It is here that Laxman's sense of parodyand satire find some of their finest expressions. A selection of these rare and masterly cartoons which comment caustically on our social and political character were togethter in the first volume of "laugh with Laxman", and proved to be immensly popular. This is the second volume in the series replete with timeless gems that continue to amuse.

    In the festering sewers below a darker game is afoot: a Wall Street takeover artist has been murdered, and Gant’s crusading ex-wife, Joan Fine, has been hired to find out why. The year is 2023, and Ayn Rand has been resurrected and bottled in a hurricane lamp to serve as Joan's assistant; an eco-terrorist named Philo Dufrense travels in a pink-and-green submarine designed by Howard Hughes; a Volkswagen Beetle is possessed by the spirit of Abbey Hoffman; Meisterbrau, a mutant great white shark, is running loose in the sewers beneath Times Square; and a one-armed 181-year-old Civil War veteran joins Joan and Ayn in their quest for the truth. All of whom, and many more besides, are caught up in a vast conspiracy involving Walt Disney, J. Edgar Hoover, and a mob of homicidal robots.

    Highly recommended!" ― Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of Patient Zero and Rot & Ruin JACK WOULD DO ANYTHING FOR DUST―MAYBE EVEN SAVE THE WORLD! Dead Jack and the Pandemonium Device kicks off a wild and irreverent fantasy / horror series following the exploits of a zombie detective and his homunculus frenemy. In the fast-paced novel, the drug-addicted zombie detective and his shapeshifting sidekick battle and outsmart supernatural creatures, from tough-guy leprechauns to sex-obsessed shark women and insane bat gods, in a hellish, alternate New York City of the 1940s. The series is being developed for film and TV. Read Dead Jack and the Pandemonium Device now before it hits the screen! The book also features three interior illustrations.

    29 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more – everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Naked. This detailed literature summary also contains Topics for Discussion and a Free Quiz on Naked by David Sedaris.

    Those who still believe in them are often wildly misinformed. So what do you think will happen when Johnny McNormalpants finds himself face to face with a bloodthirsty vampire? Probably crap his pants, but then what? An informed citizen would know exactly what to do in this situation. If only there was some way to enlighten the public about this often forgotten subject, preferably in the form of a mock informative guide or something. From Matt Melvin, one of the creators of Explosm.net and the hit online comic Cyanide & Happiness, comes Dracula Is A Racist, the definitive guide to vampires, answering those gravely important questions that keep you up at night. . . Was Dracula really a racist?How do vampires do their hair if they don't have any reflection?Is it gross for immortals to be attracted to high school girls if they're stuck in a 17-year-old body?Was Sesame Street ever truly safe from The Count?Is dressing in all black and acting snobby toward everyone enough to fake being a vampire?Just how much more badass are vampires than zombies?Dracula Is A Racist is the essential vampire handbook that digs up all the dirt and backs it up with hard vampirical evidence. That's totally true. Really. Matt Melvin is a 25-year-old T-shirt aficionado and sideburn enthusiast. Along with three other dudes, he runs Explosm.net, a pretty awesome website full of awesome things. When not adding even more filth to the Internet, he enjoys criticizing and complaining about movies, listening to music and inventing obscure types of niche sexual acts. He currently lives in San Diego. He is very tall."

    . . in which Sydney Padua transforms one of the most compelling scientific collaborations into a hilarious series of adventures. Meet Victorian London’s most dynamic duo: Charles Babbage, the unrealized inventor of the computer, and his accomplice, Ada, Countess of Lovelace, the peculiar protoprogrammer and daughter of Lord Byron. When Lovelace translated a description of Babbage’s plans for an enormous mechanical calculating machine in 1842, she added annotations three times longer than the original work. Her footnotes contained the first appearance of the general computing theory, a hundred years before an actual computer was built. Sadly, Lovelace died of cancer a decade after publishing the paper, and Babbage never built any of his machines. But do not despair! The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage presents a rollicking alternate reality in which Lovelace and Babbage do build the Difference Engine and then use it to build runaway economic models, battle the scourge of spelling errors, explore the wilder realms of mathematics, and, of course, fight crime—for the sake of both London and science. Complete with extensive footnotes that rival those penned by Lovelace herself, historical curiosities, and never-before-seen diagrams of Babbage’s mechanical, steam-powered computer, The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage is wonderfully whimsical, utterly unusual, and, above all, entirely irresistible.(With black-and-white illustrations throughout.)

