Book picks similar to
Balloon Animals by Jonathan Dunne
fiction
humor
contemporary
humour
Twenty-one Truths About Love
Matthew Dicks - 2019
But Dan doesn’t just want to save his failing bookstore and his family’s finances he wants to do something special.Dan is an obsessive list maker; his story unfolds entirely in his lists, which are brimming with Dan’s hilarious sense of humor, unique world-view, and deeply personal thoughts. When read in full, his lists paint a picture of a man struggling to be a man, a man who has reached a point where he’s willing to do anything for the love of his life.
The Lonely Heart Attack Club
J.C. Williams - 2017
The lease on a decrepit flat that fortunately only had a couple of months to run. 2. The lease on a failing coffee shop - that had ‘always been her dream’.3. Horace the cat. The client base on the once thriving shop was now threadbare. The salvation for Jack - and the shop - could be right in front of his very eyes; the beautiful and underappreciated shop assistant and friend, Emma. Her insistence that Jack cared about someone – other than himself – would bring him closer to those who were keeping his business alive; his elderly customers. A disgraced, ex-BBC presenter and a world record attempt would also be a key ingredient in the success of the Isle of Man’s only dating and social club for the elderly – The Lonely Heart Attack Club.
Aftershocks
Marisa Reichardt - 2020
She can’t see anything beyond the rubble that she’s trapped beneath, but she’s sure someone will come save them soon. As the hours and days tick by, Ruby and Charlie struggle to stay hopeful—and stay alive. Ruby has only Charlie’s voice and her memories to find the hope to keep holding on. Will the two make it out alive? And if they do, what will they have lost to the earthquake? Riveting, tense, and emotionally complex, Aftershocks weaves together the terror and hope of a catastrophic event while showing the ways that disasters can change and unite us.
The Trojan War Museum and Other Stories
Ayse Papatya Bucak - 2019
Examining themes of identity, othering, and self-determination, The Trojan War Museum strives to bring light to the darkest corners of ourselves and our histories.
New Teeth
Simon Rich - 2021
A woman raised by wolves prepares for her parents’ annual Thanksgiving visit. An aging mutant superhero is forced to learn humility when the mayor kicks him upstairs to a desk job. And in the hard-boiled caper “The Big Nap,” a weary two-year-old detective struggles to make sense of “a world gone mad.” Equal parts silly and sincere, New Teeth is an ode to growing up, growing older, and what it means to make a family.
The Crimson Heirlooms
Hunter Dennis - 2018
There were precisely two, as defined by the High Court of France. The first was a priceless necklace called the Cross of Nantes. The second was less tangible. It was, “the devil’s song, as he danced across the blood-drenched hills of the Vendée Militaire.” Both were found.
Second Chances
Rachel Cullen - 2017
Second Chances follows a single mother deserted by her adulterous ex-husband, a socialite who abandoned her family and fled to the Caribbean, a high-powered executive with a disconcerting fear of commitment and a questionable sense of judgment, and a privileged teenager plagued with a lecherous father and absentee mother while bewildered by an unforeseen opportunity with the most sought after boy in school. Although the women are each dealt cards they never expected, they find friendship, family and love in the least likely of places, and with those, they find hope.
The Inbetween Days
Eva Woods - 2019
Life and death. And though some say that when you’re near death your entire life flashes before your eyes, Rosie can’t remember anything at all—not even how she ended up in a coma. At least not at first.Then something strange starts to happen. Rosie finds herself revisiting scattered moments from her past: a beach vacation, a play rehearsal, the day her brother was born. But why these memories? And what do they mean?As each piece of the puzzle comes into focus, Rosie struggles to face the picture of her life that forms. But with every look backward comes a glimpse of what might be: A relationship with her sister. The opportunity to pursue her passion. A second chance at love. And Rosie just might discover that she has much to live for.With bighearted emotion and comic sensibility,
The Inbetween Days
is a life-affirming novel about the little choices that determine our fate and our ever-enduring hope for the future.
