The Story of My Baldness

Watch Your Mouth

Daniel Handler · 232 pages

Tolstoy wrote that happy families are alike and that each unhappy family is unhappy in a different way. In Watch Your Mouth, Daniel Handler takes "different" to a whole new level....

The Dice Man

Luke Rhinehart · 431 pages

The cult classic that can still change your life...Let the dice decide! This is the philosophy that changes the life of bored psychiatrist Luke Rhinehart - and in some ways changes the world as well. Because once you hand over your life to the dice, anything can happen. Entertaining, humorous, scary, shocking, subversive, The Dice Man is one of the cult bestsellers of our time.

Care of Wooden Floors

Will Wiles · 295 pages

A bold and brilliant debut from a darkly funny new voice. Oskar is a minimalist composer best known for a piece called Variations on Tram Timetables. He is married to a Californian art dealer named Laura and he lives with two cats, named after Russian composers, in an Eastern European city. But this book isn't really about Oskar. Oskar is in Los Angeles, having his marriage dismantled by lawyers.

The Restraint of Beasts

Magnus Mills · 214 pages

Trainspotting

Irvine Welsh · 352 pages

Scottish writer Irvine Welsh's first novel, Trainspotting, is a collection of short-stories revolving around a group of friends, their drug use, and struggles in the city of Edinburgh.

Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World

Donald Antrim

Choke

Chuck Palahniuk · 304 pages

Victor Mancini, a medical-school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times. Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: he pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be "saved" by fellow patrons who, feeling responsible for Victor's life, go on to send checks to support him. When he's not pulling this

My Idea of Fun

Will Self · 309 pages

When the young Ian Wharton first meets Mr Broadhurst, he is completely unaware of the influence he will come to exert over his life as 'The Fat Controller' - a constant companion and confidant and also the obese, erudite manifestation of Ian's mental illness. As Ian's idea of fun becomes increasingly extreme, the reader is taken to a place where morality is eroded by the dull grind of modernity an

Portnoy's Complaint

Philip Roth · 288 pages

Though is caused outrage and controversy at the time of its publication Roth’s comic novel of sexual obsession and frustration is now widely regarded as one of the best novels of the twentieth century.

Mother Night

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. · 202 pages

Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of gray with a verdict that will haunt us all.

CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

George Saunders · 179 pages

George Saunders has seen the future of America and it is funny. Bleak, yes, and sad and toxic and greedy - and very, very weird - but funny, too. With today's malls and theme parks and ecological disasters as their foundation, these stories build a tomorrow inhabited by fat executives in despair, genetic mutants in servitude, virtual-reality merchants in Chapter 11, and American Dreamers everywher

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Ken Kesey · 311 pages

An international bestseller and the basis for a hugely successful film, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was one of the defining works of the 1960s. A mordant, wickedly subversive parable set in a mental ward, the novel chronicles the head-on collision between its hell-raising, life-affirming hero Randle Patrick McMurphy and the totalitarian rule of Big Nurse. McMurphy swaggers into

Welcome to the N.H.K.

Tatsuhiko Takimoto · 192 pages

The Man Who Spoke Snakish

Andrus Kivirahk · 400 pages

Set in a fantastical version of medieval Europe, this book follows a young boy, Leemer, who lives with his hunter-gatherer family in the forest and is the last speaker of the ancient tongue of Snakish, a language that allows its speakers to command all animals.

Spurious

Lars Iyer · 188 pages

The Sisters Brothers

Patrick deWitt · 379 pages

Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. The enigmatic and powerful man known only as the Commodore has ordered it, and his henchmen, Eli and Charlie Sisters, will make sure of it. Though Eli doesn't share his brother's appetite for whiskey and killing, he's never known anything else. But their prey isn't an easy mark, and on the road from Oregon City to Warm's gold-mining claim outside Sacramento, El

Absurdistan

Gary Shteyngart · 333 pages

"Absurdistan is not just a hilarious novel, but a record of a particular peak in the history of human folly. No one is more capable of dealing with the transition from the hell of socialism to the hell of capitalism in Eastern Europe than Shteyngart, the great-great grandson of one Nikolai Gogol and the funniest foreigner alive."--Aleksandar HemonFrom the critically acclaimed, bestselling author o

An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

Brock Clarke · 305 pages

Sam Pulsifer is determined to put his past behind him after serving a prison term for torching an American literary landmark and killing two people in the blaze, but when the homes of notable American writers begin to go up in smoke, his history makes him the prime suspect.

A Clockwork Orange

Anthony Burgess · 188 pages

A Clockwork Orange is a dystopian satirical black comedy novel by English writer Anthony Burgess, published in 1962. It is set in a near-future society that has a youth subculture of extreme violence. The teenage protagonist, Alex, narrates his violent exploits and his experiences with state authorities intent on reforming him. The book is partially written in a Russian-influenced argot called "Na

The Third Policeman

Flann O'Brien · 200 pages

The Third Policeman is Flann O'Brien's brilliantly dark comic novel about the nature of time, death, and existence. Told by a narrator who has committed a botched robbery and brutal murder, the novel follows him and his adventures in a two-dimensional police station where, through the theories of the scientist/philosopher de Selby, he is introduced to "Atomic Theory" and its relation to bicycles,

The Sellout

Paul Beatty · 304 pages

A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, Paul Beatty's *The Sellout* showcases a comic genius at the top of his game. It challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality―the black Chinese restaurant. Born

Post Office

Charles Bukowski · 160 pages

"It began as a mistake." By middle age, Henry Chinaski has lost more than twelve years of his life to the U.S. Postal Service. In a world where his three true, bitter pleasures are women, booze, and racetrack betting, he somehow drags his hangover out of bed every dawn to lug waterlogged mailbags up mud-soaked mountains, outsmart vicious guard dogs, and pray to survive the day-to-day trials of sad

The Thought Gang

Tibor Fischer · 310 pages

Eddie Coffin, a washed-up, middle-aged British philosopher, and Hubert, an incompetent, freshly-released one-armed armed robber, question the meaning of life, the value of money, and the role of banks as they wind their way from Montpelier to Toulon in search of the greatest heist in history.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Hunter S. Thompson · 204 pages

Maverick author Hunter S. Thompson introduced the world to "gonzo journalism" with this cult classic that shot back up the best seller lists after Thompson's suicide in 2005. No book ever written has more perfectly captured the spirit of the 1960s counterculture. In Las Vegas to cover a motorcycle race, Raoul Duke (Thompson) and his attorney Dr. Gonzo (inspired by a friend of Thompson) are quickly