Products - - Items tagged as "Humor"
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Baby Geisha
a collection of stories by
Trinie Dalton
Los Angeles Magazine Critic's Pick
"Half ingenious, and half-wily, winningly hard to pin down."
—Bookforum
Eye-popping stories that showcase an assured and stylish talent. -
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Backlist Bangers
Choose 12 select backlist titles for $100!
For many backlist titles, after the initial enthusiasm and support, we're left with copies. Rather than sitting in boxes, we want the books out in the world, being discovered, shared, and enjoyed by readers! Rather than sitting in boxes in storage, we want the books out there in the world, being discovered, shared, and enjoyed by readers! -
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Crapalachia New Classics Edition
a memoir by
Scott McClanahan
A Best Book of 2013
"[McClanahan] aims to
lasso the moon."
—New York Times Book Review
An endearing and haunting coming-of-age story that announces McClanahan as a resounding talent. Crapalachia New Classics Edition
a memoir by
Scott McClanahan
$ 8.99View full product details →$ 10.00*One of the Best Books of 2013 —The Millions, Flavorwire, Dazed & Confused, The L Magazine, Time Out Chicago
"McClanahan's prose is miasmic, dizzying, repetitive. A rushing river of words that reflects the chaos and humanity of the place from which he hails. [McClanahan] aims to lasso the moon... He is not a writer of half-measures. The man has purpose. This is his symphony, every note designed to resonate, to linger."
—Allison Glock, New York Times Book ReviewSynopsis
Crapalachia is a portrait of Scott McClanahan’s formative years, coming of age in rural West Virginia, during a stretch of time where he was deeply influenced by his Grandma Ruby and Uncle Nathan, who suffered from cerebral palsy.
Peopled by colorful characters and their quirky stories, Crapalachia interweaves oral folklore and area history, providing an ambitious and powerful snapshot of overlooked Americana.
Beyond the artistry, there is an optimism, a genuine love for people and the past and memories. Even more, there is a grasp to bridge the disconnect between reader and writer, for McClanahan’s stories to bind us closer to one another. -
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Dispatches From Puerto Nowhere
a memoir by
Robert Lopez
A Best Book of 2023
"Original and fearless... This is a sharply written, incisive, and extremely engaging meditation on assimilation that will strike a painful chord with many who have suffered from the same erasure of their culture in this country."
—Daniel A. Olivas, Latino Book Review
Through family recollection, the constant banter volleyed across nets within Brooklyn’s diverse tennis community, as well as an imagined fabulist history drawn from his grandfather’s remembered traits, Robert Lopez paints a compassionate portrait of family that attempts to bridge the past to the present, and re-claim a heritage threatened by assimilation and erasure.
Dispatches From Puerto Nowhere
a memoir by
Robert Lopez
$ 8.99View full product details →$ 9.99"A masterpiece clear and honest and alive to the world and its contradictions. Dispatches from Puerto Nowhere will hit you where you live."
—Justin Torres, author of We the AnimalsRobert Lopez’s grandfather Sixto was born in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, in 1904, immigrating to the United States in the 1920s, where he lived in a racially proportioned apartment complex in East New York, Brooklyn, until his death in 1987. The family’s efforts to assimilate within their new homeland led to the near complete erasure of their heritage, culture, and language within two generations.
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Frequencies Volume 1
a collection of essays by
Blake Butler, Joshua Cohen, Tracy Rose Keaton, & more!
"Heavy with literary weight."
—New Pages
The first installment of our journal of artful essays. Frequencies Volume 1
a collection of essays by
Blake Butler, Joshua Cohen, Tracy Rose Keaton, & more!
$ 7.50View full product details →$ 10.00 -
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Frequencies Volume 2
a collection of essays by
Sara Finnerty, Roxane Gay, Kate Zambreno, & more!
"Some of the smartest essays." —Flavorwire
Essays on issues of belonging in Black America, gay sex tourism in Thailand, Barbara Loden, and more! Frequencies Volume 2
a collection of essays by
Sara Finnerty, Roxane Gay, Kate Zambreno, & more!
