Book picks similar to
5d6 by Robert Bevan
fantasy
litrpg
humor
audible
We're All Damaged
Matthew Norman - 2016
He had a solid job. He ran 5Ks for charity. He was living a nice, safe Midwestern existence. And then his wife left him for a handsome paramedic down the street.We’re All Damaged begins after Andy has lost his job, ruined his best friend’s wedding, and moved to New York City, where he lives in a tiny apartment with an angry cat named Jeter that isn’t technically his. But before long he needs to go back to Omaha to say good-bye to his dying grandfather.Back home, Andy is confronted with his past, which includes his ex, his ex’s new boyfriend, his right-wing talk-radio-host mother, his parents’ crumbling marriage, and his still-angry best friend.As if these old problems weren’t enough, Andy encounters an entirely new complication: Daisy. She has fifteen tattoos, no job, and her own difficult past. But she claims she is the only person who can help Andy be happy again, if only she weren’t hiding a huge secret that will mess things up even more. Andy Carter needs a second chance at life, and Daisy—and the person Daisy pushes Andy to become—may be his last chance to set things right.
Nostradamus Ate My Hamster
Robert Rankin - 1996
He got Brentford. He wanted Spielberg. He got Fudgepacker. He got who?Fudgepacker. Ernest Fudgepacker. Directed all those weird B-movies back in the Fifties. Whatever happened to him? He retired. Opened Fudgepacker's Emporium, a prop house catering to the more bizarre needs of the film industry. Amazing place. There you could hire anything from shrunken heads to a pickled homunculus. Trouble is, they just don't make that kind of movie any more. Ernie's going bust. In fact, if he can't come up with some big bucks pretty damn quick, he's going to lose the business. It will take a miracle to save him now.Young Master Robert believes in miracles. He has a dream. He wants to star in movies alongside The Greats. The Golden Greats. The dead Golden Greats. He's a boy boffin with computers and he's invented this system that could put the stars of yesteryear right back up there on the screen. Next to him. He's written a script and he's got piles of money (his dad owns the brewery), but Hollywood isn't keen. And Mr Spielberg didn't ring back. The lad needs a director and Ernie needs the dosh, and Ernie only lives up the road. Could this be the perfect partnership?Well, it could be...but then this is Brentford and when you make movies in this neck of the woods, you can be sure of a BIG surprise. And when Brentford takes on Hollywood, then Hollywood had better pack up and head for the hills.
Envy of Angels
Matt Wallace - 2015
It's like I dropped a heroic dose of acid and turned on the Food Network for eight hours. It's funny and demented and sticks in you like a pinbone. Matt Wallace writes like someone just jammed a needle full of adrenaline in his heart - and then, in yours. From this point forward, I'll read anything this guy writes."-Chuck Wendig, author of BLACKBIRDS and ZER0ES"No one makes me think, 'Dammit, I should have thought of that!' like Matt Wallace. The Sin du Jour series is something I read with equal amounts of envy and delight." - Mur Lafferty, Campbell Award winning author of THE SHAMBLING GUIDE TO NEW YORK CITY
A Load of Hooey
Bob Odenkirk - 2014
Show with Bob and David, and many other seminal TV shows. This book, his first, is a spleen-bruisingly funny omnibus that ranges from absurdist monologues (“Martin Luther King, Jr’s Worst Speech Ever”) to intentionally bad theater (“Hitler Dinner Party: A Play”); from avant-garde fiction (“Obituary for the Creator of Madlibs”) to free-verse poetry that's funnier and more powerful than the work of Calvin Trillin, Jewel, and Robert Louis Stevenson combined.Odenkirk's debut resembles nothing so much as a hilarious new sketch comedy show that’s exclusively available as a streaming video for your mind. As Odenkirk himself writes in “The Second Coming of Jesus and Lazarus,” it is a book “to be read aloud to yourself in the voice of Bob Newhart.”
Orconomics
J. Zachary Pike - 2014
For the licensed wizards and warriors of Arth, slaying and looting the forces of evil is just a job. The Heroes' Guild has turned adventuring into a career, selling the rights to monsters’ hoards of treasure as investment opportunities. Corporations spend immense sums sponsoring heroes to undertake quests, betting they’ll reap the profits in plunder funds when the loot is divvied up.Questing was all business for famous Dwarven berserker Gorm Ingerson, until a botched expedition wiped out his party, disgraced his name, and reduced him to a thieving vagabond. Twenty years later, a chance encounter sees Gorm forcibly recruited by a priest of a mad goddess to undertake a quest that has a reputation for getting heroes killed. But there’s more to Gorm’s new job than an insane prophecy; powerful corporations and governments have shown an unusual interest in the job. Gorm might be able to turn a bad deal into a golden opportunity and win back the fame and fortune he lost so long ago.Promising fun, fantasy, and financial calamity, Orconomics: A Satire is the first book in The Dark Profit Saga, an economically epic trilogy.
The Shell Game
Janet Evanovich - 2014
Find out how FBI Special Agent Kate O’Hare and con artist Nicolas Fox first met in this exclusive eBook original short story! Con man Nick Fox is after Garson Klepper’s golden Peruvian relics. For Fox, convincing Klepper to hire him as security for the relocation of the relics to the Getty museum in L.A. was easy. Problem is, Fox wasn’t planning on Klepper also enlisting the help of the FBI. Fox also wasn’t planning on being paired up with rookie special agent Kate O’Hare. She’s smart, she’s tenacious, and when she’s conned, she holds a grudge. Life for Fox and O’Hare will never be the same again. The Shell Game is a prequel to the riveting series from Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg.
