Outsider. Misfit. Criminal. Convict. . . . Movie star. Family man. Comedy legend. Joey Diaz has been called every name in the book (and then some). Now, for the first time, he shares the story of his unlikely rise to fame in his own words—with no punches pulled.

Doug Stanhope is one of the most critically acclaimed and stridently unrepentant comedians of his generation. What will surprise some is that he owes so much of his dark and sometimes uncomfortably honest sense of humor to his mother, Bonnie.

When Norm Macdonald, one of the greatest stand-up comics of all time, was approached to write a celebrity memoir, he flatly refused, calling the genre “one step below instruction manuals.” Norm then promptly took a two-year hiatus from stand-up comedy to live on a farm in northern Canada. When he emerged he had under his arm a manuscript, a genre-smashing book about comedy, tragedy, love, loss, war, and redemption. When asked if this was the celebrity memoir, Norm replied, “Call it anything you damn like.”

Tom Segura is known for his twisted takes and irreverent comedic voice. But after a few years of crazy tours and churning out podcasts weekly, all while parenting two young children, he desperately needs a second to himself. It’s not that he hates his friends and family — he’s not a monster — he’s just beat, which is why his son’s (ruthless) first full sentence, “I’d like to play alone, please,” has since become his mantra.

Doug Stanhope has been drunkenly stumbling down the back roads and dark alleys of stand-up comedy for over a quarter of a century, roads laden with dank bars, prostitutes, cheap drugs, farm animals, evil dwarfs, public nudity, menacing third-world police, psychotic breaks, sex offenders, and some understandable suicides. You know, just for levity. While other comedians were seeking fame, Stanhope was seeking immediate gratification, dark spectacle, or sometimes just his pants.

Bert Kreischer doesn't know how to say "no." If he did, he wouldn't have gotten himself mixed up with a group of Russian mobsters on a class trip to Moscow, earning him his nickname: "The Machine." He wouldn't have wrestled with a bear or swum with sharks on national television. He wouldn't have (possibly) smoked PCP with a star of Saturday Night Live. And he wouldn't have been named the Number One Partier in the Nation by Rolling Stone, inspired the movie National Lampoon's Van Wilder, or performed standup to sellout crowds across the country.

From the outside, Harold is an average seven-year-old third grader growing up in the 1960s. Bored by school. Crushing on a girl. Likes movies and baseball—especially the hometown Boston Red Sox. Enjoys spending time with his grandfather. But inside Harold’s mind, things are a lot more complex and unusual. His thoughts come to him as birds flying through a small rectangle in the middle of his brain. He visits an outdoor cafe on the moon and is invited aboard a spaceship by famed astronomer Carl Sagan.

Babe is a charismatic and widely loved man, a gambler with a gift for gab that often gets him out of tricky situations. He’s also a dreamer, something he shares with his patient and loving wife, Rosie. They both yearn for financial stability and see the land they own as insurance for future generations. But when Babe and a few comrades enlist in a scheme that improbably falls apart, he endangers the little security the family has. On the verge of losing everything, what’s a family man to do? If you’re a gambler like Babe, you double down and risk it all for one big score.

NOFX: The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories is the first tell-all autobiography from one of the world's most influential and controversial punk bands. Fans and non-fans alike will be shocked by the stories of murder, suicide, addiction, counterfeiting, riots, bondage, terminal illness, the Yakuza, and drinking pee. Told from the perspective of each of the band's members, this audiobook looks back at more than 30 years of comedy, tragedy, and completely inexplicable success.

The hero of John Kennedy Toole's incomparable, Pultizer Prize–winning comic classic is one Ignatius J. Reilly, an obese, self-absorbed, hapless Don Quixote of the French Quarter, whose half-hearted attempts at employment lead to a series of wacky adventures among the lower denizens of New Orleans.

Daniel Sloss' stand-up comedy engages, enrages, offends, unsettles, educates, comforts, and gets audiences roaring with laughter - all at the same time. In his groundbreaking specials, seen on Netflix and HBO, he has brilliantly tackled everything from male toxicity and friendship to love, romance, and marriage - and claims (with the data to back it up) that his on-stage laser-like dissection of relationships has single-handedly caused more than 300 divorces and 120,000 breakups.

There was a time when Ralphie May was one of the biggest stand-up comedians in the country, both by ticket sales and by tonnage. While some things changed - Ralphie lost half his body weight - others did not: He will be remembered as one of the most successful comics of his time. Completed just months before his untimely passing, in This Might Get a Little Heavy, Ralphie takes listeners on a behind-the-scenes tour of his life and career, one that winds across the country, over obstacles, beyond heartbreak, and through the golden age of stand-up.

When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver for food-delivery apps. That is, until Jamie makes a delivery to an old acquaintance, Tom, who works at what he calls “an animal rights organization”. Tom’s team needs a last-minute grunt to handle things on their next field visit. Jamie, eager to do anything, immediately signs on. What Tom doesn't tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at at least. In an alternate dimension, dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm and human-free world.

