Alvin Bixby: Hulking, knuckles of steel, hideous breath, foul temper. Kids call him: Bubba. Nolan Byrd: Puny, power walker, math genius, can't keep shoes tied. Kids call him: Nerd. Bubba has been the bane of Nolan's existence for five long years. So when Mr. Green asks the class to become reporters, Nolan decides he'll write an expose--on Bubba. He doesn't want to sign his name to it (that'd be suicidal), so Nolan creates a secret identity for himself--on the Internet. He launches Shredderman.com as a place where truth and justice prevail--and bullies get what's coming to them. This hilariously triumphant story is for any kid who's ever dreamed of unleashing their own inner superhero! From the Hardcover edition.

Gloha is the only creature of her kind in all the world of Xanth, the beautiful offspring of a chance mating between a harpy and a goblin. As she grew to womanhood, she wondered where she would find the one true love with whom she could share her life. So, naturally, she sets off to find the Good Magician Humfrey to ask him for an Answer to the riddle of her heart's desire. But Humfrey, for mysterious reasons of his own, propels her instead on a perilous quest in search of truth, friendship, and, just possibly, happiness.

Jack Mac Fecker, pig breeder, farmer and father never thought that he would enter the world of spying, Steven Speilberg, badger rights, home brewing and gay farmers, especially not in the Mountains of Mourne. Temptation, in all its forms, invaded his world and he responded as any half educated Irishman would. Here we meet Jack and his family and find him at the doorstep of a world of espionage.Jack Mac Fecker, pig breeder, farmer and father never thought that he would enter the world of spying, Steven Speilberg, badger rights, home brewing and gay farmers, especially not in the Mountains of Mourne. Temptation, in all its forms, invaded his world and he responded as any half educated Irishman would. Here we meet Jack and his family and find him at the doorstep of a world of espionage, home brew and badgers. Will he go in? Will he cross that threshold and place his family, his farm and even himself in mortal danger? The first in a series of linked funny stories around the Mac Feckers.

Javan, a decorated general and military instructor, once swore an oath to his friend, King Orvan, that should he ever be needed he would answer the call. Now, Orvan is insane, taking advice only from his dog, and he has called Javan and his three best warriors to go on a suicidal mission to retrieve a magic orange petal from the Giant Kingdom, with only a chimpanzee named Mr. Prickles to aid them.King Orvan of Dargod has been cursed with insanity, passing all sorts of crazy laws and taking advice only from his dog. But when he calls for his oldest friend, a former general and military instructor, and his three best warriors to go on a mission to find a magic orange rose petal, they soon find out that this mission is not only legit, but is vital to the survival of their kingdom. On their way they encounter obstacles such as an insane wizard, drunken oafs and their hideous mother, zombies, enemy soldiers, and a giant princess who makes them into her living dolls, and their only hope seems to Mr. Prickles, the chimpanzee that King Orvan insisted that they take along.

It looks like Tim, the world’s worst private detective, and Nick, his brainy kid brother, are in trouble again. They’re dead broke. But money is the least of their worries when a mysterious man bursts into their office and offers Tim a wad of cash for his coat. Minutes later, the stranger is dead and Nick and Tim are left to puzzle over his final words. What could he have meant by "suff bee suff-iss"? Or was it "south by southeast"? Neither one seems to make much sense, but the Diamond brothers will have to figure it out, and fast! Whoever killed the stranger is now after Nick and Tim!

