Island of the Sequined Love Nun

      Christopher Moore
     Island of the Sequined Love Nun

Take a wonderfully crazed excursion into the demented heart of a tropical paradise—a world of cargo cults, cannibals, mad scientists, ninjas, and talking fruit bats. Our bumbling hero is Tucker Case, a hopeless geek trapped in a cool guy's body, who makes a living as a pilot for the Mary Jean Cosmetics Corporation. But when he demolishes his boss's pink plane during a drunken airborne liaison, Tuck must run for his life from Mary Jean's goons. Now there's only one employment opportunity left for him: piloting shady secret missions for an unscrupulous medical missionary and a sexy blond high priestess on the remotest of Micronesian hells. Here is a brazen, ingenious, irreverent, and wickedly funny novel from a modern master of the outrageous.

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    The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.)

      Ambrose Bierce
     The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.)

OUR NEW NEIGHBORS AT PONKAPOG BY THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH When I saw the little house building, an eighth of a mile beyond my own, on the Old Bay Road, I wondered who were to be the tenants. The modest structure was set well back from the road, among the trees, as if the inmates were to care nothing whatever for a view of the stylish equipages which sweep by during the summer season. For my part, I like to see the passing, in town or country; but each has his own unaccountable taste. The proprietor, who seemed to be also the architect of the new house, superintended the various details of the work with an assiduity that gave me a high opinion of his intelligence and executive ability, and I congratulated myself on the prospect of having some very agreeable neighbors. It was quite early in the spring, if I remember, when they moved into the cottage—a newly married couple, evidently: the wife very young, pretty, and with the air of a lady; the husband somewhat older, but still in the first flush of manhood. It was understood in the village that they came from Baltimore; but no one knew them personally, and they brought no letters of introduction. (For obvious reasons, I refrain from mentioning names.) It was clear that, for the present at least, their own company was entirely sufficient for them. They made no advance toward the acquaintance of any of the families in the neighborhood, and consequently were left to themselves. That, apparently, was what they desired, and why they came to Ponkapog. For after its black bass and wild duck and teal, solitude is the chief staple of Ponkapog. Perhaps its perfect rural loveliness should be included. Lying high up under the wing of the Blue Hills, and in the odorous breath of pines and cedars, it chances to be the most enchanting bit of unlaced disheveled country within fifty miles of Boston, which, moreover, can be reached in half an hour's ride by railway. But the nearest railway station (Heaven be praised!) is two miles distant, and the seclusion is without a flaw. Ponkapog has one mail a day; two mails a day would render the place uninhabitable. The village—it looks like a compact village at a distance, but unravels and disappears the moment you drive into it—has quite a large floating population. I do not allude to the perch and pickerel in Ponkapog Pond. Along the Old Bay Road, a highway even in the Colonial days, there are a number of attractive villas and cottages straggling off toward Milton, which are occupied for the summer by people from the city. These birds of passage are a distinct class from the permanent inhabitants, and the two seldom closely assimilate unless there has been some previous connection. It seemed to me that our new neighbors were to come under the head of permanent inhabitants; they had built their own house, and had the air of intending to live in it all the year round. "Are you not going to call on them?" I asked my wife one morning. "When they call on us," she replied lightly. "But it is our place to call first, they being strangers." This was said as seriously as the circumstance demanded; but my wife turned it off with a laugh, and I said no more, always trusting to her intuitions in these matters....

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    Sprout Mask Replica

      Robert Rankin
     Sprout Mask Replica

His great-great-grandfather died at the Battle of Little Big Horn after going to complain about the noise; his grandfather spoke only in rhyming couplets; his father practised body modification; and then there was him - he was the weird one. The theme of sprouts pervades this "family memoir".

