Fiction - Absurdist

First published in 1987 this novel has acquired something of a cult status among both cricket fans and those interested in experimental prose and bohemian lifestyles. It is set in Auckland in the 1980s and is a mixture of stream of conscious internal dialogue...

Humorous, heartfelt, and endearing, My Heart Belongs in an Empty Big Mac Container Buried Beneath the Ocean Floor is the story of a young man (as empty as the Big Mac container itself) facing depression head on, and learning to find beauty and hope...

A boisterous collection of surreal, darkly humorous short stories that will delight fans of George Saunders and Alice Munro From John Elizabeth Stintzi, the mind that created the daringly bizarre novel My Volcano, comes an electrifying collection of strange and dark tales.In the surreal,...

Author: J. CurtisISBN-13: 9798218456467Publisher: Tiny WorldsLanguage: EnglishPublished: 07/18/2024Pages: 90Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.21lbsSize: 8.00h x 5.00w x 0.19d

On a space station hovering relatively close to Earth, an alien scientist enhances common barnyard animals into sapient beings with superpowers. The chicken, the last to join Dr. Hash Browns' laboratory, has yet to demonstrate a superpower, prompting the others to call her Half-Baked....

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - "You wouldn't expect a comic novel about a dictionary to be a thriller too, but this one is. In fact, [it] is also a mystery, love story (two of them) and cliffhanging melodrama." --The New York Times Book Review An award-winning...

From the author of Saint Lazarus Day and Other Stories comes The Barber's Collection, an original and poignant tragicomic novel brimming with searing humour and heartrending downfalls.Deinstitutionalization has just begun, yet it can't come soon enough for one infamous patient with a violent criminal...

On a simple trip to the grocery store, struggling businessman and father of four Mick Jansen discovers that he can turn people into giant worms. Haunted but intrigued by his newfound power, Mick tests its limits, wreaking havoc in the lives of everyone he...

We no longer have a cultural narrative in which we trust. Reason and logic are simply tools of the ruling class. Your story is simply your story, not to be generalized upon, and mine is mine. There is no authority, no common humanity, no...

Step Through the Looking Glass and into a whimsical dreamworld once more in this sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Join our heroine on afantastical journey where nonsense reigns supreme, chess pieces come to life, and logic is turned on its head. Lewis Carroll's...

David Wilson is on the lam. If he can stay ahead of the law long enough to finish his great novel, he just might be able to convince his ex-wife he's worth a damn. When a man who appears to be some sort of...

A short distance up the West Coast you will find Palmsvale. Home to a thriving movie industry some may say it is just another sun-drenched paradise, but there is much more to it than palm trees and suntans. Living among its citizens is a...

Yeah, so, no one's really precisely sure what to make of all this. The promotional blurbs here and herein are from people more eloquent than this person right now writing this, so the blurbs are actually where you want to look for an approximate...

Jon Ferguson's Three Forgotten Tales tenderly rewrite* the story of Jesus; his life, crucifixion, and legacy. *If you are a Christian you might be offended by some of the rewriting.Written mainly around imagined conversations between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, their son God, and an...

HARD_SCI-FI takes on HIGH_FINANCE at the black edge of WALL_STREET... where capital emerges from human yearning and declares it MUST GO ON.The ANALYST is a speculator in the ticker market, a picker of common stocks who makes a farcical bet and loses too much...

A trippy trek through America's virtual zeitgeist, Psychotropia blurs the lines between reality and illusion. Deepfakes, holograms, spy gadgets, and slapstick news flood the landscape, a testament to humanity's addiction to lurid escapism. That obsession engulfs retired journalist Liam Kohl after his psychic wife's...

A thrilling and eccentric novel about what it means to make art as a woman, and about the powerful forces of voyeurism, power, obsession, and online performance Woo Woo follows Sabine, a conceptual artist on the verge of a photo exhibition she hopes will...

In a pre-apocalyptic world not unlike our own, a young Instagram poet starts an affair with a California billionaire who's promised a time machine that will make everything normal again--whatever that means.A whip-smart, absurdly funny debut novel for fans of Patricia Lockwood and Marlowe...

