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Blighty: The Quest for Britishness, Britain, Britons, Britishness and The British
by Steve Lowe Alan McArthurBritishness: what does it really mean? Is it all a big con? Having skewered modern British life in the bestselling Is It Just Me or is Everything Shit?, Steve Lowe and Alan MacArthur set out to uncover the deep dark truth about Britain - its history, its myths and its people.Over the course of a year they watch Dorset Morris men dancing on a chalk-giant's thirty-foot-long erection, endure the Last Night of the Proms and search for a couple of pissed dragons under a hill in Wales. They ask Prince William what it means to be British, witness Scotland rising again (a bit), encounter terrifying Europhobe ladies in Surrey, and lose the will to live in Gibraltar. They also meet a lot of druids.Hilarious, timely and provocative, Blighty offers a brilliant, alternative vision of the island in the Atlantic that some people call Britain.
Blue Remembered Heels
by Nell DixonLife is sweet for con-woman Abbey Gifford until, one ordinary Wednesday afternoon, she’s struck by lightning. They told her she might have some bizarre side effects, but nothing could have prepared Abbey for the fact that, since that fateful day, she can never tell lies again... Truthfulness is a big drawback for a con-woman, especially when suddenly she’s being followed by the suspiciously gorgeous detective Mike Flynn. If only Abbey could stop blurting out secrets every time he asks her a question! And if only Mike knew the real reason Abbey spends her life tricking other people out of their money...
The Book of Football Quotations
by Phil ShawThe greatest football quotations collection ever, now in its ninth edition.This compilation includes quotes from everyone – Shakespeare to Suarez, Camus to Cantona, Busby to Beckham – who has made an apt, pithy or comical comment about football. And not just footballers and managers either – fans, pundits, groundsmen, directors and wives all get to have their say too. Every subject is covered, from tactical debates to changing lifestyles, to produce a sometimes hilarious and always thought-provoking commentary on the game.‘My players are always the best players in the world, even if they aren’t’ - José Mourinho‘He was a quiet man, Eric Cantona, but he was a man of few words’ - David Beckham‘Sometimes when you aim for the stars you hit the moon’ - Ian Holloway
Boy: Tales of Childhood (The Roald Dahl Classic Collection)
by Roald DahlWe all have our moments of brilliance and glory, and this was mine.This beautiful edition of Boy, part of The Roald Dahl Classic Collection, features official archive material from the Roald Dahl Museum and is perfect for Dahl fans old and new.So, enter a world where invention and mischief can be found on every page and where magic might be at the very tips of your fingers . . .The Roald Dahl Classic Collection reinstates the versions of Dahl’s books that were published before the 2022 Puffin editions, aimed at newly independent young readers.
The Boyhood of Burglar Bill
by Allan AhlbergCoronation Year, 1953, and in Oldbury a Coronation football competition is organized. The boys from the bottom pitch get a team up, but there's no chance they'll win, of course. They're just the odds and sods – one of them is even a girl – but they're all football crazy and ready and eager to beat off the opposition.A funny and moving story of football and friendship in a world when the streets were full of kids and empty of cars. Not only for boys – and girls – of 9+, there's a real pull of nostalgia for adults as well. And, of course, for all lovers of football, whether on the pitch or in the park.
A Brand New Me
by Shari LowFor anyone who’s ever thought January 1st would be the first day of their new life…
Broken: A Novel (P. S. Ser.)
by Daniel ClayYou thought your neighbours were bad? Wait till you meet the Oswalds. They're crass, cruel and seemingly untouchable. Until, that is, they go one step too far – and the results begin to tear an entire community apart.
Bullies, Bitches and Bastards
by Eileen Condon Amanda EdwardsA hilarious guide to dissing the dicks in your life.