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    You're A Scientist! (Make Your Own Mistakes: Volume 1)

      Phil Edwards
     You're A Scientist! (Make Your Own Mistakes: Volume 1)

You are just a lowly beaker cleaner...until fate intervenes. When the Fake Science Laboratories come calling, you answer—and it turns out to be the greatest adventure of the last 15 minutes. Can YOU make the mistakes that will save/destroy/do nothing notable to the lab? Can YOU turn the pages? Can YOU really read? If so, please prove it by shouting “I can read!” at the nearest scientist.You are just a lowly beaker cleaner...until fate intervenes. When the Fake Science Laboratories come calling, you answer—and it turns out to be the greatest adventure of the last 15 minutes. Can YOU make the mistakes that will save/destroy/do nothing notable to the lab? Can YOU turn the pages? Can YOU really read? If so, please prove it by shouting “I can read!” at the nearest scientist.“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.”-An excerpt from Moby Dick, which this book surpasses in every way, including whale content.

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    My Best Friend's Bucket List: Volume One

      Shane Grey
     My Best Friend's Bucket List: Volume One

Tucker Sawyer is on a mission to fulfil his dead best friends bucket list. All while getting advice from the ghost of Dick Pickett and dealing with his dead friends ex Lorrie Lovitt that happens to be the love of Tuck's life.Tucker Sawyer's best friend, Dick Pickett, dies and leaves behind a bucket list(21 items long)and a girlfriend Tuck is in love with, Lorrie Lovitt. Tuck ends up in over his head with: Russian mob boss Boris Spotnik, an angry nurse, mysterious blues singers, mafia pizza parlors, adult stars, random hook ups, ex-girlfriends, and even Sarah Silverman!

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    Sir Thomas and the Abbess Martha

      Rosemary Sturge
     Sir Thomas and the Abbess Martha

The ghosts of Mayfield Abbey, wicked Sir Thomas, and saintly Abbess Martha, rarely agree about anything, but when they discover that their beloved stately pile is in danger they may be forced to co-operate!Reza finds the afterlife isn’t all he thought it was supposed to be. As he watches the world continue on without him, he discovers his longtime girlfriend had been cheating on him. Unfortunately he’s dead. Then an odd ally tells him there is a secret way back to the world of the living. Now Reza can get his revenge, that is, if he can pass three unusual tests.It's the third story I released to the public back in November of 2011. If you enjoy this story, check out my others. If you really loved it, look into my first novel, Void Star. Thank you so much for reading and supporting indie authors!-J.P. YagerOtterbored.com

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    Fates Worse Than Death: An Autobiographical Collage

      Kurt Vonnegut
     Fates Worse Than Death: An Autobiographical Collage

s/t: An Autobiographical Collage of the 1980s Preface 21 Sections Appendices w/Comments by the author: What My Son Mark Wanted Me to Tell the Psychiatrists in Philadelphis, which was also the Afterword to a New Edition of his Book The Eden Express On Literature by Karel Capek, from Toward the Radical Center, Catbird Press, '90 What Bernard V. O'Hare Said about Our Friendship on My 60th Birthday From The Bomber's Baedeker, Guide to the Economic Importance of German Towns & Cities, '44 English Translation of the Latin Mass Promulgated by Pope St Pius V in 1570 by Decree of the Council of Trent Mass Promulgated by Me in 1985 Latin Version of My Mass by John F. Collins Unpublished Essay by Me, Written after Reading Galleys of an Anthology of 1st-rate Poems & Short Prose Pieces by Persons Who Were or Are in Institutions for the Mentally Ill My Reply to a Letter from the Dean of the Chapel at Transylvania University about a Speech I Gave There Also several photos & drawings

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    Number 11

      Jonathan Coe
     Number 11

This is a novel about the hundreds of tiny connections between the public and private worlds and how they affect us all. It's about the legacy of war and the end of innocence. It's about how comedy and politics are battling it out and comedy might have won. It's about how 140 characters can make fools of us all. It's about living in a city where bankers need cinemas in their basements and others need food banks down the street. It is Jonathan Coe doing what he does best ­ - showing us how we live now. 'Coe is among the handful of novelists who can tell us something about the temper of our times' Observer

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    While Drowning in the Desert