White Lotus meets Shaun of the Dead in this absurdist take on the wellness retreat.Our narrator and his accidental companion, K. Sohail, inadvertently find themselves on an island wellness retreat impersonating a couple, the Dhaliwals, who have probably been killed in a helicopter crash....

"[An] enjoyable comic fable . . ." --Wall Street JournalThis auspicious debut announces a bright new voice in comic suspense." --Publishers Weekly, Starred ReviewNot every fishmonger can be a secret agent.Journey to an unnamed mountainous country in central Europe at the end of the...

Ancient Mesopotamia, the Zodiac, and the land of the dead feature in this wildly surrealistic adventure story--Leonora Carrington's revolutionary second novel, long out of print. The Stone Door is an omen, an incantation, and an adventure story rolled into one. Built in layers like...

Soon to be a major motion picture starring John Cusack Mr. Quark is a down-on-his luck pot-smuggler hiding out in the mountains of Colombia with his dog, High Pockets, and a small band of banditos led by the irascible Jose. Only months before, these...

Thirteen tall tales about the role facial hair has played in athletics and competition over the years, Sporting Moustaches puts the "ache" in "moustache." Whiskers are wrapped around sticks, bats, clubs, paddles, chess pieces, and shotglasses, woven into ropes, nets, arrow strings, and even...

A genre-bending collection of dramatic monologues shining a light on the anxious, self-directed gaze that defines contemporary consciousness. Borrowing stylistic elements from the prose poem, faux memoir, online diatribe, and philosophical investigation, the twenty-five dramatic monologues in Spencer Gordon's genre-bending collection shine a light...

How far would you go to achieve the "American Dream?"Timothy and Cynthia Lawson are on their way to having it all. But when they move into their dream home on an idyllic cul-du-sac they soon start to realize that not everything is as it...

Jo was being told to grow up and take control of her life, so she begins dating Orlando, the local drunk driver, a man widely hated and rejected by his hometown. Swearing they have the wrong idea about him, Jo sets off to prove...

A New York Times Notable Book: Darkly comic fables of modern life from a "major discovery" whose "writing gets in your bloodstream like a fever" (The Washington Post Book World). A housewife with a ravenous lust for the adolescent boy who mows her lawn...

Della Comb is the queen of her hive. She's only in her early twenties, but she's already managed to build an empire selling drugs to junkies who are looking for the ultimate escape. The key to her success is that she manufactures her drugs...

A poisoned man dreams of astronauts. Stories included in this volume: "Nostalgia - Part One," "Negative Waves," "The Church of Death and Nothingness," "Apokalypsis," and "Nostalgia - Part Two."Author: William III PauleyISBN-10: 196019013XISBN-13: 9781960190130Publisher: Doom FictionLanguage: EnglishPublished: 08/03/2023Pages: 114Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.34lbsSize: 8.50h x 5.50w...

The story of a man who became his bathroom. From the author of The Astronaut Dream Book.Author: William III PauleyISBN-10: 1960190245ISBN-13: 9781960190246Publisher: William Pauley IIILanguage: EnglishPublished: 09/25/2023Pages: 146Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.43lbsSize: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.34d

OUR PROTAGONIST is pretty sure he's just committed a murder. The body is newly dead, he's the only one around, and a quick look at the evidence suggests he's guilty as sin. Also, he's totally insane. A rare brain condition causes his memories to...

Something is happening to the residents of Eighth Block Tower... There's radiation in the walls. Salt covers the hallways. The food and water are poisonous. A giant green brain pulsates under the roof, pumping electric venom throughout the apartment building. The residents are trapped...

A man walks into a bar and over the course of the night realizes everyone there is named Danny.... Jared Joseph's DANNY THE AMBULANCE is a mind-bending novel told with masterful wit. 'Have you ever seen Danny Welle's adaptation of Danny Kafka's The Trial?...

