Showing titles in Dark Humour

Vampires have walked among us for thousands of years. These reanimated corpses survive by draining and consuming the blood of the living, and their threat to humanity cannot be ignored. Throughout the centuries, professors and peasants have offered their own vampire-fighting tips, but these were often old wives' tales, based more on superstition than on fact. Here, for the first time, is a comprehensive vampire-fighting guide for the 21st century.

This is a collection of the third six short stories in the Caverns and Creatures series.

After her twin sister, Chiara, goes missing at a mom-fluencer weekend, Adrienne Shaw will find her no matter what it takes. They may have been on the outs, but no one comes for her sister and gets away with it. It’s been a year, the authorities have no answers, and her brother-in-law is useless in the matter. It’s time for Adrienne to take the case into her own hands. Following in Chiara’s last footsteps, Adrienne goes undercover, infiltrating the same influencer retreat as the last thing she wants to be: an Instamommy.

Set in the author’s native Belfast, the ten stories in Sweet Home lay bare the heartbreak and quiet tragedies that run under the surface of everyday lives. A lonely woman is fascinated by her niqab-wearing neighbours; a middle-aged teacher becomes obsessed with a young Gaelic football player; and an employer covers for his two employees caught having sex in a public toilet.

Morris Duckworth can't get over Massimina, or Mimi, as he likes to refer to her. But then, he should have thought of that before he kidnapped and killed her. Only now, living in Verona and married to Mimi's sister, does he appreciate how much he misses her and how blindly he has stumbled into a trap of fate. Struggling to adjust to his good fortune, with a lavish house and cushy job, our unsavory hero finds that his new success is rife with tribulation: not least his pushy bride's staggering sexual appetite.

Read by actor Alex Jennings, At Last is the fifth and final novel in Edward St Aubyn's semi-autobiographical series, The Patrick Melrose Novels, filmed for Sky Atlantic and starring Benedict Cumberbatch as aristocratic addict, Patrick. As friends, relatives and foes trickle in to pay their final...

Miles Platting is pulled from the ruins of a shipwreck into a world in which no one will speak to him. The founder of Lingua Franca - a naming-rights agency committed to renaming every UK town after a corporate sponsor - Miles recounts the story of his quest for linguistic supremacy to anyone who'll listen. Confined to his hospital bed in a deathly quiet ward, Miles seeks to find his colleagues and reunite with his true love. But in doing so, Miles must confront his deepest held convictions and consider what's in a name in a world where the spoken word has been replaced with silence.

Robert Doughten Savile, aka "Doughty," is the son of a once-wealthy, now hard-up family from Darien, Connecticut. Doughty lives in a perpetual cloud of delusion, convinced of his own genius and status. While he has little capacity to accurately assess his own abilities or prospects, he cruises through life on the sheer force of his own sense of entitlement, dropping out of college and landing in the early '90s in New York City, a place brimming with both prosperity and desperation.

Taut, brooding and densely atmospheric, these stories show us the ways in which murder can arise out of boredom, perversity can result from adolescent curiosity and sheer evil might be the solution to unbearable loneliness.

In the wake of their recent loss, the Caverns and Creatures gang are left hanging. Do their choices amount to more than waiting around to die of thirst and leaping to a quicker death? Probably, or else this would have been a much shorter story.

Cabo Matança é uma vila costeira turística cheia de casinhas coloridas, lojas excêntricas e um número extraordinariamente alto de cadáveres. É que às vezes turistas trazem problemas, e a jardineira local, Harper Starling, não admite que ninguém estrague seu lar perfeito. Profissional habilidosa com instintos assassinos, Harper transforma visitantes mal-intencionados em adubo para suas flores – que inclusive já lhe renderam vários prêmios.

Considered one of the best baseball novels of all time, this black comedy about a discontented businessman's obsession with a fantasy baseball league of his own creation is "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" meets William Gaddis meets John Updike's Rabbit, Run. Somewhere in a "major-league" American city, there lives a man named J. Henry Waugh—no-account accountant, barfly, and country music fan.

Brought to you by Penguin. Once close friends, writers Gwyn Barry and Richard Tull now find themselves in fierce competition. While Tull has spiralled into a mire of literary obscurity and belletristic odd jobs, Barry’s atrocious attempts at novels have brought him untold success. Prizes...

Brought to you by Penguin. John Self is a consumer extraordinaire. Rolling between London and New York he closes movie deals and spends feverishly, all the while grabbing everything he can to sate his massive appetites: alcohol, tobacco, pills, pornography and mountains of junk food. But John's...

Grower's Market is set in remote marijuana country peopled with characters whose backgrounds are diverse and whose futures are uncertain. Sunbeam, who entered adult life as a 1960s San Francisco hippie girl, moved north searching for peace and quiet in unspoiled nature. Eventually she ended up running the Bird of Prey Tavern and growing enough weed to support her tranquil life.

Welcome to Aberfal Boys High School. Independent jewel of academic and sporting excellence in the South-west -- until the headmaster is murdered in his study. And now the Year Seven School Mums' WhatsApp Group really do have something to talk about...As the resulting police investigation reveals more and more of Aberfal's long-hidden secrets the list of suspects who wanted the headmaster dead grows by the day. And far from being a glittering jewel of exclusivity and excellence, it would appear Aberfal Boys High School is rotten to its core...

A mother and her two young children rent a battered old RV (optimistically christened the Chateau) and embark upon a journey through the Alaskan wilderness. At first their trip feels like a vacation: they spot wild animals and build bonfires. But as they travel deeper into the forest, dodging wildfires and eccentric locals, we learn more of the events that forced them to escape their old lives in search of something redemptive out at the very edge of civilization.

Fresh from their honeymoon, Meddy and Nathan meet the Aunties in Jakarta for a family celebration. Amid the festivities, an old flame of Second Aunt’s arrives with extravagant gifts. Unfortunately, not all the presents were meant for them. The item goes missing, putting Meddy and the Aunties in the middle of a feud between Jakarta’s most powerful business moguls – and in great danger. To save her loved ones, Meddy must organise a search party, a break-in and a kidnapping. It might sound impossible – but with the Aunties by her side, nothing is impossible…just complicated.

The orcs are thirsty. And so are Captain Frank Gerber's swords, but apparently, you can't murder your customers. Stuck with a nightclub after a job gone wrong, Frank has to figure out how to rebuild something he never even wanted. That's just the first of his problems. Frank's blades will have a taste of blood again, but first, he has to party with orcs, barter with gnomes, drink with dwarves, and make shady deals with the scum of Sankta Varath, the greatest city in all of Steelheart Kingdom. And that's just the first week.

Da werden doch die Kühe auf der Alm verrückt - Franz Eberhofer soll einen Mord begangen haben! Als im Polizeihof Landshut ein toter Polizist gefunden wird, ist Franz der Hauptverdächtige. Schließlich handelt es sich um seinen erklärten Erzfeind Barschl, mit dem er am Abend vorher einen Riesenkrach hatte. Dann wird auch noch die Mordwaffe gefunden: Franz Eberhofers Hirschfänger. Zum Glück ist der Birkenberger Rudi zur Stelle, um den delikaten Fall aufzuklären, und natürlich gibt auch der Moratschek seinen Senf dazu.