      Don Winslow
     While Drowning in the Desert

Edgar and Shamus Award-nominee Don Winslow combines breathless suspense, zany wit, and whiplash action in his latest novel featuring grad student/private eye Neal Carey. Now Neal's assigned to escort monkeyish octogenarian Natty Silver home from Las Vegas to Palm Springs. Natty, once a burlesque top banana, has a nonstop barrage of corny jokes, an eye for an aging cocktail waitress, and a chronic disappearing act. When Neal catches up with him, he can see why Natty doesn't want to go home. Sole witness to a crime, he's now the quarry of hard-faced suits, a fascist con artist, and a career-track assassin. And bodyguard Neal-scorching through the trackless desert at 80 mph, brooding on his inner child by freezing starlight, and looking down the barrel of one gun too many-is soon dodging vultures and on the brink of a surprise watery grave.

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    A Boy and His Bot

      Daniel H. Wilson
     A Boy and His Bot

When young Code falls down a hole while following a mysterious robotic insect, he lands in a world that defies all imagination. Everything in Mekhos is made from metal and circuitry, including the citizens-who happen to be robots. To find his way home, Code must first cross Mekhos's bizarre and dangerous landscape to reach the Beam Stalk. There, an artifact known as the Robonomicon is being guarded by an evil ruler who has plans to destroy Mekhos. Can Code free the Robonomicon, save the robots of Mekhos from impending doom, and still get himself back to Earth in time to catch the school bus? With its dazzling array of robots and futuristic gadgetry, this rollicking story will hold special appeal for boys and budding sci-fi lovers everywhere.

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    Humorous Hits and How to Hold an Audience

      Mark Twain
     Humorous Hits and How to Hold an Audience

In preparing this volume the author has been guided by his own platform experience extending over twelve years. During that time he has given hundreds of public recitals before audiences of almost every description, and in all parts of the country. It may not be considered presumptuous, therefore, for him to offer some practical suggestions on the art of entertaining and holding an audience, and to indicate certain selections which he has found have in themselves the elements of success. The "encore fiend," as he is sometimes called, is so ubiquitous and insistent that no speaker or reader can afford to ignore him, and, indeed, must prepare for him in advance. To find material that will satisfy him in one or in a dozen of the ordinary books of selections is an almost impossible task. It is only too obvious that many compilations of the kind are put together by persons who have had little or no practical platform experience. In an attempt to remedy this defect this volume has been prepared.

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    Jack Emerson

      Michael Brent Jones
     Jack Emerson

"You cannot describe the main character of a story, the story describes them."Rosabel McGuiness, orphaned werewolf, has finally decided to leave the werelion pride she’s been living with for the last eighteen years. She’s been challenged to one duel too many. It’s time to find a pack to call home.Theodore Wilson, Alpha of the Mount Roxby Pack, has never cared about finding his mate. He swore off women when his wife, a human who knew nothing about what he was cheated on him. But now a new wolf has walked into town, and stirred up feelings he never imagined he would feel.Mount Roxby has a plethora of supernatural beings, unbeknownst to the humans that live there. After a series of mysterious disappearances, and fatal attacks on both werewolves and vampires alike, Rosabel decides something needs to be done. But can she persuade the Pack Alpha and Vampire King, to put old prejudices behind them long enough to work together, and solve these attacks? Or will one bite too many cause a war?

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    Nightmare Abbey

      Thomas Love Peacock
     Nightmare Abbey

Set in a former abbey whose owner, Christopher Glowry, is host to visitors who enjoy his hospitality and engage in endless debate. Among these guests are figures recognizable to Peacock’s contemporaries, including characters based on Lord Byron and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Mr. Glowry’s son Scythrop (also modeled on a famous Romantic, Peacock’s friend Percy Bysshe Shelley) locks himself up in a tower where he reads German tragedies and transcendental philosophy and develops a “passion for reforming the world.” Disappointed in love, a sorrowful Scythrop decides the only thing to do is to commit suicide, but circumstances persuade him to instead follow his father in a love of misanthropy and Madeira. Thomas Love Peacock was an English novelist, poet, and official of the East India Company. He was a close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley and they influenced each other’s work. Peacock wrote satirical novels, each with the same basic setting — characters at a table discussing and criticising the philosophical opinions of the day.

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