Book picks similar to
Dead Comic Standing by Karen H. Vaughan


funny
humor
mystery-ink-book-possibilities
novel

Cosmic Banditos


A.C. Weisbecker - 1981
    Quark is a down-on-his luck pot-smuggler hiding out in the mountains of Colombia with his dog, High Pockets, and a small band of banditos led by the irascible Jose. Only months before, these three and their fearless associates were rolling in millions in cash and high-grade marijuana, eluding prosecution on "ridiculously false" drug and terrorism charges. But times have quickly grown lean, and to liven up their exile, Jose decides to mug a family of American tourists.Among the spoils are physics texts, which launch Mr. Quark on a side-splitting, boisterous adventure north to California, where he confronts the owner of the books with his own theories on relativity, the nature of the universe, and looking for the meaning of life in all the wrong places....

Hissy Fit


Mary Kay Andrews - 2004
    And now she’s throwing a Hissy Fit, in the best possible sense. A delicious tale of revenge and renovation, Hissy Fit tells of a wronged spitfire who’s determined to see that the no-good lowdown, lying, cheating varmint of an ex-fiancé who ruined her life and her business gets the comeuppance he so richly deserves…even as she struggles to revitalize a broken-down antebellum mansion for a hunky, if slightly odd, local businessman. If you like the novels of Fannie Flagg, Jennifer Crusie, Adriana Trigiani, and Emily Giffin, or are a devoted follower of Rebecca Wells or Jill Conner Browne’s Sweet Potato Queens, then Mary Kay’s Hissy Fit is not to be missed.

The African Safari Papers


Robert Sedlack - 2001
    Obviously, this is a mistake.As Richard smolders with resentment, he documents the trip in a series of journal entries that are funny, sad, and piercingly insightful. Juxtaposed with the hostile environment, the tense situation becomes explosive: with raw energy and acuity, somewhere between Hunter S. Thompson and David Sedaris, we see Mom going insane, Dad drinking compulsively, and Richard busy getting high on smuggled drugs. Anything can happen, and it does, in this family travelogue for the twenty-first century.

Eat, Pray, Die


Chelsea Field - 2016
    The one side of the job that lives up to expectations is the money. Which is just as well for Izzy, since she needs an awful lot of it. Who knew when she made a lifelong commitment to a man that it would be one year living with him and the rest of her life paying for it?But even her scoundrel ex-husband doesn’t look so bad compared to her new client. He’s competent, condescending, and annoyingly attractive, and Izzy doesn’t know whether to sleep with him or poison him herself. Throw in a loan-shark, a nosy neighbor, and a murder attempt, and Izzy will have her work cut out for her.

In the City of Love's Sleep


Lavinia Greenlaw - 2018
    Raif is a stalled academic, as uncertain of the past as he is the future, whose girlfriend is about to move in. They meet by chance, nothing important is said, yet Iris turns away and starts to run. She is running from what this encounter has woken in her. In the City of Love's Sleep is a contemporary fable about what it means to fall in love in middle age. It charts the steps two people take towards one another and what it means to have taken those steps before.

The Zombie Survival Guide Journal


Max Brooks - 2011
    This lenticular journal cover sets in motion images of slithering, shuffling zombies from the bestselling graphic novel The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks. Filled with lined pages, this all-purpose journal is perfect for jotting down notes, making to-do lists, plotting your own survival strategy, and is just the creepy thing for zombie fans everywhere.

It's Hard Out Here For a Shrimp: Life, Love & Living Large


Jim Lewis - 2008
    He's a lothario, a linguist, and a specialist at looking on the bright side of life-- especially when it means twisting or turning a situation so it works in his favor! In this book, he will teach you how to do the same for yourself. He offers a plethora of thorough advice on parties, relationships, careers, love, friendship, and life in general-- there is something in here for everyone! Pepe's thoughts on friendship? "Love comes and goes .but friendship is forever, or at least until they run out of money and places to take you. Building lifelong relationships with people who aren't related to you or attractive to you is a strange habit, but one that's hard to shake. Here's how I deal with it..." Laugh-out-loud funny and in his authentic, Spanish-accented voice, Pepe's musings and guidance will delight readers of all ages with this fantastic comic relief! Served up with hot, fresh, and filled with wit, pith and a dash of salsa this is Pepe's guide to life, love and living large! From family to friendship to romance and everything is between, Pepe's words of wisdom are served up in fun and witty quotes and advice told with his signature brand of humor.

Meat Market


Rob Radcliffe - 2015
    Fortunately Greg's best mate Stu has come to the rescue. Now it's Stu's job to lead Greg down the path of enlightenment, where woman swarm by their hundreds and will pay for Greg's company. Welcome to the Meat Market, where everything has a price, even love.

I Have Iraq in My Shoe: Misadventures of a Soldier of Fashion


Gretchen Berg - 2012
    To cope, she decided to uproot her life and move to the Middle East. She expected to make some good money, pay off some bad debt, and take some photos of camels. She did not expect to feel at home. She did not expect to fall for a student. She did not expect Diet Coke withdrawal.Irreverent, hilarious, and completely relevant, I Have Iraq in My Shoe takes a single, broke, fashion-conscious American female who prefers Project Runaway to CNN and tosses her into Iraq in exchange for cash and vacation time.Watch the desert sand fly!