Over twenty years ago, the heiress Patricia Lockwood was abducted during a robbery of her family's estate, then locked inside an isolated cabin for months. Patricia escaped, but so did her captors - and the items stolen from her family were never recovered. Until now. On the Upper West Side, a recluse is found murdered in his penthouse apartment, alongside two objects of note: a stolen Vermeer painting and a leather suitcase bearing the initials WHL3. For the first time in years, the authorities have a lead - with the suitcase and painting both pointing them toward one man.

Kinch Na Shannack owes the Takers Guild a small fortune for his education as a thief, which includes (but is not limited to) lock-picking, knife-fighting, wall-scaling, fall-breaking, lie-weaving, trap-making, plus a few small magics. His debt has driven him to lie in wait by the old forest road, planning to rob the next traveler that crosses his path. But today, Kinch Na Shannack has picked the wrong mark.

Pittsburgh, 1995. The son of a black father he’s never known and a white mother he sometimes wishes he didn’t, 22-year-old Bobby Saraceno is passing for white. Raised by his bigoted maternal grandfather, Bobby has hidden his truth from everyone, even his best friend and fellow comic-book geek, Aaron, who has just returned home from prison a hardened racist.

Weighing in at 320 pounds, Winston "Tuffy" Foshay, is an East Harlem denizen who breaks jaws and shoots dogs and dreams of millions from his idea, Cap'n Crunch: The Movie, starring Danny DeVito. His best friend is a disabled Muslim who wants to rob banks, his guiding light is an ex-hippie Asian woman who worked for Malcolm X, and his wife, Yolanda, he married from jail over the phone. Shrewdly comical as this dazzling novel is, it turns acerbically sublime when the frustrated Tuffy agrees to run for City Council.

The town of Northfall, Minnesota, will never be the same. Meteors cratered hardwood forests and annihilated homes, and among the wreckage a new metal was discovered. This “omnimetal” has properties that make it world-changing as an energy source…and a weapon. John Frontier returns for his sister’s wedding to find his family embroiled in a cutthroat war to control mineral rights and mining operations. His father rightly suspects foreign leaders and competing corporations of sabotage, but the greatest threat to his legacy might be the US government.

When Alex and Diane meet, there are instant, undeniable sparks. Both are single parents living in wealthy suburbia: independent, highly competent, and seemingly settled in their comfortable lives. She runs a successful catering business. He's a detail-oriented, rough-hewn thief who robs banks, casinos, and jewelry stores. They're immediately drawn to each other, but neither realizes initially that their lives have overlapped once before, under dangerous circumstances. Soon their shared history and burgeoning relationship will threaten everything they love.

It's been said that all great literature boils down to one of two stories—a man takes a journey, or a stranger comes to town. While mystery writers have been successfully using both approaches for generations, there's something undeniably alluring in the nature of a stranger: the uninvited guest, the unacquainted neighbor, the fish out of water. In the newest collection of stories by the Mystery Writers of America, each author weaves a fresh tale surrounding the eerie feeling that comes when a stranger enters our midst, featuring stories by prolific mystery writers.

Teenaged Jesse is trapped. Growing up, he had all the potential in the world, but then real life intervened. Now he's got a high school diploma, two perpetually black eyes, and a pill fix he can't shake. By day, when he's not high on pain killers, Jesse is hardening his body; it’s the only thing about his life that he can really control. By night, he’s a god in the makeshift ring under the barnyard flood lights, willing to take on any local tough the Madsen brothers put in front of him.

Bert Kreischer doesn't know how to say "no." If he did, he wouldn't have gotten himself mixed up with a group of Russian mobsters on a class trip to Moscow, earning him his nickname: "The Machine." He wouldn't have wrestled with a bear or swum with sharks on national television. He wouldn't have (possibly) smoked PCP with a star of Saturday Night Live. And he wouldn't have been named the Number One Partier in the Nation by Rolling Stone, inspired the movie National Lampoon's Van Wilder, or performed standup to sellout crowds across the country.

Doug Stanhope is one of the most critically acclaimed and stridently unrepentant comedians of his generation. What will surprise some is that he owes so much of his dark and sometimes uncomfortably honest sense of humor to his mother, Bonnie.

Outsider. Misfit. Criminal. Convict. . . . Movie star. Family man. Comedy legend. Joey Diaz has been called every name in the book (and then some). Now, for the first time, he shares the story of his unlikely rise to fame in his own words—with no punches pulled.

In this essay, Norm Macdonald’s philosophy of life, death, and comedy is sketched out thematically from his original material, as well as from extant interviews with him and profiles of him over the years. Among his fellow comedians, Norm Macdonald was widely hailed as one of the funniest men alive, a DGAF Mark Twain whose unique combination of cadence, persona, material, and delivery left a cultural impact that greatly outsized the limited commercial success he experienced. To his fans, Norm’s everyman persona engendered a sense of relatability and connection. But there were aspects of...