Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris Summary & Study Guide


BookRags - 2010
    61 pages of summaries and analysis on Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris.This study guide includes the following sections: Plot Summary, Chapter Summaries & Analysis, Characters, Objects/Places, Themes, Style, Quotes, and Topics for Discussion.

Redtooth


Brian Rathbone - 2011
    Be careful what you put in your ears...In this humorous short story, a trip to the pawnshop sends Bob Hanks on an unexpected adventure.Also from this author: The World of Godsland fantasy seriesThe Dawning of Power trilogy (Omnibus Edition available)Call of the HeraldInherited DangerDragon OreThe Balance of Power trilogy (Omnibus Edition available)RegentFeralRegal

A Christmas at Pasidian Palace


S.L. Morgan - 2016
    With peace in their lands, Levi and Reece have been living a life of serenity and peace, raising their three young children at Oxley Manor. Everything seems perfect and well until Levi realizes something: a holiday he knows his wife as always loved on her home planet of Earth has never been celebrated in his realm. In fact, Reece hasn't had the privilege of enjoying her favorite holiday in over six years, and Levi vows to change that. But can he? With his sister's wedding at hand, his own daughter professing her love for another as well, and wanting to have a new holiday introduced to Pemdas...Levi is determined to find a way to make all of this work no matter the sacrifices he must make.

The Immortal Bard


Isaac Asimov - 1954
    It was first published in the May 1954 issue of Universe Science Fiction, and has since been republished in several collections and anthologies, including Earth Is Room Enough (1957) and The Best Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov (1986). Like many of his stories, it is told as a conversation, in this case between two professors at a college faculty's annual Christmas party.It is likely that Asimov wrote this short story after seeing how literary academia viewed his own writing. His autobiography, In Memory Yet Green, describes how science fiction gradually became more "respectable", while at the same time, professors of literary studies wrote things about SF — even about Asimov's own stories — which he completely failed to grasp. "The Immortal Bard" is an expression of Asimov's own deep admiration for William Shakespeare which also satirizes the interpretations built upon Shakespeare's work — such as symbolic, Freudian, and New Critical.

The Dalkey Archive


Flann O'Brien - 1964
    W. Dunne's and Albert Einstein's views on time and relativity, and the lives and works of Saint Augustine and James Joyce, both of whom have speaking parts in the novel. Bewildering? Yes, but as O'Brien insists, "a measure of bewilderment is part of the job of literature."

Discworld Companion


Terry Pratchett - 1994
    From the great city of Ankh-Morpork, featuring a river you could skateboard across if it wasn't so knobbly, to the distant Ramtop Mountains and mysterious Counterweight Continent, the Discworld is a place where Death waits around every corner... For safety's sake, you need a guide. And here it is. Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs, respectively chronicler and cartographer of the Discworld, have the produced the one and only definitive guide to the flat planet - its geography, its flora and fauna, its (many) religions, its architecture and customs, and its outstanding personalities. What is a Quantum Weather Butterfly? What does Death keep on his desk? Would you drink Bearhugger's Homeopathic Sipping Whiskey? How are the kings of Ankh-Morpork different from the kings of Ankh? Everything the Discworld traveller needs to know is contained in these pages, together with useful maps and illustrations of significant places and emblems in this unique world.

Hail! Hail!


Harry Turtledove - 2018
     Fresh from Duck Soup (1933), Julius, Leonard, Arthur and Herbert Marx - or as the world knows them, Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo - are transported by a freak electrical storm to Nacogdoches, Texas in the year 1826. Landing in the midst of the Fredonian Rebellion (the first attempt by settlers in Texas to secede from Mexico) and into the company of the only other Jewish person in town, they are in deep dreck. Falling in with Stephen F. Austin and inadvertently filling his head with knowledge of what is to come, our heroes risk tampering with the future of Texas, and perhaps the entire U.S.A., in their quest to return to their own time. Will they find their way back? Or will they be doomed to live out their lives without indoor plumbing?