Suzanne and Gertrude: A Novel


Jeb Loy Nichols - 2019
     Suzanne and Gertrude is a tale of intermittent griefs and wonderments. How do we live, not just with each other, but with memories, with impermanence, with the inevitable melancholy of being?   Suzanne and Gertrude is a spare novel with a profound impact.

The Nanny


Melissa Nathan - 2003
    With a new job that offers excitement; a cool car; and her own suite with a TV, DVD player, and a cell phone, how can she go wrong?Then she meets . . . the Fitzgeralds -- Dick and Vanessa and their unruly brood of rugrats who have suddenly been entrusted into Jo's care. There's eight-year-old "psycho-babe" Cassandra; bloodthirsty Zak, the six-year-old Terminator; and timid little Tallulah.So what else could go wrong? How about the arrival of Dick's children from his first marriage: teenage Toby and (gulp!) all-grown-up-and-very-nicely-at-that Josh the accountant? And now that she has to temporarily share her room with Josh, Jo's head is really in a spin -- because with her hometown beau still in the picture and a sexy possibility sleeping just a foot away, life has suddenly gotten very complicated indeed!

That Dorky Homemade Look: Quilting Lessons From A Parallel Universe


Lisa Boyer - 2002
    She clears your path of all those merciless judgments pronounced by the Quilting Queens. She invites you to make quilts that are full of life. This funny book offers these nine principles for the 20 million quilters in America:           1. Pretty fabric is not acceptable. Go right back to the quilt shop and exchange it for something you feel sorry for.           2. Realize that patterns and templates are only someone's opinion and should be loosely translated. Personally, I've never thought much of a person who could only make a triangle with three sides.           3. When choosing a color plan for your quilt, keep in mind that the colors will fade after a hundred years or so. This being the case, you will need to start with really bright colors.           4. You should plan on cutting off about half your triangle or star points. Any more than that is showing off.           5. If you are doing applique, remember that bigger is dorkier. Flowers should be huge. Animals should possess really big eyes.           6. Throw away your seam ripper and repeat after me: "Oops. Oh, no one will notice."           7. Plan on running out of border fabric when you are three-quarters of the way finished. Complete the remaining border with something else you have a lot of, preferably in an unrelated color family.           8. You should be able to quilt equally well in all directions. I had to really work on this one. It was difficult to make my forward stitching look as bad as my backward stitching, but closing my eyes helped.           9. When you have put your last stitch in the binding, you are still only half finished. Your quilt must now undergo a thorough conditioning. Give it to someone you love dearly—to drag around the house, wrap up in, spill something on, and wash and dry until it is properly lumpy.           "No reason not to have quiltmaking be a pleasure", says Lisa Boyer, who has as firm a grip on her sense of humor as she does on her quilting needles. "If we didn't make Dorky Homemade quilts, all the quilts in the world would end up in the Beautiful Quilt Museum, untouched and intact. Quilts would just be something to look at. We would forget that quilts are lovable, touchable, shreddable, squeezable, chewable, and huggable -- made to wrap up in when the world seems to be falling down around us."

Playing James


Sarah Mason - 2004
    Newly “promoted” to crime reporter for the Bristol Gazette, she must shadow the unsmiling (though undeniably delicious) Detective James Sabine through his action-packed days, and then capture all the danger and thrills of a cop’s life in a daily column for the rag.Well, on the bright side, she gets her own byline. On the down side, delectable James is hardly overjoyed to have her around. But soon her columns are a hit with readers who can’t get enough of her personal adventures riding shotgun with the sexy crime stopper.Who ever expected law and order to be so romantic? Certainly Holly’s rugby-playing boyfriend and James’s super-gorgeous fiancée are enough to keep any sparks of electricity in check? In the end, though, love always evens the score. . . .

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared


Jonas Jonasson - 2009
    The only problem is that he’s still in good health. A big celebration is in the works for his 100th birthday, but Allan really isn’t interested (and he’d like a bit more control over his alcohol consumption), so he decides to escape. He climbs out the window in his slippers and embarks on a hilarious and entirely unexpected journey. It would be the adventure of a lifetime for anyone else, but Allan has a larger-than-life backstory: he has not only witnessed some of the most important events of the 20th century, but actually played a key role in them. Quirky and utterly unique, The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared has charmed readers across the world.

The Someday Jar


Allison Morgan - 2015
    Then she stumbles across her old Someday Jar, the forgotten glass relic where she stashed all the childhood wishes—no matter how crazy—that her father encouraged her to write down on the backs of Chinese restaurant fortunes. She used to be fun once! What happened to her?DON'T CHOKE ON THE RIND.Although Lanie is wary of uncorking her past, when an attractive stranger saves her from a life-or-death encounter with a lemon peel at the bottom of a martini glass, she realizes that life is way too short for regrets. Now, jar in hand, Lanie decides to throw caution to the wind, and carry out everything she had once hoped to do, even if it means leaving her perfectly “perfect” life behind…