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.

    WHAT are the dangers of getting directions from a fairy tale frog? WHERE do archangels go to kick back and relax? HOW can a garden gnome mend a broken heart? WHO is the last person you’d expect to visit you at Christmas? WHY shouldn’t you let Satan organise your funeral? Find out the answers to these and other pressing questions in this collection of short stories from the authors of the Clovenhoof series.

    In these eight stories, the master burglar indulges his passion for cricket and crime: stealing jewels from a country house, outwitting the law, pilfering from the nouveau riche, and, of course, bowling like a demon-all with the assistance of his plucky sidekick, Bunny. Encouraged by his brother-in-law, Arthur Conan Doyle, to write a series about a public school villain, and influenced by his own experiences at Uppingham, E. W. Hornung created a unique form of crime story, where, in stealing as in sport, it is playing the game that counts, and there is always honor among thieves.

    Fry transforms the adventures of Zeus and the Olympians into emotionally resonant and deeply funny stories, without losing any of their original wonder.This stunning book features classical artwork inspired by the myths, as well as learned notes from the author. Each adventure is infused with Fry's distinctive wit, voice, and writing style. Connoisseurs of the Greek myths will appreciate this fresh-yet-reverential interpretation, while newcomers will feel welcome. Retellings brim with humor and emotion and offer rich cultural contextCelebrating the thrills, grandeur, and unabashed fun of the Greek myths, Mythos breathes life into ancient tales—from Pandora's box to Prometheus's fire.This gorgeous volume invites you to explore a captivating world with the brilliant storyteller Stephen Fry as your guide.

    

    DC Books' catalog primarily includes books in Malayalam literature, and also children's literature, poetry, reference, biography, self-help, yoga, management titles, and foreign translations.

    The planes break, the regs break, metal gets bent, students are lost at sea, and a Top Gun wannabe student, who has four hundred hours of flight instruction, still hasn’t made his first solo flight. “CFI! The Book” is an over-the-top satirical aviation comedy that’s loosely based on real world experiences of flight instruction, but if the FAA asks, this is all strictly fictional.

    In this hilarious book of tongue-in-cheek poetry, the author of the internationally syndicated comic strip Sally Forth helps cats unlock their creative potential and explain their odd behaviour to ignorant humans. With titles like Who Is That on Your Lap?, This Is My Chair, Kneel Before Me, Nudge, and Some of My Best Friends Are Dogs, the poems collected in I Could Pee on This perfectly capture the inner workings of the cat psyche. With photos of the cat authors throughout, this whimsical volume reveals kitties at their wackiest, and most exasperating (but always lovable).

    Beginning on January 1, this book features 365 new holidays, each accompanied by a strange, dark and humorous short story explaining the day you woke up in and how to celebrate it. These 365 daily doses of delight, perversion, and nonsense include Hire Someone Attractive To Pretend To Love You Day, Hang on to Your Wide-Eyed Innocence Day, Sit in Abject Terror Day, and, of course, Cruelty Day.Far more than just a humor book, Happy Cruelty Day! is like a daily instructional manual written by a psychopath. On one page, the book has you joining a community crime watch group in an effort to make friends (it won't work). Flip the page, and you'll find the details of your attempt to rescue your husband from a POW camp (you'll fail). Flip it again, and Happy Cruelty Day! will have important insight into how best to befriend a runaway teen (offer her some soup).These holidays celebrate everything from that pivotal point in your life when everything changes, to the day you're not going to do anything but sit on the edge of your bed and get very drunk. When people realize they've fallen in love, or when they realize their love was just a lie. And of course, when love of whatever incarnation brings an index finger to clench tight around the trigger of a gun.Raw, ridiculous, and laugh-out-loud funny, this is a sharp-edged satire on the subtleties, shallowness, and stupidity of daily life.

    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.

    The Countess Olivia, a woman with her own household, attracts Duke (or Count) Orsino. Two other would-be suitors are her pretentious steward, Malvolio, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek.Onto this scene arrive the twins Viola and Sebastian; caught in a shipwreck, each thinks the other has drowned. Viola disguises herself as a male page and enters Orsino’s service. Orsino sends her as his envoy to Olivia—only to have Olivia fall in love with the messenger. The play complicates, then wonderfully untangles, these relationships.

    Bluff Farmer Giles lives in a land-of-fable England, full of giants and dragons. A reluctant hero like the Brave Little Tailor or Bilbo in The Hobbit, Giles wins a great reputation by firing his blunderbuss at a wandering giant--who retreats not in fear but to avoid this tiresome stinging "insect". One thing leads to another, and despite all his excuses the now famous Giles is called to save his country from the marauding dragon Chrysophylax. He has a legendary anti-dragon sword and a lot of luck, but dragons can be as devious as politicians... Tolkien crammed much sly wit into his little story, plus jokey philological explanations that Giles's amazing adventures are commemorated in Thames Valley placenames like Worminghall and Thame. It's illustrated with nearly 50 line drawings by Paula Baynes: Tolkien loved these, but some look sadly faded here, like fourth-generation photocopies. As a bonus, the anniversary edition includes an introduction telling the story's history, a transcription of the original, unfinished draft, and 23 pages of notes on allusions and names (Chrysophylax means "keeper of gold", which is indeed what dragons do). A pleasant gift book. --David Langford

    Everyone knows that if Scarlett O’Hara had an unlimited text-and-data plan, she’d constantly try to tempt Ashley away from Melanie with suggestive messages. If Mr. Rochester could text Jane Eyre, his ardent missives would obviously be in all-caps. And Daisy Buchanan would not only text while driving, she’d text you to pick her up after she totaled her car. Based on the popular web-feature, Texts from Jane Eyre is a witty, irreverent mashup that brings the characters from your favorite books into the twenty-first century.

    And who is funnier?"- Edna O'BrienThe cream of Flann O'Brien's comic tour-de-force, the Keats and Chapman stories began in O'Brien's column in the Irish Times. He called them "studies in literary pathology" -- monstrously tall tales that explore the very limits of the shaggy dog story. As one critic wrote, they will accumulate the fantasy to the point of sadism, and then cash home with the flat, desolating pun."The Brother" is another of O'Brien's funniest creations. He is the archetypal Dublin man -- an authority on every one of mankind's ills, from the common cold to the court case. Forget the experts, The Brother knows best."The best comic writer I can think of."- S. J. Perelman

    After Mrs. Armitage makes a wish, the Armitage family has “interesting and unusual” experiences every Monday (and the occasional Tuesday). The Board of Incantation tries to take over their house to use as a school for young wizards; the Furies come to stay; and a cutout from a cereal box leads into a beautiful and tragic palace garden. Charming and magical, the uncommon lives of the Armitage family will thrill and delight. Includes Joan Aiken’s “Prelude” from Armitage, Armitage, Fly Away Home, as well as introductions from Joan Aiken’s daughter, Lizza Aiken, and best-selling author Garth Nix. Illustrated by Andi Watson.