Dark Humor

From author Rupert Holmes comes a devilish thriller with a killer concept: The McMasters Conservatory for the Applied Arts, a luxurious, clandestine college dedicated to the fine art of murder where earnest students study how best to “delete” their most deserving victim....

Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him....

Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once. I’m not trying to be dramatic, but it is the truth. Some of us are good, others are bad, and some just unfortunate....

Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate; she works an easy job at a hip art gallery and lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side....

When the Australian Mystery Writers’ Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book....

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....

The Vegetarian meets Heathers in this darkly funny, seductively strange novel about a lonely graduate student drawn into a clique of rich girls who seem to move and speak as one....

This series of short, fictional vignettes explores our day-to-day interactions with an ever-elusive and arbitrary God....

Meet Jim Carrey. Sure, he's an insanely successful and beloved movie star drowning in wealth and privilege — but he's also lonely. Maybe past his prime. Maybe even...getting fat? He's tried diets, gurus, and cuddling with his military-grade Israeli guard dogs....

Outside Los Angeles, a driver pulls up to find a young woman sitting on a large black box. She offers him $200,000 cash to transport her and that box across the country, to Washington, DC. But there are rules....

Conor O’Toole has never been anywhere like Cutters Neck, a gated community near Cape Cod. It’s a sweet deal for the summer: in exchange for tennis lessons, he receives free lodging in a luxurious guest cottage, far from the cramped Yonkers apartment he shares with his diabetic mother.

For lovers of Meg Wolitzer, Maria Semple, and Jenny Offill comes this raucous, poignant celebration of life, love, and friendship at its imperfect and radiant best....

Jack is back to work, trying his best to keep out of trouble. But when his chain-smoking coworker discovers a mysterious radio signal revealing the guarded secrets of their town, Jack will learn that an annoying new dayshift manager is far from the worst of his problems....

Low-life writer and unrepentant alcoholic Henry Chinaski was born to survive...

American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal....

Enid is obsessed with space. She can tell you all about black holes and their ability to spaghettify you without batting an eye in fear. Her one major phobia? Bald men. But she tries to keep that one under wraps....

Swords. Sorcery. Dick Jokes. Truly do the gods smile upon you, dear listener, for the first four books in the hilarious Caverns and Creatures series are now available in one audiobook set. Join Tim, Dave, Julian, and Cooper as they are thrown into a hostile fantasy world....

You'd Look Better as a Ghost follows the trials and tribulations of Claire, a part-time serial killer, who is keen to keep her favorite hobby a secret—despite the efforts of a determined blackmailer....

Jesse Braddock is trapped in a tiny cabin deep in the Everglades with her infant daughter and her ex-boyfriend, a wannabe reality TV star who turned out to be a lot prettier on the outside than on the inside....

Boy Parts is the incendiary debut novel from Eliza Clark, a pitch-black comedy both shocking and hilarious, fearlessly exploring the taboo regions of sexuality and gender roles in the 21st century....

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk is a novel made up of stories: 23 of them, to be precise. Twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales....

Martha Friel just turned forty. Once, she worked at Vogue and planned to write a novel. Now, she creates internet content. She used to live in a pied-à-terre in Paris....

Gilda, a 20-something, atheist, animal-loving lesbian, cannot stop ruminating about death. Desperate for relief from her panicky mind and alienated from her repressive family, she responds to a flyer for free therapy at a local Catholic church....

Six old friends descend on Napa Valley for a luxurious weekend of fine wine and good times…until old tensions simmer to the surface. So much can go wrong in this dark comedy by the author of The Goddess Effect....

Lorrie Moore’s first novel since A Gate at the Stairs—a daring, meditative exploration of love and death, passion and grief, and what it means to be haunted by the past, both by history and the human heart....

Growing up on a Cuba-esque Caribbean island, Casandra, Calia, and Caleb endure life under two tyrannies: that of their parents, and the Island’s authoritarian dictator, Pop-Pop Mustache. Papa was the dictator's former right-hand man. Now, he’s a political pariah and an ugly parody of a tyrant, treating his home as a nation which he rules with an iron fist. As for Mom, his wife and hateful second in command, she rules from the mind. Obsessed with armchair psychoanalysis, she spends her days reading self-help books and seeks to diagnose the kids, and perhaps even herself.

Hawk, dissolute advertising creative wunderkind, is given the project that might just save his career, rescue him from debt, and put him on the fast track back to human dignity. All he has to do is create the brand for FOCXI, a new crypto start-up, and help launch it to the world. But the deeper he gets, the more Hawk has to wonder: is anything in the cryptoverse for real?