Tuberculosis. A terrifying word, as terrifying then as cancer is now. It meant entering a sanatorium for treatment, leaving her family, her children. And what if she did not recover? Hardly the basis for comedy, one would suppose. And one would be wrong. Betty MacDonald always had the ability to face up to adversity -- and heaven knows she had enough in her life -- so after the initial shock had passed, she proceeded to laugh at her illness, the other patients, the nurses, the doctors, and -- chiefly -- herself. Humor was her greatest medicine, right up to the day she left the sanatorium, cured. Of course she had her bad moments when despair and tragedy underlying what she saw and heard refused to be pushed into the background, but she had the grit and wit to rise above it. The result is a lively, cheerful and most funny book. In fact, it's a tonic. You know how sometimes friendship blossoms in the first few moments of meeting? Something clicked, we say. Well, that's what discovering Betty MacDonald was like for me: I happened to read a couple of pages of one of her books and click; knew right away that here was a vivacious writer whose friendly, funny, and fiery company I was really going to enjoy. Although MacDonald's first and most popular book, The Egg and I, has remained in print since its original publication, her three other volumes have been unavailable for decades. The Plague and I recounts MacDonald's experiences in a Seattle sanitarium, where the author spent almost a year (1938-39) battling tuberculosis. The White Plague was no laughing matter, but MacDonald nonetheless makes a sprightly tale of her brush with something deadly. Anybody Can Do Anything is a high-spirited, hilarious celebration of how the warmth and loyalty and laughter of a big family brightened their weathering of The Great Depression. In Onions in the Stew, MacDonald is in unbuttonedly frolicsome form as she describes how, with husband and daughters, she set to work making a life on a rough-and-tumble island in Puget Sound, a ferry-ride from Seattle.

A hilarious collection of stories from the life of the New York Times bestselling author of Look Again At last, together in one collection, are Lisa Scottoline’s wildly popular Philadelphia Inquirer columns. In her column, Lisa lets her hair down, roots and all, to show the humorous side of life from a woman’s perspective. The Sunday column debuted in 2007 and on the day it started, Lisa wrote, “I write novels, so I usually have 100,000 words to tell a story. In a column there’s only 700 words. I can barely say hello in 700 words. I’m Italian.” The column gained momentum and popularity. Word of mouth spread, and readers demanded a collection. Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog is that collection. Seventy vignettes. Vintage Scottoline. In this collection, you’ll laugh about: • Being caught braless in the emergency room • Betty and Veronica’s Life Lessons for Girls • A man’s most important body part • Interrupting as an art form • A religion men and women can worship • Real estate ads as porn • Spanx are public enemy number one • And so much more about life, love, family, pets, and the pursuit of jeans that actually fit!

The end of the world is nigh and only one man can stop the coming apocalypse. Shane MacGowan has the ultimate weapon; the greatest song ever written and to save the world, his mammy and Teresa he just has to remember how it feckin goes.This is a collection of over 250 poems that altogether seeks to reflect man as both the poet and the actor who handles the helm of his own affairs, on a timed cruise, down his very own banked personal river. Using his abilities to compose and steer his poetic story, faring only as suitably as his capabilities and fate enables him.The essence of poetry is in its use of eloquent apt words to convey the poet’s exact thoughts, as they are felt or experienced by him. Like it is the actor’s ability to apply specific skills to portray a scripted character reveals a story, it is likewise the poet's grant to create the content and set the beauty of the words.If the soul is scripted, if the mind can think, if the heart does feel and the body is specific; then every individual distinctively roams on a course throughout their lives that can be manipulated to fit their own different experience, but not actually change it. For the poet mans the helm, and the cruise is his composed poem.

This short pictorial offers an inside look at the ‘OutWorld’ and the craft that get us there – the place where science fiction meets science fact – somewhere beyond the edge of reason. Katamma Reach. Lagos High. Tranquility Badlands.Honoring the Bard!A Murderer No need then to take a life,Silence its voice Strew its brains across the gutter Shred its fibers into pulp When bold Macbeth Has done it for me: I’ve heard his heart knocking at his ribs, Staggered with him from the king’s bedchamber Bedabbed in gore, Hunched in the dark with not two but three henchmen In Banquo’s path, And waded so far into Fife’s red pool It was easier to go o’er than turn back. We two, famous murderers, Have had our fill. November 1991