$ 7.50View full product details →$ 10.00 -
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Frequencies Volume 3
a collection of essays by
Antonia Crane, D. Foy, Lawrence Shainberg,
& more!
"The world needs more endeavors like this." —Flavorwire
Find out who taught Ernest Hemingway to thumb-wrestle, and more! Frequencies Volume 3
a collection of essays by
Antonia Crane, D. Foy, Lawrence Shainberg,
& more!
$ 7.50View full product details →$ 10.00 -
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Frequencies Volume 4
a collection of essays by
Colin Asher, Nathan Knapp, Joshua Mohr, & more!
"It's like The Believer just up and said 'fuck it.'" —Brooklyn Based
Coming of age in the heady days of dial-up, family strife, plus a satirical interview with Shia LaBeouf. Frequencies Volume 4
a collection of essays by
Colin Asher, Nathan Knapp, Joshua Mohr, & more!
$ 7.50View full product details →$ 10.00 -
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I'm Not Patrick
a film by
Eric Obenauf
"This film is punk as hell."
—Heavy Feather Review
A dark comedy about the importance of individuality, I'm Not Patrick follows Seth, whose twin brother, Patrick, has just committed suicide. Seth doesn't know what to feel, but everyone is eager to suggest typical reactions to monozygotic suicide. I'm Not Patrick
a film by
Eric Obenauf
$ 11.99Sorry! This is being reordered and will be back in stock soon.
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I'm Trying to Reach You
a novel by
Barbara Browning
A Best Book of 2012
The Believer Book Award Finalist.
First Michael Jackson, then Pina Bausch. Is someone killing famous dancers? A witty and seductive mystery. I'm Trying to Reach You
a novel by
Barbara Browning
$ 8.99View full product details →$ 9.99*The Believer Book Award Finalist
* Winner of the 2013 IPPY Award for GAY/LESBIAN/BI/TRANS FICTION“I was in Zagreb the day that Michael Jackson died. When I heard the news, the first thing I thought was, That’s it. That’s the first line of my novel. ‘I was in Zagreb the day that Michael Jackson died.’”
First Michael Jackson, then Pina Bausch. Next is Merce Cunningham.
Gray Adams, a former dancer with the Royal Swiss Ballet at work on his dissertation at NYU, has a theory spurred by countless hours of YouTube-based procrastination: Someone is killing these famous dancers! (And he may bear an uncanny resemblance to Jimmy Stewart, circa Vertigo.)
I’m Trying to Reach You is a moving and candid contemporary look at how we process grief, as well as how we love and communicate with one another.
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Kentucky Colonels: J.D. Wilkes and Gary Lovely
Two Kentucky Colonels, Gary Lovely and J.D. Wilkes, in discussion.
Kentucky Colonels: J.D. Wilkes and Gary Lovely
$ 0.00Sorry! This is being reordered and will be back in stock soon.
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New Animal
a novel by
Ella Baxter
Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction, Shortlist
"For fans of Sally Rooney’s brand of millennial malaise and Six Feet Under’s tragicomic take on the mortuary business, New Animal is at turns graphic, raw and tender—a wholly human exploration of the Venn diagram of emotion."
—Sarah Stiefvater, PureWow
New Animal is a poignant, darkly comedic look at human connection from a biting and original new voice in Ella Baxter.
New Animal
a novel by
Ella Baxter
$ 9.99View full product details →$ 10.99"A story about sex, connection and, comically, the Tasmanian BDSM scene, that is by turns profound and funny."
—Kylie Northover, The AgeNew Animal is a poignant, darkly comedic look at human connection from a biting and original new voice in Ella Baxter.
Amelia Aurelia is approaching thirty and her closest relationships — other than her mother — are through her dating apps. She works at the family mortuary business as a cosmetic mortician with her eccentric step-father and older brother, whose throuple’s current preoccupation is with what type of snake to adopt. When Amelia’s affectionate mother passes away without warning, she is left without anchor. Fleeing the funeral, she seeks solace with her birth-father in Tasmania and stumbles into the local BDSM community, where her riotous attempts to belong are met with confusion, shock, and empathy.