Death Warmed Over


Kevin J. Anderson - 2012
    Dan Chambeaux. Taking on the creepiest of cases in the Unnatural Quarter with a human lawyer for a partner and a ghost for a girlfriend, Chambeaux redefines "dead on arrival." But just because he was murdered doesn't mean he'd leave his clients in the lurch. Besides, zombies are so good at lurching. Now he's back from the dead and back in business--with a caseload that's downright unnatural. A resurrected mummy is suing the museum that put him on display. Two witches, victims of a curse gone terribly wrong, seek restitution from a publisher for not using "spell check" on its magical tomes. And he's got to figure out a very personal question--Who killed him? For Dan Chambeaux, it's all in a day's work. (Still, does everybody have to call him "Shamble"?) Funny, fresh, and irresistible, this cadaverous caper puts the P.I. in R.I.P. . ..with a vengeance. "Wickedly funny, deviously twisted and enormously satisfying. This is a big juicy bite of zombie goodness. Two decaying thumbs up!"--Jonathan Maberry"Anderson has become the literary equivalent of Quentin Tarantino in the fantasy adventure genre."--The Daily Rotation"An unpredictable walk on the weird side. Prepare to be entertained." --Charlaine Harris

All My Friends are Superheroes


Andrew Kaufman - 2003
    Tom even married a superhero, the Perfectionist. But at their wedding, the Perfectionist was hypnotized (by ex-boyfriend Hypno, of course) to believe that Tom is invisible. Nothing he does can make her see him. Six months later, she's sure that Tom has abandoned her.So she's moving to Vancouver. She'll use her superpower to make Vancouver perfect and leave all the heartbreak in Toronto. With no idea Tom's beside her, she boards an airplane in Toronto. Tom has until the wheels touch the ground in Vancouver to convince her he's visible, or he loses her forever.

The Works of Andre Norton


Andre Norton - 2009
    12 stories by science fiction author Andre Norton, together in one collection, with an active table of contents:The Defiant AgentsThe Gifts of AstiKey Out of TimePlague ShipRalestone LuckRebel SpursRide Proud, Rebel!Star BornStar HunterStorm Over WarlockThe Time TradersVoodoo Planet

The Afterlife Coach


Susan E. Paul - 2017
    For Claire Anderson, this crosses the line. To make matters worse, they’re on the lam and can’t be returned to sender until In Between, the afterlife way station, can arrange transportation to pick them up. In the meantime, Claire tries to contain this motley crew, hoping to stave off an international incident. How do they manage to walk among us? Will Claire succeed in repatriating them? And at what cost? The Afterlife Coach is a humorous tale of second chances, self-awareness and, for those among us who make bad choices, demonstrates just how hard it is to die happily ever after.

Making History


Stephen Fry - 1996
    And with their success is launched a brave new world that is in some ways better than ours--but in most ways even worse. Fry's experiment in history makes for his most ambitious novel yet, and his most affecting. His first book to be set mostly in America, it is a thriller with a funny streak, a futuristic fantasy based on one of mankind's darkest realities. It is, in every sense, a story of our times.

The Fermata


Nicholson Baker - 1994
    He is hard at work on his autobiography, The Fermata, which proves in the telling to be a very provocative, very funny and altogether morally confused piece of work.Hilarious and totally original, Nicholson Baker's new novel is a triumphant comedy about sexual fantasy and fantastic sexuality.

Fat Vampire Value Meal


Johnny B. Truant - 2013
    And when Maurice turns Reginald to save his life, it's just Reginald's own further bad luck that he wakes up to discover he's become the slowest, weakest, most out-of-shape vampire ever born, doomed to "heal" to his corpulent self for all of eternity.As Reginald struggles with the downsides of being a fat vampire -- too slow to catch people to feed on, mocked by those he tries to glamour, assaulted by his intended prey and left for undead -- he discovers in himself rare powers that few vampires have… and just in time too, because the Vampire Council might just want his head for being an inferior representative of their race. Fat Vampire is the story of an unlikely hero who, after having an imperfect eternity shoved into his grease-stained hands, must learn to turn the afterlife's lemons into tasty lemon danishes.

The Egg Said Nothing


Caris O'Malley - 2010
    He's your average shut-in with a penchant for late night television and looting local fountains for coins. With eight locks on his door and newspapers covering his windows, he's more than a bit paranoid too.His wasn't a great life, but it was comfortable—at least it was until the morning he awoke with an egg between his legs. But what might have been a curse becomes a charm as this unlikely event leads him to all night diner, where he finds inedible pie, undrinkable coffee, and the girl of his dreams.But can this unexpected chance at love survive after the egg cracks and time itself turns against him, dead-set on rerouting history and putting a shovel to the face of the one person who could bring real and lasting change to Manny's world?