検索キーワード： ユーモア・風刺文学・フィクション

Giulio Montesano è un affermato architetto ed esperto d’arte. Una vita di successo grazie alla partnership con Vittorio Zanca, ambiguo ingegnere edile di origini calabro-venete e dubbia moralità, che lo ha introdotto nella società che conta, ma a caro prezzo. Giulio però ha un segreto: la notte di ogni 15 del mese rischia la vita nascondendosi al centro della carreggiata di una strada statale in una grande scatola. È solo uno spregiudicato gioco mortale? No, la scatola assume nel corso del romanzo varie funzioni con l’evolversi turbolento della storia.

“Don’t tell anyone we’re Democrats,” warned Mother when we moved to Bakersfield, CA, a town often referred to, back then, as redneck central. “And for heaven’s sake, don’t tell them you’re Jewish.”

Gina Marie Cototi is a feisty Sicilian sparkplug, a Brooklyn-based PI with a fondness for family, friends, and one roguishly handsome Casanova named Rocco Benelli. Hey, nobody's perfect. This headstrong sleuth drives a split-window '63 Corvette coupe and never, I mean never, misses Sunday dinner with Ma, Dad, and her sister Theresa. Broke, brooding, and breathtaking, Benelli, an out-of-work parole officer is cursed with more charm than any man deserves.

Un tragicomico tribunale, sei pericolosi camorristi, una donna capace di sbaragliarli tutti.Napoli, 1944. Il Natale è ormai alle porte e in casa di Calogero Martorio, Mammasantissima della camorra, è in corso una cena con tutti i capi dei Quartieri per decretare la condanna a morte di Carmine Atriere, un giovane delinquente accusato di aver ammazzato Zumpatiello, braccio destro del potente Tommaso Cacace. Le testimonianze sembrano tutte concordi: il ragazzo, vilmente, ha accoltellato alle spalle Zumpatiello, assassinando non solo un uomo d’onore ma il padre di cinque figli.

Da una parte Laura, Francesco, Nené e gli altri prof: a spiegare Ungaretti e le formule di fisica davanti a uno schermo, con la rete instabile e le piccole icone nere e mute che ogni tanto si accendono rivelando cucine affollate, camerette in disordine, animali domestici e fratellini molesti. Dall'altra loro, i ragazzi. Mai avrebbero immaginato di sentire la mancanza di banchi e lavagne, eppure eccoli lì: Basma, che a casa è costretta a coprirsi col velo e a tenere il mascara nascosto in fondo allo zaino; Rambo e Tommy, che combattono la noia a colpi di challenge; Kevin che porta il cane a spasso.

'Isabella's NOT dead.' Every time someone asks Gwen about her best friend – you know, the one who ghosted them all fifteen years ago – this is what Gwen tells them. But where is Isabella? Why did she leave, just when Gwen needed her the most? Setting out to solve the mystery, in an adventure that takes Gwen across the country then across Europe; that tests her friendships and strains her marriage, Gwen searches for Isabella. But Isabella's not the only one who's lost. Is Gwen also searching for… herself?

Novelist, poet and critic Kingsley Amis was one of Britain’s greatest postwar writers. A master of comic fiction, he came to fame in 1954, and won the 1986 Booker Prize for The Old Devils. Included in this collection are dramatisations of seven of his short stories and two novels, all imbued with his characteristic wit and social satire. These are complemented by readings of selected correspondence and an interview with Amis himself.

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.

Taking its title from a group of stories that begin the book, Bream Gives Me Hiccups moves from contemporary LA to the dorm rooms of an American college to ancient Pompeii, throwing the listener into a universe of social misfits, reimagined scenes from history, and ridiculous overreactions. In one piece a tense email exchange between a young man and his girlfriend is taken over by the man's sister, who is obsessed with the Bosnian genocide ("The situation reminds me of a little historical blip called the Karadordevo agreement").

No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the alluring and ruthless Becky Sharp, who defies her impoverished background to clamber up the class ladder. Her sentimental companion Amelia, however, longs only for caddish soldier George. As the two heroines make their way through the tawdry glamour of Regency society, battles are fought, fortunes made and lost. The one steadfast and honourable figure in this corrupt world is Dobbin, bringing pathos and depth to Thackeray's gloriously satirical epic of love and social adventure.