Hilarious and heartfelt, New Animal reveals hard-won truths as Amelia struggles to find her place in the world without her mother, with the help of her two well-intentioned fathers and adventures at the kink club. -
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Nog
a novel by
Rudolph Wurlitzer
"The Novel of Bullshit is Dead."
—Thomas Pynchon
A man adrift in the American West, armed with nothing more than his own three pencil-thin memories and an octopus in a bathysphere. Nog
a novel by
Rudolph Wurlitzer
$ 15.50Sorry! This is being reordered and will be back in stock soon.
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Not Dark Yet
a novel by
Berit Ellingsen
A Best Book of 2015
"[Ellingsen] is just starting what promises to be a major career, but already giving readers a unique and fascinating perspective."
—Jeff VanderMeer
A rich character-driven drama, addressing questions of personal morals and societal ethics, set on the cusp of a self-inflicted apocalypse. Not Dark Yet
a novel by
Berit Ellingsen
$ 8.99View full product details →$ 9.99*Favorite books of 2015 —Electric Literature
"Fascinating, surreal, gorgeously written, and like nothing you’ve ever read before, Not Dark Yet is the book we all need to read right now. It is art about science, climate change, and activism, and it vitally explores how we as people deal with a world that is transforming in terrifying ways."
—BuzzFeedBrandon leaves his boyfriend in the city for a quiet life in the mountains after an affair with a professor ends with Brandon being forced to kill a research animal. It is a violent, unfortunate episode that conjures memories from his military background.
In the mountains, his new neighbors are using the increased temperatures to stage an ambitious agricultural project in an effort to combat globally heightened food prices and shortages. Brandon gets swept along with their optimism, while simultaneously applying to a new astronaut training program. However, he learns that these changes—internal, external—are irreversible.
A sublime love story coupled with the universal struggle for personal understanding, Not Dark Yet is an informed novel of consequences with an ever-tightening emotional grip on the reader. -
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Other Minds and Other Stories
a collection of stories by
Bennett Sims
November 2023!
“[Sims is] kind of like if Alfred Hitchcock and Brian Evenson raised a baby with David Foster Wallace and Nicholson Baker. Sims should be a household name in horror.”
—Carmen Maria Machado, LitHub
From the award-winning author of A Questionable Shape and White Dialogues, a brilliant, anxious, and hilarious new collection. Other Minds and Other Stories
a collection of stories by
Bennett Sims
$ 8.99View full product details →$ 9.99From the award-winning author of A Questionable Shape and White Dialogues, a brilliant, anxious, and hilarious new collection.
A man lends his phone to a stranger in the mall, setting off an uncanny series of Unknown calls that come to haunt his relationship with jealousy and dread. A well-meaning locavore tries to butcher his backyard chickens humanely, only to find himself absorbed into the absurd violence of the pecking order. A student applying for a philosophy fellowship struggles to project himself into the thoughts of his hypothetical judges, becoming increasingly possessed and overpowered by the problem of other minds. And in “The Postcard,” a private detective is hired to investigate a posthumous message that a widower has seemingly received from his dead wife, leading him into a foggy landscape of lost memories, shifting identities, and strange doublings.
Cerebral and eerie, captivating and profound, these thirteen stories expertly guide us through the paranoia and obsession of everyday horrors, not least the horrors of overthinking what other people might be thinking. With all of Sims’s trademark virtuosity, innovation, and wit, Other Minds and Other Stories continues to expand the possibilities of contemporary fiction. -
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Pages of Mourning
a novel by
Diego Gerard Morrison
May 2024!
"Very funny and very sad and very, very smart. Unafraid to make his fiction work on and around questions of unambiguous gravity, Morrison never forgets the importance, indeed the power, in the endeavor of play."
—Laird Hunt, author of Zorrie
Pages of Mourning is a stunning achievement, a pioneering and inventive novel that confronts family history, creativity, Magical Realism, and the impact of violence from Mexico’s drug war, by a magnificent new talent in Diego Gerard Morrison.
Pages of Mourning
a novel by
Diego Gerard Morrison
$ 9.99View full product details →$ 10.99A daring, captivating, darkly funny novel that grapples with uncertainty and loss in a land of violence and superstition, while questioning whether Magical Realism as a genre is capable of confronting the brutal dissonance of a country that awaits the return of the missing while not wholly acknowledging their death.
