He doesn’t know his fiancé is a fortune teller either. He doesn’t know Russian culture, politics, or language, but he does know American business. And he knows his fiancé speaks Russian. He thinks she can make him the new Tsar of the timber industry, but first they must survive a weekend with the Russian mob. Red Russia is the story of an American businessman and his interpreter in Russia, of business, lies, and deception, of fortunes bought and told.

    in this audacious, satirical tale of a struggling screenwriter, his media-whore best friend, and their circle of celebrity-seeking pals."(213)?" you'll likely ask.Well, the area code, of course."Misadventures?"Just the high jinks underemployed Tinseltown wannabes are usually up to. Like making off with fish from Tina Louise's koi pond. Or harassing Alicia Silverstone with tales of watermelon-loving porn stars. Or auctioning off Andrew Shue's chicken wing and Heather Locklear's lip print for charity. You know.Packed with Hollywood life lessons and more B-level celebs than you can shake a casting sheet at, Misadventures in the (213) is a brilliantly witty dagger straight through the heart of the L.A. entertainment machine.

    Dave travels to India because he wants to get Liz into bed.Liz loves India, hugs the beggars, and is well on her way to finding her tantric center. Dave, however, realizes he hates Liz, and has bad karma toward his fellow travelers: Jeremy, whose spiritual journey is aided by checks from Dad; Jonah, who hasn’t worn shoes for a decade; and Fee and Caz, fresh from leper-washing in Udaipur…With refreshing honesty and a healthy dose of cynicism, William Sutcliffe offers a transatlantic, nineties version of On the Road that all readers will enjoy.

    Returning to the Paris hotel where he spent his honeymoon six years earlier, he decides to take what seems like the only way out - suicide. But a chance encounter with a Russian in a similar predicament leaves Nick with an unlikely obligation to fulfil, one that will take him to Italy, and offer him a chance at something like redemption. www.kevinwignall.com

    A town where nearly all of the volunteer firemen are named Jim, where The Dirty Shame—the only bar in town—refuses to serve mixed drinks (too much work), where the locals hate the newcomers (then again, they hate the locals, too), and where the town softball team has never even come close to having a winning season. Until now.Rachel Flood has snuck back into town after leaving behind a trail of chaos nine years prior. She’s here to make amends, but nobody wants to hear it, especially her mother, Laverna. But with the help of a local boy named Jake and a little soul-searching, she just might make things right.In the spirit of Empire Falls and A League of Their Own, with the caustic wit of Where’d You Go, Bernadette thrown in for good measure, Richard Fifield’s hilarious and heartwarming debut will have you laughing through tears.

    Keeping her end up while seven grown-up children tear about the fecking place like the eejits haven't got a home to go to.Packed with Mammy's tips for keeping a perfect family, or at least a family, as well as contributions from her children, neighbours and other hangers on, Mrs Brown's Family Handbook dispenses advice in her own inimical fecking style. You'll learn:• why every mammy's secret weapon is the tea towel• the dos and don't of cleaning up Granddad • what Dermot doesn't know about farting (not much)• what Winnie knows about seks (not enough)• all about the Five-Sausages-A-Day Diet (hint: contains sausages)• from Maria all about pain relief in child birth (if its free, take it)The perfect gift for anyone in a large family - it's one present and cheap - or with no family at all (seeing what they're missing might cheer the miserable feckers up), Mrs Brown's Family Handbook is also ideal for anyone sick and tired of giving out bloody DVDs for Christmas.Brendan O'Carroll is an Irish writer, producer, comedian, actor, director and author. He is best known for playing Agnes Brown in Mrs Brown's Boys, which won the best sitcom BAFTA in 2012. He has written four films and nine comedy shows, including The Course (1995), The Last Wedding (1999) and last year saw the release of his DVD for the live tour Good Mourning Mrs Brown. He has also published seven novels, including The Mammy, The Scrapper and The Young Wan - a number of which have been translated into 12 languages.

    and Mrs. Fang called it art.Their children called it mischief.Performance artists Caleb and Camille Fang dedicated themselves to making great art. But when an artist’s work lies in subverting normality, it can be difficult to raise well-adjusted children. Just ask Buster and Annie Fang. For as long as they can remember, they starred (unwillingly) in their parents’ madcap pieces. But now that they are grown up, the chaos of their childhood has made it difficult to cope with life outside the fishbowl of their parents’ strange world.When the lives they’ve built come crashing down, brother and sister have nowhere to go but home, where they discover that Caleb and Camille are planning one last performance -– their magnum opus -– whether the kids agree to participate or not. Soon, ambition breeds conflict, bringing the Fangs to face the difficult decision about what’s ultimately more important: their family or their art.

