Showing titles in Dark Humour

By his own admission, Dougie Neil is a deeply unattractive man. With only one failed relationship to his name, Dougie is now middle-aged, single, and close to giving up his quest to find love. Then, after the strangest of incidents at work, the unthinkable happens—Dougie is propositioned by a succession of attractive women. Armed with his newfound superpower, Dougie’s only remaining challenge is to decide which of his many admirers is Ms. Right. Then he can settle down, get married, and live happily ever after.

The adventure continues. Tim and the C and C gang face their most difficult challenges yet. Horses die. Eyeballs are eaten. People are urinated on. A god is born.

This is a satellite-dish-free zone of tall houses, standing shoulder to shoulder with big front doors, five floors apiece. You could almost be in Kensington. This is where the actors, writers and media types live, where small children wearing smart uniforms and shoes in the shape of lightbulbs get ferried every day to schools that are not local. Some people are luckier than others; fortune smiles on some and gobs on the rest. Jo Metcalf smokes and spies on the smug Cunninghams down the street as they play their bile-inducing game of happy families.

Charles O’Brien, Irish bard and giant: The cynical are moved by his flights of romance; the craven stirred by his tales of epic deeds. The Surprising Irish Giant may be the sensation of the season but only his compatriots seem to attend to his mythic powers of invention. John Hunter, celebrated surgeon and anatomist, buys dead men from the gallows and babies’ corpses by the inch. Where is a man as unique as The Giant to hide his bones when he is yet alive?

From the rubble-strewn streets of US-occupied Baghdad, the scavenger Hadi collects human body parts and stitches them together to create a corpse. His goal, he claims, is for the government to recognise the parts as people and give them a proper burial. But when the corpse goes missing, a wave of eerie murders sweeps the city, and reports stream in of a horrendous-looking criminal who, though shot, cannot be killed. Hadi soon realises he has created a monster: one that needs human flesh to survive - first from the guilty, and then from anyone who crosses its path.

Conor is a recent graduate from a law school no one has heard of. Without any job prospects and needing to support his chronically ill mother, he takes a summer job teaching tennis at the affluent gated community of Cutters Neck, Massachusetts. One of his first students is Catherine, a magnetic divorcée keen to hire him for more than advice on her serve. What begins as a transactional arrangement soon develops into an intoxicating sexual relationship. Things become even more complicated when Conor encounters Emily, with whom he has his first taste of real intimacy.

Sherlock Holmes is an unparalleled genius. Warlock Holmes is an idiot. A font of arcane power, certainly. But he's brilliantly dim. Frankly, he couldn't deduce his way out of a paper bag. The only thing he has really got going for him are the might of 1,000 demons and his stalwart companion. Thankfully, Dr. Watson is always there to aid him through the treacherous shoals of Victorian propriety and save him from a gruesome death every now and again.

The characters in this extraordinary book are often - on the surface - depraved, vicious, cowardly and manipulative, but their essential humanity is never undermined. Two professors of philosophy turn pugilists; Leith removal men become the objects of desire for Hollywood goddesses; God turns Boab Coyle into a house-fly; and in the novella, 'A Smart Cunt', the drug-addled young hero spins off on a collision course with his past.

Los Angeles and Lucifer are a lot alike. They both seduce and lure with promises of wealth, fame, beauty, or love. But those promises are often empty; and even when they’re not, there’s a price to pay.

Brought to you by Penguin. From the award-winning author of The Raptures and The Fire Starters, a magically surreal novel about history, identity and redemption It’s summer 2017 and the last few residents of the Lough Neagh Archipelago are facing imminent eviction. The flood planned to combat...

Drunk customers. Shoplifting raccoons. Otherworldly visitors. As night shift clerk at the 24-hour gas station at the edge of town, Jack has pretty much seen it all.

'I could not put this book down and loved every page.' - Salena Godden 'Humane, funny, surprising, profound.' - Chris Power 'A masterpiece.' - David Keenan Meet Drew Lord Haig, called upon to sing the obscure hit from his youth at a paramilitary event. Or Max, who recalls an eventful journey to...

Lawyer turned murderer Björn wants to stop killing. Unfortunately, the prisoner in his basement is getting restless, the parents' committee at his daughter's preschool is clamouring for his attention, and to cap it all, he's also being blackmailed. To manage all this stress, he turns to a mindfulness coach to learn about the unmet needs of his inner child. As he begins listening to this inner child, he finds it doesn't just have needs, but solutions: creative ways he can solve his problems. All of them.

It all starts with a girl... (because yes, there's always a girl...) Jason Priestley (not that one) has just seen her. They shared an incredible, brief, fleeting moment of deep possibility, somewhere halfway down Charlotte Street. And then, just like that, she was gone - accidentally leaving him...

Berlin: a man wakes up in a trash can with no idea who he is. He's taken to hospital for treatment. Then people start trying to assassinate him. The man has to find out why, how to get them to stop, and what the CIA has to do with all this. There's also the little problem of working out who he used to be, and why that changed. Meanwhile, his girlfriend Piper and best friend Lance are trying to find him.

Fearne Dixon hates Christmas. As the long-suffering wife of the Ellsbury Christmas Market’s manager, she’s sick to the back teeth of it and it’s still only November. But then the bodies start piling up, an old rival arrives back in her life, and Fearne reaches breaking point.

A penguin is all that stands between one man and murder by the mafia Sit back and enjoy this darkly comic full-cast adaptation of Andrey Kurkov’s bestselling novel set in mid-90s Ukraine, plus a bonus interview with the author. Viktor Alekseyevich Zolotaryov is an aspiring writer in Ukraine...

Featuring an exclusive conversation with Logic and Steve Blum From #1 New York Times bestselling author Logic comes the highly anticipated second novel set in the far future as two friends uncover if the utopian planet Paradise lives up to its name. In the year 2115, when the Earth is no longer...

The best-selling author of the classic Mars trilogy and The Years of Rice and Salt returns with a riveting new trilogy of cutting-edge science, international politics, and the real-life ramifications of global warming as they are played out in our nation's capital - and in the daily lives of those at the center of the action. Hauntingly realistic, here is a novel of the near future that is inspired by scientific facts already making headlines. BONUS AUDIO: Includes an exclusive introduction by author Kim Stanley Robinson.

Cambridge, 1994. Professor Don Lamb is a revered art historian at the height of his powers, consumed by the book he is writing about the skies of the Venetian master Tiepolo. However, his academic brilliance belies a deep inexperience of life and love. When an explosive piece of contemporary art is installed on the lawn of his college, it sets in motion Don's abrupt departure from Cambridge to take up a role at a south London museum. There he befriends Ben, a young artist who draws him into the anarchic 1990s British art scene and the nightlife of Soho.