Jenny Green is dreading her Class of 2007 reunion. While her friends are killing it, Jenny's promising career as an artisanal baker went up in flames (literally) and her deadbeat, commitment-phobe boyfriend is cheating on her with their swishy-ponytailed neighbour. She feels like she didn't get the memo... As it turns out, she didn't. Begrudgingly back at university, she receives a text from an unlisted number: Jenny Green - please collect your memo. Hidden on her old campus is a secret female-led organisation providing memos to select students; blueprints for success.

Can comedy be taught? Someone, at some point, seemed to think so. The Chicago Stand-Up program has enrolled young comedians for nearly a decade. Its teachers and students all know how bits work—in theory, at least. They know that there's a line between sharp and cruel, that sad becomes funny at the right angle, that the worst is the best, the truth is the worst, and any moment of your life that isn’t a punchline will either get you to a punchline or force you to be one. They’re all afraid to be one.

It's 2017, and the crisis of forced disappearances has reached a tipping point after forty-three docent students disappeared and are feared dead. Aureliano Más the Second is a fledgling writer at a lucrative fellowship in Mexico City chaired by his aunt, Rose.

Meet Charles™, the latest in robot servant technology. Programmed to undertake the most menial household chores, Charles is loyal, efficient and logical to a fault. That is, until a rather large fault causes him to murder his owner. Understandably perplexed, Charles finds himself without a master – therefore worthless in a society utterly reliant on artificial labour and services.

Tommo has just started at a new school—a training ground for the Scottish elite—when his friend Johnnie's brother is found dead in a Land Rover on a Highland farm. There's a shotgun at his feet. Nobody seems clear about what has happened, least of all Tommo. A child of the middle class, and with new independence thrust upon him, Tommo finds himself invited into fading crumbling houses. It's the early nineties and this elite is struggling for relevance. Alienated from the mainstream, and running low on inherited wealth, his peers have retreated into snobbery and fatalism.

Anuri's stepmother, Ophelia, is the ultimate 'mumfluencer'. Throughout Anuri's childhood, she catalogued every minute, milestone and carefully curated family outing on social media, cultivating a devoted—and sizable—following. Now twenty-five years old, life looks pretty perfect on the outside. Ophelia's fans could be forgiven for wondering why Anuri spends much of her time insulting men online for money, battling the call of alcohol, running from a PhD application, and reminding herself that she is now allowed to choose her own outfits.

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.

When Myriam and Allison fall in love at a show in a run-down punk house, their relationship begins to unfold through a series of hypotheticals. What if they became mothers by finding a baby in an alley? What if the only cure for Myriam’s depression was Allison’s flesh? What if they were B-list celebrities, famous for writing a book about building healthy lesbian relationships? How much darker - or sexier - would their dynamic be if one were a power-hungry CEO, and the other her lowly employee?

From Sophia Bannion’s first day on the Storytelling team at HEBE, a luxury skincare/wellness company based in New York City’s glitziest neighborhood, it’s clear something is deeply amiss. But Sophia, pushing thirty with plenty of skeletons in her closet next to the designer knock-offs, doesn’t care. Though she leads an outwardly charmed life, she aches for a deeper meaning to her flat existence—and a cure for her brutal nail-biting habit. She finds it all and more at HEBE, and with Tree Whitestone, HEBE’s charismatic, sinister founder and CEO.

We meet our ill-tempered protagonist—the story’s titular “brat”—at a low moment, but not yet at rock bottom. The Gabriel of the novel is mourning the death of his father as well as a recent breakup and struggling to finish writing his second book. Alone and aimless, he agrees to move back into his parents’ house to clear it out for sale. Here, the clichés end.

Deadish is a delightful blend of dark humor and absurdism that celebrates the medical world while poking fun at hospital bureaucracy. Rife with silly office politics, medical misadventures, and stories told after one too many drinks, you'll follow the lives of Ashley and Chris, two junior surgeons at Serenity Hospital, as they struggle with domineering management, awkward patient encounters, and unintentionally amusing events that make you want to laugh out loud.

Liz Millanova has stage four cancer, a grown daughter who doesn’t speak to her, and obsessive memories of a relationship that tore apart her marriage.

Conor O’Toole has never been anywhere like Cutters Neck, a gated community near Cape Cod. It’s a sweet deal for the summer: in exchange for tennis lessons, he receives free lodging in a luxurious guest cottage, far from the cramped Yonkers apartment he shares with his diabetic mother.