Space Team
Barry J. Hutchison - 2016
Imprisoned and forced to share a cell with a cannibalistic serial killer, Cal thinks things can't possibly get any worse. He is wrong. It’s not until two-thirds of the human race is wiped out and Cal is abducted by aliens that his day really starts to go downhill. Whisked across the galaxy, Cal is thrown into a team of some of the sector's most notorious villains and scumbags. Their mission should be simple enough, but as one screw-up leads to another, they find themselves in a frantic battle to save an entire alien civilization - and its god - from total annihilation. A hilarious, fast-paced space adventure from the author the Independent calls "the new Terry Pratchett."
The Man With Two Left Feet and Other Stories
P.G. Wodehouse - 1917
It is here that Jeeves makes his first appearance with these unremarkable words: "Mrs. Gregson to see you, sir." Years later, when Jeeves became a household name, Wodehouse said he blushed to think of the off-hand way he had treated the man at their first encounter...In the story "Extricating Young Gussie," we find Bertie Wooster's redoubtable Aunt Agatha "who had an eye like a man-eating fish and had got amoral suasion down to a fine point." The other stories are also fine vintage Wodehouse: the romance between a lovely girl and a would-be playwright, the rivalry between the ugly policeman and Alf the romeo milkman, and the plight of Henry in the title piece, The Man with Two Left Feet, who fell in love with a dance hostess.
Graveyard Shift
Angela Roquet - 2009
She resides in Limbo City, the modern capital of the collective afterlives, where she likes to stick it to the man (the legendary Grim Reaper himself) by harvesting the bare minimum of souls required of her. She’d much rather be hanging out with Gabriel, her favorite archangel, at Purgatory Lounge. But when a shocking promotion falls in Lana's lap, she learns something that could unravel the very fabric of Eternity. If the job isn’t completed, there could be some real hell to pay.
Driving Mr. Dead
Molly Harper - 2011
Miranda's assignment? Driving Collin Sutherland, the world's most fastidious vampire from Washington to Kentucky, so he can deliver a mysterious black case to Council official Ophelia Lambert. Collin, a paranoid, aristocratic vampire with a debilitating fear of flying, refuses to let the case out of his sight. Miranda needs this time on the road to decide whether to permanently cut her ties with the fiance that had an "emotional affair" with a childhood pal, but Collin’s neatnik tendencies are driving her around the bend. The man acts as if leaving a fast food wrapped on the passenger seat is reason for a full-on CDC de-contamination scrub-down of the car. All she can do is promise to stop intentionally doing the things that make his stiff upper lip twitch with irritation. As more and more mishaps occur on the road trip from hell, Miranda and Collin work together to meet his delivery deadline. Hotel rooms are destroyed. Beloved cars are defiled. And somewhere along the line, client-driver hostilities become snarky flirtation. Will Collin and Miranda make it to the Hollow in one piece? And if they do, will Miranda leave old, safe relationships behind for something new and well, just plain weird?
Themes and Variations
David Sedaris - 2020
Someday, when it was his turn at the table, he’d connect with his readers. The experience has been even more revealing than he’d hoped.In this hilarious and perceptive essay, the celebrated humorist reflects on the unusual patterns of forced socialization between author and audience, and the obligations and sometimes surprising returns of not-so-chance encounters with strangers: jokes, secrets, insights, and even charity.
The Portable Door
Tom Holt - 2003
Wells he has no idea what trouble lies in store. Because he is about to discover that the apparently respectable establishment now paying his salary is in fact a front for a deeply sinister organization that has a mighty peculiar agenda. It seems that half the time his bosses are away with the fairies. But they're not, of course. They're away with the goblins. Tom Holt, Master of the Comic Fantasy Novel, cordially invites you to join him in his world of madness by reading his next hilarious masterpiece.
Carrots
Colleen Helme - 2011
Her life is organized and predictable, revolving around her husband and two children. All that changes the day she stops at the grocery store for some carrots. As the cashier rings up her purchases, a gunman is busy robbing the bank inside the store. When a customer grabs the robber's mask, he is shot and everyone runs for cover. Everyone except Shelby, who finds herself face to face with the killer. The next thing she knows, she's lying on the floor with a bullet wound to her head. Luckily, the bullet only grazes her scalp, and she doesn't suspect any lasting affects until later, when she suddenly 'hears' what people are thinking. With this uncanny ability, her life takes on a whole new dimension. Her kids think she's bossy and too old to understand them, but that's nothing compared to her husband. He says he loves her, but what is it about the redhead at work that he doesn't want her to know? As if that isn't enough, the gunman knows she can identify him, and he's out to silence her forever. In her fight to stay alive, she is saved from certain death by a handsome hit-man with ties to organized crime. This pulls Shelby even deeper into danger, where knowing someone's thoughts can not only hurt her feelings, but get her killed.
Witch Weigh
Caroline Mickelson - 2012
Magical spells aside, she’s snarky and selfish, and the other witches in her silent spell coven are fed up with her. Their plan to reform Tessa involves taking away her magic, saddling her with one hundred extra pounds and sending her to a weight loss spa. For good measure they call in Liam Kennedy, a charming and sexy fairy godfather, to teach her some manners. Desperate to regain her magic and determined to shed the weight, Tessa soon realizes that protecting her heart from Liam will prove to be her greatest challenge.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
James Thurber - 1939
A henpecked husband copes with the frustrations of his dull life by imagining he is a fearless airplane pilot, a brilliant doctor, and other dashing figures.