The New York Times bestselling author hailed as “the UK’s answer to Tina Fey, Chelsea Handler, and Lena Dunham all rolled into one” (Marie Claire) makes her fiction debut with a hilarious yet deeply moving coming of age novel. What do you do in your teenage years when you realize what your parents taught you wasn’t enough? You must go out and find books and poetry and pop songs and bad heroes—and build yourself. It’s 1990. Johanna Morrigan, fourteen, has shamed herself so badly on local TV that she decides that there’s no point in being Johanna anymore and reinvents herself as Dolly Wilde—fast-talking, hard-drinking Gothic hero and full-time Lady Sex Adventurer. She will save her poverty-stricken Bohemian family by becoming a writer—like Jo in Little Women, or the Bröntes—but without the dying young bit. By sixteen, she’s smoking cigarettes, getting drunk and working for a music paper. She’s writing pornographic letters to rock-stars, having all the kinds of sex with all kinds of men, and eviscerating bands in reviews of 600 words or less. But what happens when Johanna realizes she’s built Dolly with a fatal flaw? Is a box full of records, a wall full of posters, and a head full of paperbacks, enough to build a girl after all? Imagine The Bell Jar written by Rizzo from Grease. How to Build a Girl is a funny, poignant, and heartbreakingly evocative story of self-discovery and invention, as only Caitlin Moran could tell it.

It has always been John Omally's secret ambition to become a rock star. In his youth he mastered air guitar and wardrobe-mirror posing, but he lacked that certain something. Talent. But at last an opportunity has arisen for John to get into 'The Industry'. A band called Gandhi's Hairdryer are looking for a manager, so all John has to do is persuade them that he is the new Brian Epstein. It should be a piece of cake. But - and there's always a but - there is something rather odd about this band. Something other-worldly. It might be the lead singer, whose voice has the power to heal. Might she be an angel, perhaps? Or could she be the Devil in disguise? Because, after all, the Devil does have all the best tunes. And this is Brentford. In this, his final offering of the twentieth century, Robert Rankin returns to the town of his birth, the friends of his youth and one of the loves of his life: Rock Music.

The After-Hero, the guy that's always in the heroes' shadow, twisted by existential woes and sexual perversions, wishing to be a protagonist himself... alas no one writes about him.If you're looking for selfless heroes, true love, adventures on the high seas and heroic sacrifices you should go back to reading the Bible. If you're looking for a neurotic protagonist in a trench coat who is willing to become a villain to defeat the villain (and just for fun), if you want to read about a man who compensates for his shortcomings with a short-barreled shotgun and gratuitous violence, if you want to LOL, then this is the story for you. Would you like to see what's under the trench coat, little girl?

A six-pack sampler of short fiction by Alan Annand: humor, crime and WW2 adventure.A six-pack sampler of short fiction by Alan Annand: humor, crime and WW2 adventure.Bananarama: Reformed meat-eater embarks on a 15-day bananas-and-orange-juice diet, with surprising side effects. The Date Square Killer: Mild-mannered hit man finds love, social justice and the meaning of life in non-random acts of murder.River Girl: Middle-aged bureaucrat takes a detour on his morning jog that leads him to an unexpected rendezvous with Fate.Specimen: A wealthy butterfly collector visits his twin brother, warden of a penal colony, who is building his own unique collection.The Bassman Cometh: My night with Margaret Atwood: Hapless university graduate student in 1975 ruins famous Canadian author's poetry reading.The Naskapi & the U-Boat: A German U-Boat in WW2 visits northern Quebec to install a weather station, but a native family compromises their secret mission.