Letters for Scarlet
Julie C. Gardner - 2016
Although she spent a decade burying that desperate girl and her regrets, each page resurrects the past, dragging Corie back to a time when all she craved was Scarlet Hinden’s friendship and Tuck Slater’s heart. But she couldn’t keep them both and keep her word.Scarlet is haunted in her own way, by memories of Corie and of a night that left her wishing she were dead. But Scarlet is not only alive, she’s carrying new life: a baby she never wanted and is terrified to have. Convinced she would be a disastrous mother, she questions whether or not she deserves the love of any man. Especially the father of her child."Letters for Scarlet" traces one friendship from deep roots to branches torn by broken promises and loss.
Alice in Tumblr-land
Tim Manley - 2013
Cinderella swaps her glass slippers for Crocs. The Tortoise and the Hare Facebook stalk each other. Goldilocks goes gluten free. And Peter Pan finally has to grow up and get a job, or at least start paying rent.Here are more than one hundred fairy tales, illustrated and re-imagined for today. Instead of fairy godmothers, there’s Siri. And rather than big bad wolves, there are creepy dudes on OkCupid. In our brave new world of social networking, YouTube, and texting, fairy tales can once again lead us to "happily ever after" — and have us laughing all the way.
Jacket Weather
Mike DeCapite - 2021
Back then, he thought she was "the living night--all the glamour and potential of a New York night when you're 25." Now he's twice divorced and happy to be alone--so happy he's writing a book about it. Then he meets June again. "And here she was with a raincoat over the back of the chair talking about getting a divorce and saying she's done with relationships. Her ice-calm eyes are the same, the same her glory of curls."Jacket Weather is about awakening to love--dizzying, all-consuming, worldview-shaking love--when it's least expected. It's also about remaining alert to today's pleasures--exploring the city, observing the seasons, listening to the guys at the gym--while time is slipping away. Told in fragments of narrative, reveries, recipes, bits of conversation and snatches of weather, the book collapses a decade in Mike and June's life and shifts a reader to a glowing nostalgia for the present.
Dancing With Lies
Summer Cooper - 2021
until he appeared.Lincoln-the swim team captain turned tech billionaire.Gorgeous, clean-shaven, and... oh so vanilla. There's no space for him in this dark world of hers.Especially if she wants to leave the past where it belongs and her secrets hidden.DANCING WITH LIES is a full-length novel containing mature language and adult scenes. It's the first book in the Barre To Bar series.
Mindsploitation: Asinine Assignments for the Online Homework Cheating Industry
Vernon Chatman - 2013
But will they write ANY essay you request? Only the WORST of these horrible companies were employed in the composition of Mindsploitation. A GREAT DEAL of money was wasted ACROSS THE GLOBE to commission what may be the dumbest collection of ridiculous assignments in HUMAN HISTORY.What does it say about our society that we can buy a quick custom eulogy for our grandmother, or pay to have a love poem for a mistress prepared by a stranger at the click of a button? How entitled is a culture that keeps these services afloat? Mindsploitation uses such questions as a launching pad for wildly entertaining comedic exchanges. The 50 assignments in this book hilariously explore self-help, spirituality, family, health, diet, pop culture, love, and more.
Going Nowhere Faster
Sean Beaudoin - 2008
At 17, the former junior chess champion turned "Town's Laziest Register Monkey at the Town's Only Video Store" has no car, no college, and, of course, no girl. If that weren't pathetic enough, he's got an organic-food-freak vegan mother, an eccentric inventor father, a dead-end job, a dog with a flatulence problem, and a former classmate threatening to kill him. With a 165 IQ, Stan was expected to Be Something and Go Somewhere. But when all he has is a beat-up old bike that keeps getting vandalized, he's going nowhere, faster.
Panorama City
Antoine Wilson - 2012
Ping-ponging between his watchful and sharp-tongued aunt and an outlaw philosopher with the face "of a newly hatched crocodile," Oppen finds himself constantly in the sights of people who believe that their way is the only way for him. Oppen Porter is "an American original" (Stewart O'Nan) for whom finding one's own way is both a delightful art and a painstaking science. Disarmingly funny and surreptitiously moving, Panorama City makes us see the world, and our place in it, with new eyes.* Not really