Yorker, Punch, The National Lampoon, and many other magazines; there is no telling, really, how many readers he has corrupted or comforted. He is revered for his playfully sinister take on childhood, adulthood, men, women, and monsters. His brand of humor makes you laugh until you cry. And it’s about time that a collection of his cartoons was published that did justice to his vast body of work.When Gahan Wilson walked into Hugh Hefner’s office in 1957, he sat down as Hefner was on the phone, gently rejecting a submission to his new gentlemen’s magazine: “I think it’s very well-written and I liked it very much,” Hefner reportedly said, “but it’s anti-sin. And I’m afraid we’re pro-sin.” Wilson knew, at that moment, that he had found a kindred spirit and a potential home for his cartoons. And indeed he had; Wilson appeared in every issue of Playboy from the December 1957 issue to today. It has been one of the most fruitful, successful, and long-lived relationships between a contributor and a magazine, ever.Gahan Wilson: 50 Years of Playboy Cartoons features not only every cartoon Wilson drew for Playboy, but all his prose fiction that has appeared in that magazine as well, from his first story in the June 1962 issue, “Horror Trio,” to such classics as “Dracula Country” (September 1978). It also includes the text-and-art features he drew for Playboy, such as his look at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, his take on our country’s “pathology of violence,” and his appreciation of “transplant surgery.”Wilson’s notoriously black sense of comedy is on display throughout the book, leaving no sacred cow unturned (an image curiously absent in the book), ridiculing everything from state sponsored executions to the sober precincts of the nouveau rich, from teenage dating to police line-ups, with scalding and hilarious satirical jabs. Although Wilson is known as an artist who relishes the creepy side of modern life, this three-volume set truly demonstrates the depth and breadth of his range—from illustrating private angst we never knew we had (when you eat a steak, just whom are you eating?) to the ironic and deadpan take on horrifying public issues (ecological disaster, nuclear destruction anyone?).Gahan Wilson has been peeling back the troubling layers of modern life with his incongruously playful and unnerving cartoons, assailing our deepest fears and our most inane follies. This three-volume set is a testament to one of the funniest—and wickedly disturbing—cartoonists alive.Nominated for two 2010 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards (Best Archival Collection/Project: Strips; Best Publication Design).

    Packed full of zingers and hilarious illustrations, if this doesn't put a smile on your face, nothing will. What's not to like:The other day someone left a piece of plasticine in my dressing room. I didn't know what to make of it. I'm against hunting. I'm actually a hunt saboteur. I go out the night before and shoot the fox. I saw this bloke chatting up a cheetah. He was trying to pull a fast one. Black holes. I don't know what people see in them. So I fancied a game of darts with my mate. He said, 'Nearest the bull goes first.' He went 'Baah' and I went 'Moo'. He said 'You're closest.' Velcro. What a rip-off. Black Beauty. He's a dark horse. I've got a sponge front door. Hey, don't knock it.