検索キーワード： ユーモア・風刺文学・フィクション

Katie Chandler had always heard that New York is a weird and wonderful place, but this small-town Texas gal had no idea how weird until she moved there. Everywhere she goes, she sees something worth gawking at and Katie is afraid she's a little too normal to make a splash in the big city. Working for an ogre of a boss doesn't help. Then, seemingly out of the blue, Katie gets a job offer from Magic, Spells, and Illusions, Inc., a company that tricks of the trade to the magic community. For MSI, Katie's ordinariness is an asset.

A gleefully gruesome look at the actual science behind the most outlandish, cartoonish, and impossible deaths you can imagine. What would happen if you took a swim outside a deep-sea submarine wearing only a swimsuit? How long could you last if you stood on the surface of the sun? How far could you actually get in digging a hole to China? Paul Doherty, senior staff scientist at San Francisco's famed Exploratorium Museum, and writer Cody Cassidy explore the real science behind these and other fantastical scenarios.

Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom.

Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle - and people in general - has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands.

It’s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong? Our narrator has many of the advantages of life: young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, she lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like everything else, by her inheritance. But there is a vacuum at the heart of things, and it isn’t just the loss of her parents in college, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her alleged best friend.

Evelyn Waugh's 1934 novel is a bitingly funny vision of aristocratic decadence in England between the wars. It tells the story of Tony Last, who, to the irritation of his wife, is inordinately obsessed with his Victorian Gothic country house and life. When Lady Brenda Last embarks on an affair with the worthless John Beaver out of boredom with her husband, she sets in motion a sequence of tragicomic disasters that reveal Waugh at his most scathing.

A fictional true crime podcast starring BAFTA Award winner Sheridan Smith (Mrs Biggs, Cilla) and Golden Globe winner Joanne Froggatt (Downton Abbey), THE MARGATE MURDERS follows the hunt for an elusive serial killer who murders once every decade, and then changes his identity. In a story full of shocking twists and turns, a journalist, a survivor, a witness, a detective and a forensic psychologist are all interviewed for their perspective on the what went right, and what went horribly wrong, in the hunt for a killer. But everyone has their own agenda, and maybe even something to hide…

Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel–prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results.

How fast can charity fundraiser CeCe Barclay’s unimpeachable society life come tumbling down? One minute she’s speaking before Chicago’s glitterati. The next, her financier husband is wanted for embezzlement. Her assets seized and her fall mortifyingly public, CeCe grasps for refuge—and employment—as a sorority housemom at Eli Whitney University, her daughter Hayden’s alma mater.

Frances is 21 years-old, cool-headed and observant. A student in Dublin and an aspiring writer, at night she performs spoken word with her best friend Bobbi, who used to be her girlfriend. When they are interviewed and then befriended by Melissa, a well-known journalist who is married to Nick, an actor, they enter a world of beautiful houses, raucous dinner parties and holidays in Provence. But when Frances and Nick get unexpectedly closer, the sharply witty and emotion-averse Frances is forced to honestly confront her own vulnerabilities for the first time.

In Everthing Is F*cked, Mark Manson turns his gaze from the inevitable flaws within each individual self to the endless calamities taking place in the world around us. Drawing from the pool of psychological research on these topics, as well as the timeless wisdom of philosophers such as Plato, Nietzsche, and Tom Waits, he dissects religion and politics and the uncomfortable ways they have come to resemble one another. He looks at our relationships with money, entertainment, and the internet, and how too much of a good thing can psychologically eat us alive.

Mrs. Harris is a salt-of-the-earth charlady, content with her lot, cleaning the homes of the rich. However, her knack of setting things straight often has the tendency to stray beyond keeping things neat and tidy. In Mrs Harris MP, the honest as-ever old char impresses her employer with her no-nonsense political views to such an extent that he—an MP, no less—encourages her to become a voice for the people of Battersea and stand for election herself.

Evelyn Waugh’s first novel, Decline and Fall, is the daring and hilarious tale of Paul Pennyfeather, a theology student expelled from Oxford and sent to teach at a private boys’ school in Wales. Previously a modest young man, Paul finds himself a bit out of place amongst the teachers of Llanabba, who are all misfits, fools, and derelicts themselves: Prendy (the anxious) and Captain Grimes (the drunk), just to name two.

A twisted tale of murder in the world of big-stakes bass fishing tournaments. Filled with ex-wives, evangelists, and an armed pit-bull, this is a story that could only be concocted by Carl Hiaasen, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, New York Times best-selling author, and czar of Florida noir fiction.

Lillian and Madison were unlikely roommates and yet inseparable friends at their elite boarding school. But then, Lillian had to leave the school unexpectedly in the wake of a scandal, and they’ve barely spoken since. Until now, when Lillian gets a letter from Madison pleading for her help. Madison’s twin stepkids are moving in with her family, and she wants Lillian to be their caretaker. However, there’s a catch: The twins spontaneously combust when they get agitated, flames igniting from their skin in a startling but beautiful way.

Maybe there are people in Antarctica with penguins in their basements, but in Virginia? Finding a body down there is somewhat more likely for Meg. Explaining the penguins' presence is easy; Meg's dad volunteered to take care of the birds until the future of the bankrupt local zoo could be determined. But identifying the body in the basement proves a harder task.

Tollpatsch Alfie erbt eine Pension in Tirol - und wähnt sich in der schönen, aber verschlafenen Touristengegend im Glück. Schön? Ja. Verschlafen? Mitnichten! Schon bald überschlagen sich die Ereignisse im Grenzgebiet zwischen Seefeld und Mittenwald, wo sich Österreicher und Deutsche gute Nacht sagen, und Alfie muss feststellen, dass seine Hausgäste alles andere als harmlos sind... Tatjana Kruse, wie man sie kennt: Schräg, schwungvoll, spannend und rabenschwarz.

On the eve of her wedding to Nicholas Young, heir to one of the greatest fortunes in Asia, Rachel should be over the moon. She has a flawless Asscher-cut diamond from JAR, a wedding dress she loves more than anything found in the salons of Paris, and a fiancé willing to sacrifice his entire inheritance in order to marry her. But Rachel still mourns the fact that her birthfather, a man she never knew, won't be able to walk her down the aisle.

Stephanie Cole, Benedict Cumberbatch & Roger Allam star in the fourth series of the hit sitcom about the tiny charter airline for whom no job is too small, but many, many jobs are too difficult. By John Finnemore (The News Quiz, Mitchell & Webb).

Filled with relentless drinking in seamy bars and glamorous nightclubs, wild, drug-fuelled parties, and dispassionate sexual encounters, Less than Zero - narrated by Clay, an 18-year-old student returning home to Los Angeles for Christmas - is a fierce coming-of-age story, justifiably celebrated for its unflinching depiction of hedonistic youth, its brutal portrayal of the inexorable consequences of such moral depravity and its author’s refusal to condone or chastise such behaviour.

Irina obsessively takes explicit photographs of the average-looking men she persuades to model for her, scouted from the streets of Newcastle. Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she is offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world and offering an escape from her rut of drugs, alcohol and extreme cinema. The news triggers a self-destructive tailspin, centred around Irina's relationship with her obsessive best friend and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has attracted her attention....