The II Volume of short-stories about the working world. Surreal aspects of everyday workplaces and exaggerated characters, that we can all, unfortunately, relate to. Working for heat is a direct translation of the Portuguese idiomatic expression - “trabalhar para aquecer” - which, very roughly, translates into working to no avail. A humorous satire about the working world.The II Volume of short-stories about the working world. Surreal aspects of everyday workplaces and exaggerated characters, that we, unfortunately, can all relate to. Working for heat is a direct translation of the Portuguese idiomatic expression - “trabalhar para aquecer” - which, very roughly, translates into working to no avail. A humorous satire about the working world.Featuring four stories:- The Amazing Discarder- The Board of Zombies- To Teach is no Peach- This is not an Epilogue

Bert and Betty Brown have got themselves a little angel. Bert found him in his top pocket when he was driving his bus. Bert and Betty's friends think he's lovely. So do Nancy and Jack and Alice from Class 5K. What a wonder! But Acting Head Teacher Mrs Mole is not so sure. Nor is Professor Smellie. Or the mysterious bloke in black who claims to be a School Inspector. Then there's Basher Malone - big, lumbering Basher Malone. He REALLY doesn't like Angelino. And it looks like he's out to get him...

Dor agreed to act as King of Xanth so long as Trent was gone for a week. But the weeks passed and Trent did not return. Dor knew he had to rescue his king but with no magic powers, how could it be done...? From the Paperback edition.

A spy has a package to deliver. He is not sure of the contact. Her hair is light brown, not blonde. Her green sweater is not solid, it has yellow triangles. What should he do? They are meeting in a honky tonk dance hall.. She asks him to do the Turkey Trot with her. It is close to the password.A spy has a package to deliver. He is not sure of the contact. Her hair is light brown, not blonde. Her green sweater is not solid, it has yellow triangles. What should he do? They are meeting in a honky tonk dance hall.. She asks him to do the Turkey Trot with her. It is close to the password.He returns to his table and sips on his beer. She appears at his table again to dance a Paul Jones. After dancing with other women, he makes up his mind when the whistle blows and she has his hand.

If you like murder, comedy, drama, romance, intrigue, and something that doesn't make your brain work too hard, this is the book for you!Jennifer Parson loves life. She loves insulting her psychologist about how fat and useless he is. She loves telling all the other patients that she is amazing, a doctor, a philanthropist and thoroughly better than any of them can ever be. They should be blessed to be in her company. Yes, life is good.Then her psychologist decides to suddenly retire, and is replaced by the very irritating ‘Heavy Debbie’, as Jennifer describes her.Thoroughly irritated by Heavy Debbie’s new approach to her treatment, Jennifer doesn’t understand why she is being questioned about every aspect of a life she led several years ago. It must, of course, be Heavy Debbie’s incompetency and lack of understanding about the science of psychology.But when Jennifer receives her first and only visitor several years after being admitted to Grove Hospital for the Mentally Ill not long after the arrival of her new psychologist, her life starts to become a little … well, less good.Paranoia kicks in as Jennifer begins to realise she is no longer safe. Her perfect escape is no longer perfect. He is coming for her.A crime/thriller/satire told in duel narratives, The Institution is a story about hiding from your fears, life ending obsessions and murder. With a little splash of comedy to lighten the mood.

The stories In Persuasion Nation are easily his best work yet. "The Red Bow,"about a town consumed by pet-killing hysteria, won a 2004 National Magazine Award and "Bohemians," the story of two supposed Eastern European widows trying to fit in in suburban USA, is included in The Best American Short Stories 2005. His new book includes both unpublished work, and stories that first appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, and Esquire. The stories in this volume work together as a whole whose impact far exceeds the simple sum of its parts. Fans of Saunders know and love him for his sharp and hilarious satirical eye. But In Persuasion Nation also includes more personal and poignant pieces that reveal a new kind of emotional conviction in Saunders's writing. Saunders's work in the last six years has come to be recognized as one of the strongest-and most consoling-cries in the wilderness of the millennium's political and cultural malaise. In Persuasion Nation's sophistication and populism should establish Saunders once and for all as this generation's literary voice of wisdom and humor in a time when we need it most.