    So has her talent for clever dialogue, and pointed social commentary with a light touch.The Anvil of the World is her first fantasy novel, a journey across a fantastic landscape filled with bizarre creatures, human and otherwise. It is the tale of Smith, of the large extended family of Smiths, of the Children of the Sun. They are a race given to blood feuds, and Smith was formerly an extremely successful assassin. Now he has wearied of his work and is trying to retire in another country, to live an honest life in obscurity in spite of all those who have sworn to kill him.His problems begin when he agrees to be the master of a caravan from the inland city of Troon to the seaside city of Salesh. The caravan is dogged with murder, magic, and the brooding image of the Master of the Mountain, a powerful demon, looking down from his mountain kingdom upon the greenlands and the travelers passing below. In Salesh, Smith becomes an innkeeper, but on the journey he befriended the young Lord Ermenwyr, a decadent demonic half-breed. Each time Ermenwyr turns up, he brings new trouble with him.The outgrowth of stories Baker has been writing since childhood, as engaging as Tolkien and yet nothing like him, Smith's adventure is certainly the only fantasy on record with a white-uniformed nurse, gourmet cuisine, one hundred and forty-four glass butterflies, and a steamboat. This is a book filled with intrigue, romance, sudden violence, and moments of emotional impact, a cast of charming characters, and echoes of the fantasy tradition from Lord Dunsany and Fritz Leiber to Jack Vance and Roger Zelazny.

    This book goes through all the miserable people you love to hate. Do you hate morning people? How about the guy who doesn’t wipe the ketchup top after using it? Or people who just don’t care? After all, isn’t hating just another form of caring?It's true: Misery does love company. But what kind of company can you keep if you can't stand anyone? This kind. No matter who they are or what they do that sets you off and gets you going, you'll find 'em inside. From rich people who are dicks to guys named Rich who go by Dick to those who are always cold to people who are just hot, no one is safe. But one thing is certain—everyone will find someone they equally despise. And you're gonna love it, period.

    Ranging from the depths of the ocean to the most arid corners of the land, Caspar Henderson captures the beauty and bizzareness of the many living forms we thought we knew and some we could never have contemplated, inviting us to better imagine the precarious world we inhabit.A witty, vivid blend of cutting edge natural history and meditative reflections, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings is infectious and celebratory about the sheer ingenuity and variety of life.

    On assignment in West Africa in a post-9/11 world, he is tasked with hunting down the terrorist Omar al-Suqqit, who is looking to launch his group of ragtag militants onto the international jihadi stage. But chasing a terrorist proves an easier challenge than managing his agency’s bureaucracy. Omar, meanwhile, faces his own bureaucratic struggles as he joins forces with a global terrorist group that begins micro-managing its franchises in an effort to streamline attacks. When Victor appears on his own country’s Terrorist Watch List and Omar finds himself struggling to write “Lessons Learned” in the suicide bomber program, they each realize they might have a common enemy: red tape.

    Working as an investigative reporter for the newspaper The Word, Spider attacks the injustices of his surreal 23rd Century surroundings. Combining black humor, life-threatening situations, and moral ambiguity, this book is the first look into the mind of an outlaw journalist and the world he seeks to destroy.

    Gurdjieff's self-observation exercises, Alfred Korzybskis general semantics, Aleister Crowley's magical theorems, and the several disciplines of Yoga; not to mention Christian Science, relativity, quantum mechanics, and many other approaches to understanding the world around us! That is exactly what Robert Anton Wilson does in Prometheus Rising. In short, this is a book about how the human mind works and what you can do to make the most of yours.

    Sixty-five million years ago, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, there lived a small mammal, a proto-primate of the species Purgatorius. From this humble beginning, Baxter traces the human lineage forward through time. The adventure that unfolds is a gripping odyssey governed by chance and competition, a perilous journey to an uncertain destination along a route beset by sudden and catastrophic upheavals. It is a route that ends, for most species, in stagnation or extinction. Why should humanity escape this fate?

    The "Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood (York Notes Advanced - NOT THE NOVEL)

     Retired stage magician turned professional mystic debunker, John Barker, finds his sceptical beliefs under fire when he encounters a strange man who claims to be Merlin. After several unsuccessful attempts to rid himself of his increasingly unpredictable companion, John finally relents and agrees to assist in the man’s crazy mission, to find the true grave of the mythical King Arthur. Following a hidden code contained within the text of a soft porn novel, they gather a growing entourage of hippies, mystic seekers and alien hunters as they leave a trail of chaos across the south west of England. When the group comes to the attention of a TV Reality Show producer looking to make a fast profit out of harmless eccentrics and fading celebrities, John decides it’s time to take charge and prove one way or the other, the identity of this mysterious person who claims to be a fictional wizard. “Whose reality is this anyway?” is a warm-hearted tale of what it means to be an individual and to follow one’s dreams. With his trademark cast of oddball characters and absurd situations, David Luddington once more transports us into a world where who you are is more important than what you are. “David Luddington epitomizes the elusive quality of writing that he perpetuates - the British Comedy.” – Grady Harp