It’s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong? Our narrator has many of the advantages of life: young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, she lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like everything else, by her inheritance. But there is a vacuum at the heart of things, and it isn’t just the loss of her parents in college, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her alleged best friend.

Quand Julia débarque comme psychologue à la maison de retraite Les Tamaris, elle ne croit pas plus au bonheur qu'à la petite souris. Pire, une fois sur place, elle se souvient qu'elle ne déborde pas d'affection pour les personnes âgées. Et dire qu'elle a tout plaqué pour se sauver, dans tous les sens du terme. Au fil des jours, Julia découvre que les pensionnaires ont bien des choses à lui apprendre.

At dinner parties and over coffee, Rabih and Kirsten's friends always ask them the same question: how did you meet? The answer comes easily - it's a happy story, one they both love to tell. But there is a second part to this story, the answer to a question their friends never ask: what happened next? Rabih and Kirsten find each other, fall in love, get married. Society tells us this is the end of the story. In fact it is only the beginning.

Un grupo de niños encuentra un cadáver flotando en las aguas turbias de un canal de riego cercano a la ranchería de La Matosa. El cuerpo resulta ser de la Bruja, una mujer que heredó dicho oficio de su madre fallecida, y a quienes los pobladores de esa zona rural respetaban y temían. Tras el macabro hallazgo, las sospechas y habladurías recaerán sobre un grupo de muchachos del pueblo, a quienes días antes una vecina vio mientras huían de casa de la hechicera, cargando lo que parecía ser un cuerpo inerte.

Rebecca Bloomwood verdient ihren Lebensunterhalt damit, anderen Leuten gute Tipps in Geldfragen zu geben. Ihre Freizeit verbringt sie mit Einkaufen. Kein Wunder, dass sie sich ständig gezwungen sieht, sich durch ausgiebiges Shoppen zu entspannen - ein Teufelskreis. Schließlich droht sie in ihrem selbst geschaffenen Chaos unterzugehen, da sie sich gleichzeitig die Bank vom Leib halten, den attraktiven Luke Brandon beeindrucken und ihrer täglichen Arbeit nachgehen soll...

Harassment Architecture has been described as an almost plotless and violent march against what the author calls the "lowerworld". Written in many small to medium sized chapters, it's the story of a man who aims to usher in collapse. He's sick on his surroundings, bound by them, but still seeking the way out.

Peyote Trip has a pretty good gig in the deals department on the fifth floor of Hell. Sure, none of the pens work, the coffee machine has been out of order for a century, and the only drink on offer is Jagermeister, but Pey has a plan—and all he needs is one last member of the Harrison family to sell their soul. When the Harrisons retreat to the family lake house for the summer, with their daughter Mickey's precocious new friend Ruth in tow, the opportunity Pey has waited a millennium for might finally be in his grasp.

Josie's life is fine. Absolutely, completely fine. Nice husband, brilliant best friend, a gorgeous kid at uni. The big house of her dreams on its leafy London street is a lifetime away from the Lancashire farm of her childhood. So what if her mother is tricky, and James isn't in love with Josie any more, and maybe she's not in love with him either? It's great to have time to herself now Chloe's flown the nest . . . isn't it?

Corbin College, not quite upstate New York, winter 1959-1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian—but not an historian of the Jews—is co-opted onto a hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar specializing in the Spanish Inquisition. When Benzion Netanyahu shows up for an interview, family unexpectedly in tow, Blum plays the reluctant host to guests who proceed to lay waste to his American complacencies. Mixing fiction with nonfiction, the campus novel with the lecture, The Netanyahus is a wildly inventive comedy of blending, identity, and politics.

Samuel Pickwick, founder and chairman of the Pickwick Club, engages three fellow members to accompany him on a journey. By coach they’ll travel to the outreaches of London to explore, observe, and report back on the quaint wonders of the English countryside. What transpires is a picaresque romp of misadventures, hair-raising challenges, and romantic follies entangling the fates of a riot of colorful characters - a passel of villains, spinsters, poets, and sportsmen - and the unworldly Pickwick himself, who has much to learn about life outside his gentleman’s club.