Watched by a ceiling camera inside a Macao casino, Clarity Nice joins videographer Plum Bailey, boarding Heir Force One, the plane of Sheik Hari Al-Najib, after offering to him a ring that points to an ancient sorority. Rejected by his family, known as the dumbest loss-making machine of the Emirates, Hari seeks the help of Clarity to sort his love life and make his first dollar on his own.Watched by a ceiling camera inside the Florentia Moenia casino in Macau, teleoperator Clarity Nice joins the woman watching her, videographer Plum Bailey, in a live dealer gambling room broadcasting over the internet. Plum leads Clarity with her on board Heir Force One, the plane of Sheik Haroun Al-Najib, known colloquially as Hari, after offering to him the luxurious ring made by the firm Mauboussin, brought by Clarity to Macau, which points to an ancient sorority identified by a symbol known as the 'incomplete triangle'. Rejected by his family, known as the dumbest human loss-making machine of the Emirates, Hari likes to wear shabby clothes, which include a sweater with growths patched with puffs of woolfiller, ripped jeans, worn out brown leather shoes with one of the soles open, and housing several white pebbles.A golden bachelor with a solid reputation of lacking qualification and being indecisive whatever he does, Hari has not decided to marry, and is confused by all the women around him, who want to be near him in order to enjoy the affluent lifestyle of 'HDH', His Dumb Highness, as everyone else but himself thinks of him. Hari does not care about failure, and sees it as something inherent in business and in general.Seen as a nuisance by his family for their business, because of his loss making business blunders and repeated incompetence, his list of achievements including only failures and money losing ventures or trades, Hari heads for the Caribbean to sort out his love life and make his first dollar on his own. His plane lands in the British Virgin Islands and he gets a job as waiter in a terrace of Tortola. After an unfortunate tip to a tourist on a penny stock which fails, Hari is fired from his job, and becomes jobless again.Sheik Hari is a sociable guy, who trusts himself when someone else tells him he is rich. He is rich, but someone else always ends up managing his money, either his family or his retainer Hakeem, a man who resents all the fortune around him, and seeks a chunk of all the money thrown away by Hari's disastrous forays into business, trade, or investing.After an email sent by error by Hari results in the landing of a consortium of journalists investigating the Sheik and the holdings of his company, Clarity helps Hari sort out some of the problems arising out of the unwanted notoriety. The mess created by Hari includes a scandal called Scrub Leaks, involving the Sheik's family assets and other powerful members of the elite, and a money laundering charge by the BVI financial services commission, which leads Hari's girlfriend to leave him. As a result of the mess, Hari, and Clarity, are arrested and are led to jail in Tortola.Stuck with Hari in jail, awaiting a trial which the authorities want as example of their compliance with laundering legislation, Clarity will have to find an ingenious way to leave jail and the island, to elude the charges against them by bringing to the police commissioner those who tampered with the Sheik's account in Tortola. Lacking any local allies, the only way for Clarity out of Hari's mess, is to strike a deal exchanging favors with Plum, who is seeking a valuable list of connections owned by the Sheik, in order to reach the sorority headed by an older woman, Lady Mulham, which brings to their members an explanation of 'completion', in particular the completion of its symbol, the incomplete triangle. (This is the regular banana humor version of the Shabby Sheik)

Is it possessed?Is it some kind of experiment?It doesn't matter.All that matters is that it is out to get you.The DilDozer, or DD for short, calls on all of those in its path in the hopes that one day it can unleash its 20 full inches of destructive force upon the world. Read on, if you dare, the tale of the DilDozer.Deadly.Dangerous.Ribbed for her terror.The world has gone black.At least, you can't see anything. You can't move or scream either. You're trapped.This has to be a dream, yet... something tells you it's all too real. Not only do you not remember where you are, you don't remember who you are.With a poetic narrative that promises an existential read, Nothing but the Black searches for a light in the darkness of identity.

Sherman Alexie’s darkly humorous story collection weaves memory, fantasy, and stark reality to powerfully evoke life on the Spokane Indian Reservation. The twenty-four linked tales in Alexie’s debut collection—an instant classic—paint an unforgettable portrait of life on and around the Spokane Indian Reservation, a place where “Survival = Anger x Imagination,” where HUD houses and generations of privation intertwine with history, passion, and myth. We follow Thomas Builds-the-Fire, the longwinded storyteller no one really listens to; his half-hearted nemesis, Victor, the basketball star turned recovering alcoholic; and a wide cast of other vividly drawn characters on a haunting journey filled with humor and sorrow, resilience and resignation, dreams and reality. Alexie’s unadulterated honesty and boundless compassion come together in a poetic vision of a world in which the gaps between past and present are not really gaps after all. The basis for the acclaimed 1998 feature film Smoke Signals,the Chicago Tribune noted, “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven . . . is for the American Indian what Richard Wright’s Native Son was for the black American in 1940.” The collection received a Special Citation for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Fiction. This ebook edition features a new prologue from the author, as well as an illustrated biography and rare photos from Sherman Alexie’s personal collection.