Searching for his missing brother in Prague, an American encounters a world of killers, gangsters, and ancient mysteries in a "satisfyingly twisted tale" (Publishers Weekly). When American collections agent Lee Holloway receives a letter from a mysterious woman named Vera concerning his missing brother...

In the mid-21st Century, a top-secret consortium of corporations and governments have made time travel possible, only to realize that intruding on the past has been a terrible mistake. At the outset of the program, a thousand scientists, engineers and support staff were confined...

Kathleen's third book, an adult fairy tale: Wak-A-Delic Tales Fun Flash Fiction From The World Of Flora And Fauna It is a collection of hilarious short stories about personified animals who use social media, high tech and other means to solve their problems. Author:...

A budding cult classic that dramatically splits the reviewers. Which side will you be on? A seamless melding of the intricate plotting of Umberto Eco in The Name of the Rose; the side-splitting humor of John Kennedy Toole in A Confederacy of Dunces; and...

A budding cult classic that dramatically splits the reviewers. Which side will you be on? A seamless melding of the intricate plotting of Umberto Eco in The Name of the Rose; the side-splitting humor of John Kennedy Toole in A Confederacy of Dunces; and...

Masters of Atlantis is a cockeyed journey into an America of misfits and con men, oddballs, and innocents, by one of America's most respected novelists, #1New York Times bestselling author Charles Portis. "One of the few laugh-out-loud novels I've read." --Conan O'Brien Lamar Jimmerson...

From Charles Portis, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of True Grit, The Dog of the South is a novel about a husband on a crazy road trip pursuing his runaway wife. "Hilarious . . . is, to me, a very American voice."...

Norwood, #1 New York Times bestselling author Charles Portis's first novel, displayed right out of the gate the wit, style, and singular voice that made him one of our great American writers. "A great American deadpan comedy. . . . Norwood, like a belt...

From the author of The Metamorphosis and The Trial, and one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century: Arriving in a village to take up the position of land surveyor for the mysterious lord of a castle, the character known as K. finds...

Absurd philosophies, dark surrealism, and the end of the human race . . . God hates you. All of you. He closed the gates of Heaven and wants you to rot on Earth forever. Not only that, he is repossesing your souls and feeding...

In this satirical classic, a brilliant scientist invents the Karburator, a reactor that can create abundant and practically free energy. However, the Karburator's superefficient energy production also yields a powerful by-product. The machine works by completely annihilating matter and in so doing releases the...

"For decades, Gilbert Sorrentino has remained a unique figure in our literature. He reminds us that fiction lives because artists make it. . . . To the novel--everyone's novel--Sorrentino brings honor, tradition and relentless passion."--Don DeLillo"Possessing both the grace of James Joyce and the...

Welcome to Mark Leyner's America, where you can order gallium arsenide sushi at a roadside diner, get loaded on a cocktail of growth hormones and anabolic steroids, and support your habit by appearing on TV game shows. Welcome to a wildly post-Einsteinian fictional universe...

Heaven is no longer a paradise. It was once a blissful utopia full of wonders far beyond human comprehension. But that was a long, long time ago. The afterlife is now in ruins. It has become an ugly, lonely wasteland populated by strange monstrous...

Mattia Pascal endures a life of drudgery in a provincial town. Then, providentially, he discovers that he has been declared dead. Realizing he has a chance to start over, to do it right this time, he moves to a new city, adopts a new...

Contemporary short stories about edgy, urban, obsessive characters by one of America's best writers of experimental fiction.Author: Stephen DixonISBN-10: 1566890810ISBN-13: 9781566890816Publisher: Coffee House PressLanguage: EnglishPublished: 04/01/1999Pages: 288Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.83lbsSize: 8.46h x 5.55w x 0.90dReview Citation(s): Kirkus Reviews 01/15/1999 pg. 102Publishers Weekly 02/01/1999 pg. 74Booklist...

Bruce Wagner weaves together tales of desperation and depravity of the modern age in Dead Stars, his uproarious and sharply critical take on the obsessions of Hollywood. Telma, the world's youngest breast cancer survivor, is threatened with obscurity by a four-year-old that's undergone a...