Showing titles in Absurdist

Erin is a plastic girl living in a plastic world. Every day she eats a breakfast of boiled chicken, then conveys her articulated body to Tablet Town, where she sells other figurines Smartbodies: wearable tech that allows full physical immersion in a virtual world, a refuge from real life’s brutal wars, oppressive governmental monitoring, and omnipresent eco-terrorist insurgency. If you cut her, she will not bleed—but she and her fellow figurines can still be cracked or blown apart by gunfire or bombs, or crumble away from nuclear fallout.

Nightshift clerk and high-functioning insomniac 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. In this second installment of the Gas Station saga, Jack finds himself entangled in his most harrowing adventure yet.

Jorge trabaja desde hace años en un call center de seis de la tarde a las seis de la mañana, en una rutina eterna que de pronto una tarde se rompe cuando se va a calzar sus zapatos y descubre que le han crecido un poco los pies. Ese detalle misterioso lo va sumiendo en un lento pero inexorable hundimiento.

Thoroughly absurd and yet all-too-real, My Way to Canossa follows four journeys that re-imagine the Middle Ages amid the political and technological changes of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. It isn't an historical novel. It's an exploration of how the present uses the past.

An immigrant arrives in New York City at the turn of the century, falls into a job at a famous hedge fund, and is startled to discover how business is done on Wall Street. His observations of American culture and finance are jarring, surreal, and hilarious. The author worked directly for George Soros and launched funds with several other Soros alumni. In addition to his career in finance, he founded and continues to host one of the largest veteran fundraisers in New York.

Traveling across the landscapes of time and of space, heading always west, and carrying a dead but laconically opinionated crow in her chest, our undead narrator encounters and loses parts of her body and her self in one terrifying, hilarious, and heartbreaking situation after another.

Jenlena and her best friend Daphne are two humanities grads in their early 20s, trying to find their way in a society that has just eradicated all animals for the safety of humanity. In the post-fauna world, Jenlena transforms from an aspiring poet to a gig worker, capitalizing on other people’s grief by selling house plants that have come to replace pets and cosplaying as dogs for pay. Meanwhile Daphne, a once-promising student, flounders in a deep depression, smoking weed and ditching work to hang out with her once famous, now canceled boyfriend.

The beloved author of The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared returns with an enchanting adventure that skewers the greed and hypocrisy that dominates our time and holds lessons about what’s truly important in life.

Preble Jefferson can see five seconds into the future. Otherwise, he lives an ordinary life. But when a confrontation with a cop on a New York City subway goes tragically wrong, those seconds give Preble the chance to dodge a bullet, causing another man to die in his place. Government agencies become aware of Preble's gift, a manhunt ensues, and their ambitions shift from law enforcement to military R&D. Preble will do whatever it takes to protect his family, but as events spiral out of control, he must weigh the cost of his gift against the loss of his humanity.

Tras saber que el Turco baja por la costa con una peligrosa armada, Don Alonso Quijano, el caballero don Quijote de la Mancha, saldrá, una vez más, y con la oposición de su sobrina y de su ama, a una nueva batalla que empezará en la Mancha y terminará en.

For Jim Nashe, it all started when he came into a small inheritance and left Boston in pursuit of a "life of freedom." Careening back and forth across the United States, waiting for the money to run out, Nashe met Jack Pozzi, a young man with a temper and a plan. With Nashe's last funds, they entered a poker game against two rich eccentrics, "risking everything on the single blind turn of a card."

Jonathan Abernathy is a self-proclaimed loser . . . he’s behind on his debts, has no prospects, no friends, and no ambitions. But when a government loan forgiveness program offers him a literal dream job, he thinks he’s found his big break. If he can appear to be competent at his new job, entering the minds of middle-class workers while they sleep and removing the unsavory detritus of their waking lives from their unconscious, he might have a chance at a new life. As Abernathy finds his footing in this new role, reality and morality begin to warp around him.

Life is lived according to The Rulebook and social hierarchy is determined by your perception of colour. Eddie Russett is an above average Red who dreams of moving up the ladder by marriage to Constance Oxblood. Until he is sent to the Outer Fringes where he meets Jane - a lowly Grey with an uncontrollable temper and a desire to see him killed. For Eddie, it's love at first sight. But his infatuation will lead him to discover that all is not as it seems in a world where everything that looks black and white is really shades of grey.

Fourteen years after her last adventure, Thursday Next, literary detective, finds herself in an unusual situation her job policing the fictional characters of the BookWorld has been downgraded since her previous escapades are now themselves in print. However, a pressing threat may call her back into action: first Sherlock Holmes and then Miss Marple are found dead, stopping their series in their tracks.

When Nolan Grey receives news that his father, a once-prominent biologist, has drowned off Leap's Island, he calls on Elsa, his estranged, older half-sister, to help pick up the pieces. This, despite the fact that it was he and Elsa who broke the family in the first place. The Greys have been avoiding each other for a dozen years. Elsa and Nolan travel to their father's field station, a wild and isolated spot off the Gulf Coast.

Lucy and Jake live in a house by a field where the sun burns like a ball of fire. Lucy has set her career aside in order to devote her life to the children, to their finely tuned routine, and to the house itself, which comforts her like an old, sly friend. But then a man calls one afternoon with a shattering message: His wife has been having an affair with Lucy's husband, Jake. The revelation marks a turning point: Lucy and Jake decide to stay together but make a special arrangement designed to even the score and save their marriage - she will hurt him three times.

A parallel universe. South Texas. Narcotics are legal, and there’s a new contraband on the market: ancient Olmec artifacts, shrunken indigenous heads, and filtered animals - species of animals brought back from extinction to clothe, feed, and generally amuse the very wealthy. Esteban Bellacosa has lived in the border town of MacArthur long enough to know to keep quiet. But his simple life starts to get complicated when the swashbuckling investigative journalist Paco Herbert invites him to come to an illegal underground dinner serving filtered animals.

Penny Rush has problems. Her marriage is over; she’s quit her job. Her mother and stepfather went missing in the Australian outback five years ago; her mentally unbalanced father provokes her; her grandmother Dr. Pincer keeps experiments in the refrigerator and something worse in the woodshed. But Penny is a virtuoso at what’s possible when all else fails. Elizabeth McKenzie, the National Book Award–nominated author of The Portable Veblen, follows Penny on her quest for a fresh start.

Oskar Matzerath ist anders. Mit drei Jahren beschließt er, nicht weiter zu wachsen. Der groteske Außenseiter betrachtet die Welt mit schonungslos-sarkastischem Blick "von unten". Sein ständiger Begleiter ist eine Blechtrommel. Mit ihr ertrommelt er sich Distanz, fordert, schreckt auf. Wird sie ihm genommen, setzt er sich mit einem Schrei zur Wehr, der Glas zerspringen lässt. So absonderlich der zornige Zwerg ist, so frei ist er. Oskar ist ein unerbittlich scharfsinniger Beobachter des Danziger Kleinbürgertums im "Dritten Reich".

Asa’s husband is transferring jobs, and his new office is located near his family’s home in the countryside. During an exceptionally hot summer, the young married couple move in, and Asa does her best to quickly adjust to their new rural lives, to their remoteness, to the constant presence of her in-laws, and the incessant buzz of cicadas. While her husband is consumed with his job, Asa is left to explore her surroundings on her own: She makes trips to the supermarket, halfheartedly looks for work, and tries to find interesting ways of killing time.