Pages of Mourning is a stunning achievement, a pioneering and inventive novel that confronts family history, creativity, Magical Realism, and the impact of violence from Mexico’s drug war, by a magnificent new talent in Diego Gerard Morrison.
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Radio Iris
a novel by
Anne-Marie Kinney
"'The Office' as scripted
by Kafka."
—Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Deals with watercooler culture in an artful and existential way, delivering an eerie allegory of our modern recession. Radio Iris
a novel by
Anne-Marie Kinney
$ 8.99View full product details →$ 9.99“Radio Iris has a lovely, eerie, anxious quality to it. Iris's observations are funny, and the story has a dramatic otherworldly payoff that is unexpected and triumphant.”
—Deb Olin Unferth, New York Times Book Review, Editors' ChoiceRadio Iris is the story of Iris Finch, a socially awkward daydreamer with a job as the receptionist/personal assistant to an eccentric and increasingly absent businessman. When Iris is not sitting behind her desk waiting for the phone to ring, she makes occasional stabs at connection with the earth and the people around her through careful observation and insomniac daydreams, always more watcher than participant as she shuttles between her one-bedroom apartment and the office she inhabits so completely, yet has never quite understood.
Her world cracks open with the discovery of “the man next door.” Over the next few weeks or months (the passage of time is iffy for Iris), she takes it upon herself to learn everything she can about this stranger. But the closer she gets to him, the more troubling questions at the heart of her own life rise to the surface, questions like—Why does she keep having the same dream? Why is it that she and her brother don’t seem to have a single shared memory of their childhood? What is it her boss actually does? In the end, Iris is faced with a choice she never imagined, and a reality she never knew enough to dread. -
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She Is Haunted
a collection of stories by
Paige Clark
Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction, Shortlist
2022 Stella Prize, Longlist"In turns devastating and hilarious, Clark’s exceptional debut collection cuts right to the emotional core of its characters and their conflicts in stories that examine Asian identity, familial relationships, climate anxiety, and gender with an astonishing sense of nuance and clarity."
—Publishers Weekly, starred
With an unforgettable voice and exuberant wit, She Is Haunted is a masterful debut exploring issues of identity, connection, and loss, told with remarkable grace and assurance by Chinese/American/Australian author, Paige Clark.
She Is Haunted
a collection of stories by
Paige Clark
$ 8.99View full product details →$ 9.99"She Is Haunted is electrically original in both prose style and energy. Fans of inventive fiction such as Elizabeth Tan’s recent Readings Prize-winning Smart Ovens for Lonely People or Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties will find much to admire about She Is Haunted, but this collection will also resonate with anyone drawn to stories of identity and connection, especially female friendships and mother-daughter relationships. An absolute pleasure to read."
—Stella Charls, bookseller at Readings CarltonA ballerina nurses an injured leg and struggles to learn Cantonese while her husband dances on an international tour of Don Quixote with a new female lead; a mother cuts her daughter’s hair because her own hair begins falling out; a woman undergoes brain surgery in order to live more comfortably in extreme temperatures; a woman attempts to physically transform into her dead husband so that she does not have to grieve.
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The Correspondence Artist
a novel by
Barbara Browning
Winner: Lambda Literary Award
"A deft look at modern life that's both witty and devastating."
—Nylon
Sure to delight fans of Chris Krause and Charlie Kaufman. The Correspondence Artist
a novel by
Barbara Browning
$ 8.99View full product details →$ 9.99*Lambda Literary Award Winner
In The Correspondence Artist, an unremarkable woman has been carrying on with an internationally recognized artist, largely via e-mail. To protect her paramour's identity, she creates a series of correspondent, alternative lovers in a self-destructing roman à clef.
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The Drop Edge of Yonder
a novel by
Rudolph Wurlitzer
A Best Book of 2008
"The most hallucinogenic western you'll ever catch in the movie house of your mind's eye."
Winner: Foreword Reviews Gold Medal for Literary Fiction
—Bookforum
Rudolph Wurlitzer’s first novel in nearly 25 years is an epic adventure that explores the truth and temptations of the American myth.