A gory tale of a really really bad Easter. By the author of SinEaster and Faerie Brace-Face.Awesome Beauty Truesdale managed to barely graduate high school (with no maternal encouragement). The very day she turned eighteen, she was gone.After three long and lonely years on the streets, she seeks refuge at her Grammy’s door.Will Grammy take her in? At what cost? And, will either of the two godly men that have more than noticed her, pursue her romantically, or is she doomed to a repeat of her mother’s lonely, unfulfilled, tragic life? And, frankly, what’s up with this “Jesus stuff” that Grammy is so obsessed with?

What do an unpublished author, a gorgeous strawberry blonde, an albino hit man, a professional gambler, an investment advisor, the federal witness protection program, and a telepathic St. Bernard all have in common? In Pine Valley, CO, just about everything! In the next 48 hours, their worlds will collide, in both a comedy of errors and predestined fate.Nicholas O’Fallon’s life is in a rut. A recent young widower in the sleepy town limits of Pine Valley, CO, he struggles to regenerate his creative muses and craft the next great American novel. Unfortunately, Nick’s achievements have culminated in a part-time bartending gig at the local brewery and writer’s block. But his mid-morning coffee cohort, Vincent, has the solution – get a dog. Reluctant at first, Nick acquiesces and finds, not only a St. Bernard, but also the new love of his life, Shauna. However, there’s a catch. Nick can hear the pooch talk. Compounding his fear of potential insanity, his parents are in route for an unprecedented visit, a mysterious stranger people call Blanco Diablo is lurking about, and the U.S. Marshals Service’s Witness Protection Program seems to be watching Nick’s every move. The next 48 hours will prove interesting, if not downright hilarious.

Every life has a history. Everyone has a home page. Sometimes, to go forward, you have to hit the "back" button. Beaver At His Parents' is a comedy-drama series about Charlie, a lawyer who loses everything and returns to his home town to start over.Episode 1: "Reasonable Foreseeability"I wrote this poem when I was 9 years old. As a little girl, I enjoyed watching films and I liked pretty actresses. They were wearing beautiful dresses and with wonderful hair styles. In my heart, I do want to have a beautiful mother whom likes a movie star. I had hoped my mother was a very beautiful lady, but unfortunately she wasn't.Before mother's Day, I thought I had to tell her my feeling and the truth.

"Equal parts Groucho Marx & Stephen Jay Gould, both enlightening & entertaining."—Sunday Denver Post & Rocky Mountain News The best-selling author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers now trains her considerable wit & curiosity on the human soul. What happens when we die? Does the light just go out & that's that—the million-year nap? Or will some part of my personality, my me-ness persist? What will that feel like? What will I do all day? Is there a place to plug in my lap-top?" In an attempt to find out, Mary Roach brings her tireless curiosity to bear on an array of contemporary & historical soul-searchers: scientists, schemers, engineers, mediums, all trying to prove (or disprove) that life goes on after we die. She begins the journey in rural India with a reincarnation researcher & ends up in a University of Virginia operating room where cardiologists have installed equipment near the ceiling to study out-of-body near-death experiences. Along the way, she enrolls in an English medium school, gets electromagnetically haunted at a university in Ontario & visits a Duke University professor with a plan to weigh the consciousness of a leech. Her historical wanderings unearth soul-seeking philosophers who rummaged thru cadavers & calves' heads, a North Carolina lawsuit that established legal precedence for ghosts & the last surviving sample of ectoplasm in a Cambridge University archive.

How do we think about money? What caused bankers to lose sight of the economy? What caused individuals to take on mortgages that were not within their means?What irrational forces guided our decisions?And how can we recover from an economic crisis? In this revised and expanded edition of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller Predictably Irrational, Duke University's behavioral economist Dan Ariely explores the hidden forces that shape our decisions, including some of the causes responsible for the current economic crisis. Bringing a much-needed dose of sophisticated psychological study to the realm of public policy, Ariely offers his own insights into the irrationalities of everyday life, the decisions that led us to the financial meltdown of 2008, and the general ways we get ourselves into trouble. Blending common experiences and clever experiments with groundbreaking...