    By arranging their histories like the index entries in a biography, the sequences of cause and effect that have led to their particular neuroses are cunningly revealed. His technique gains him a modicum of success: a thriving practice in Chicago with a client list of thriving stars.But by concentrating on his rival Richard he is blind to the other factors which put both his life and the lives of others at risk...

    The stories range in style from the gritty noir of David Means' "Sault Ste. Marie" to the mesmerizing mythmaking of Louise Erdrich's "The Plague of Doves," while the settings include a village perched on top of an enormous whale (David Lawrence Morse's "Conceived") as well as a swank suite at the Plaza Hotel (Xu Xi's "Famine"). The three most powerful stories seem to have in common the ability to immerse readers in a character's sudden, searing moment of self-knowledge and the way that insight impacts the course of a life. In Edward P. Jones' elegiac, masterful "Old Boys, Old Girls," a hard-bitten con comes to see that redemption is within his reach. Deborah Eisenberg delicately deconstructs a young girl's attraction to an abusive man in the haunting "Windows." And, finally, the storied Alice Munro, in "Passion," conveys the complex inner world of a teenager who discovers she values risk over security.

    In the title story, an unhappily married couple find their print of an orange fish brings them newfound harmony as they join other owner of the print who gather to extol the miraculous powers of “fishness.” “Chemistry” describes a group of young musicians drawn briefly into an impenetrable circle of love. And in “Hazel,” a middle-aged woman finally comes into her own as a sales rep for a line of kitchen products. The Orange Fish is a collection full of wit and compassion, a series of stories to be read and reread and savored.The orange fish --Chemistry --Hazel --Today is the day --Hinterland --Block out --Collision --Good manners --Times of sickness and health --Family secrets --Fuel for the fire --Milk bread beer ice

    

    The story line follows the celebrated cinematic auteur Boris Adrian, "King B", who undertakes The Faces of Love, an episodic film with high budget production values that will explicitly depict the range of human sexual experience. The filmmaker is loosely based on Stanley Kubrick. Southern, who collaborated with Kubrick on Dr. Strangelove, dedicated the book "To the great Stanley K." It received only moderate reviews. Sales were hampered by the refusal of the NY Times to run ads for the book. A hilarious, wildly erotic & biting satire of Hollywood, Blue Movie tells the story of an Oscar-winning director who's determined to shoot the dirtiest & most expensive X-rated movie ever made; Sid Krassman, a producer who's made a fortune catering to the tastes of the American public, & Angela Sterling, a misunderstood sex symbol who'd give anything (& everything) for a chance to do something "serious." The set is fraught with monstrous egos & enormous libidos--the kind of situation that could only come from the imagination of the irrepressible Terry Southern. A film adaptation of Blue Movie is currently in production from director Michael Dowse & producer Marc Toberoff, to be released by Vertigo Films.

    Dewy, a foul-mouthed realist, happily takes Gunnar under his wing and tries to teach him how to maneuver safely through the dangers of the Columbus, Ohio, streets. Together they devise increasingly ingenious ways to reclaim properly from their most recalicitrant customers. They become fixated in particular on a woman who will not respond to any of their attempts to repossess her furniture. Both Dewy and the customer refuse to give in. And thus the stage is set for a series of events that send Gunnar's life spiraling out of control.

    His mindfulness app, TakeOff, is already the hottest thing in tech and he's about to launch a new and improved version that promises to bring investors running and may turn his brainchild into a $1 billion dollar business--in startup parlance, an elusive unicorn. Katya Pasternack is hungry for a scoop that will drive traffic. An ambitious young journalist at a gossipy tech blog, Katya knows that she needs more than another PR friendly puff piece to make her the go-to byline for industry news. Sabrina Choe Blum just wants to stay afloat. The exhausted mother of two and failed creative writer is trying to escape from her credit card debt and an inattentive husband-who also happens to be Katya's boss-as she rejoins a work force that has gotten younger, hipper, and much more computer literate since she's been away. Before the ink on Mack's latest round of funding is dry, an errant text message hints that he may be working a bit too closely for comfort with a young social media manager in his office. When Mack's bad behavior collides with Katya's search for a salacious post, Sabrina gets caught in the middle as TakeOff goes viral for all the wrong reasons. As the fallout from Mack's scandal engulfs the lower Manhattan office building where all three work, it's up to Katya and Sabrina to write the story the men in their lives would prefer remain untold. An assured, observant debut from the veteran online journalist Doree Shafrir, Startup is a sharp, hugely entertaining story of youth, ambition, love, money and technology's inability to hack human nature.

    In the meantime, enjoy this freebie from God: OMG: How I Created the Universe, Adam, and Steve, which contains the first five chapters on the Creation of Adam and Steve (you read correctly) excerpted from The Last Testament.