In Furiously Happy, #1 New York Times bestselling author Jenny Lawson explores her lifelong battle with mental illness. A hysterical, ridiculous book about crippling depression and anxiety? That sounds like a terrible idea. But terrible ideas are what Jenny does best. As Jenny says*: * "Some people might think that being 'furiously happy' is just an excuse to be stupid and irresponsible and invite a herd of kangaroos over to your house without telling your husband first because you suspect he would say no since he's never particularly liked kangaroos. And that would be ridiculous because no one would invite a herd of kangaroos into their house. Two is the limit. I speak from personal experience. My husband says that none is the new limit. I say he should have been clearer about that before I rented all those kangaroos. "Most of my favorite people are dangerously fucked-up but you'd never guess because we've learned to bare it so honestly that it becomes the new normal. Like John Hughes wrote in The Breakfast Club, 'We're all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it.' Except go back and cross out the word 'hiding.'" Furiously Happy is about "taking those moments when things are fine and making them amazing, because those moments are what make us who we are, and they're the same moments we take into battle with us when our brains declare war on our very existence. It's the difference between "surviving life" and "living life". It's the difference between "taking a shower" and "teaching your monkey butler how to shampoo your hair." It's the difference between being "sane" and being "furiously happy." Lawson is beloved around the world for her inimitable humor and honesty, and in Furiously Happy, she is at her snort-inducing funniest. This is a book about embracing everything that makes us who we are - the beautiful and the flawed - and then using it to find joy in fantastic and outrageous ways. Because as Jenny's mom says, "Maybe 'crazy' isn't so bad after all." Sometimes crazy is just right.

On vacation from school, Denis goes to stay at Crome, an English country house inhabitated by several of Huxley’s most outlandish characters–from Mr. Barbecue-Smith, who writes 1,500 publishable words an hour by “getting in touch” with his “subconscious,” to Henry Wimbush, who is obsessed with writing the definitive History of Crome. Denis’s stay proves to be a disaster amid his weak attempts to attract the girl of his dreams and the ridicule he endures regarding his plan to write a novel about love and art. Aldous Huxley’s first novel, Crome Yellow, was published in 1921, and, as a comedy of manners and ideas, its relatively realistic setting and format may come as a surprise to fans of his later works such as Point Counter Point and Brave New World. Some who know only Brave New World may not know that as a 16-year-old planning to enter medicine, Aldous Huxley was stricken by a serious eye disease which left him temporarily blind, and which derailed what certainly would have been a prominent career as a physician or scientist. Crome Yellow has often been called “witty,” as well as “talky,” and it certainly owes as much to Vanity Fair as it may, surprisingly to some, owe to Tristram Shandy, although one might think that characters such as Mr. Barbecue-Smith and his remarkable writing theories could have some literary antecedents in Lawrence Sterne. Lambasting the post-Victorian standards of morality, Crome Yellow is a witty masterpiece that, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s words, “is too irnonic to be called satire and too scornful to be called irony.”Aldous Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. He spent the later part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death in 1963. Best known for his novels and wide-ranging output of essays, he also published short stories, poetry, travel writing, and film stories and scripts. Huxley was a humanist and pacifist, but was also latterly interested in spiritual subjects such as parapsychology and philosophical mysticism. He was also well known for advocating and taking psychedelics. By the end of his life Huxley was considered, in some academic circles, a leader of modern thought and an intellectual of the highest rank.

8 Short Stories. Most of them are science fiction and some of them are humorous.8 Short Stories. Most of them are science fiction and some of them are humorous.Proper Care & Feeding of a Gort - Be careful adopting alien pets.Just To See What Happens - Quantum theories come to fruitionAdmirals & Dreadnoughts - The Kingdom has too many AdmiralsA Boy on a River Bank - A time of no heroesThe Devil & King Midus - Maybe you shouldn't listen to advice from demonsThe Good Doctor Stutz - Time traveling (medical) doctor, but no boxWhat Time Is It? - At least an ostrich will remove its head from the sand eventuallyTae Ga-Ku - A boy has strange dreams of a girl getting closer, then she arrives.