Caligula for President: Better American Living Through Tyranny
by Cintra WilsonIn this inventive and biting satire, acclaimed novelist and cultural critic Cintra Wilson reimagines America's Manifest Destiny as helmed by Caligula, the only leader in world history capable of turning our floundering democracy into a fully functioning-and totally fun-tyranny, both here and abroad. With Caligula running the show, America will finally be able to achieve what the founding fathers really wanted, but never had the nerve to admit. Like, how to: Achieve the guilt-free looting of natural resources for the sake of immediate gratification; Declare war on abstract concepts (drugs, terror, the ocean) for the sake of imperial expansion; Utilize propaganda, psychological operations, and other prisoner-of-war techniques to create a sense of learned helplessness in the citizenry, gain their utterly terrified trust and obedience-and leave them begging for more; Rape, pillage, and loot-both here and abroad-with impunity Wilson also traces the historical arc of Caligula's life and not-so-hard times, from his privileged childhood in Syria to his ascent to power to his eventual takedown by the hands of an angry populace, to point out the unsettling parallels between his own extravagant reign and the avariciousness of other administrations, which helped usher in a new golden age of unlimited executive power. Part political parable, part cautionary tale, Caligula for President is an ingenious and hilarious send-up of the current state of our Union by one of this generation's sharpest satirists.
Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription: Notes and Asides from National Review
by William F. Buckley Jr.National Review has always published letters from readers. In 1965 the magazine decided that certain letters merited different treatment, and William F. Buckley, the editor, began a column called "Notes & Asides” in which he personally replied to the most notable and outrageous correspondence.Culled from four decades of the column, Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription includes exchanges with such well-known figures as Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, John Kenneth Galbraith, A.M. Rosenthal, Auberon Waugh, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., and many others. There are also hilarious exchanges with ordinary readers, as well as letters from Buckley to various organizations and government agencies.Combative, brilliant, and uproariously funny, Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription represents Buckley at his mischievous best.
Candy Everybody Wants
by Josh Kilmer-PurcellArmistead Maupin meets Beautiful People in Josh Kilmer-Purcell’s hilarious and yet poignant coming-of-age tale
The Chicken Dance
by Jacques CouvillonWelcome to Horse Island, where knowing about chickens is the key to popularity and eggs are more valuable than money. This is where eleven-year-old Don Schmidt lives on a chicken farm with his parents. He is sort of unpopular, both at home (where his mother refers nonstop to his talented, dancing, dead sister, Dawn) and at school (where the other kids call him "new kid†? even though he's been at the school for several years).With nowhere else to turn, Don begins a friendship with the chickens that live outside his window on the family's farm.Then one day, Don enters the chicken-judging contest at the local dairy festival and becomes the youngest person in history ever to win. This spurs a dramatic chain of events that makes Don the most popular kid in town. But it also leads him to discover that his parents have been hiding family secrets.Jacques Couvillon has created a refreshing story with a character who is charming, sincere, and just so funny. The Chicken Dance is an entertaining page-turner that readers will not want to put down.
Choke
by Chuck PalahniukVictor Mancini has devised a complicated scam to pay for his mother's hospital care: pretend to be choking on a piece of food in a restaurant and the person who 'saves you' will feel responsible for you for the rest of their lives. Multiply that a couple of hundred times and you generate a healthy flow of cheques, week in, week out. Victor also works at a theme park with a motley group of losers, cruises sex addiction groups for action, and visits his mother, whose Alzheimer's disease now hides what may be the startling truth about his parentage.
Christmas with the Savages (A Puffin Book #2)
by Mary CliveCHRISTMAS WITH THE SAVAGES by Mary Clive is based on real events and people. It is the story of a small girl's Christmas holiday in a large Edwardian country house is effortlessly funny. At Tamerlane Hall, Evelyn finds a horde of children: the gentle Glens, the plaintive Howliboos, and above all, the uninhibited Savages. They are controlled - or not - by a host of parents, supernumerary Uncles and Aunts, Nannies and nurserymaids. Evelyn survives the Christmas festivities - just - returning home none too soon! Seen through the eyes of a prim little eight-year-old, this is an amusing and touching account of a childhood a hundred years ago.
Classic Wodehouse: Articles And Stories - The Original Classic Edition
by P. G. Wodehouse'The funniest writer ever to put words to paper.' Hugh LaurieCocktail TimeAn Uncle Fred novelFrederick, Earl of Ickenham, remains young at heart. So it is for him the act of a moment to lean out of the Drones Club window with a catapult and ping the silk top-hat off his grumpy in-law, the distinguished barrister Sir Raymond Bastable. Unfortunately things don’t end there.The sprightly earl finds that his action has inspired a scandalous bestseller and a film script – but this is as nothing compared with the entangled fates of the couples that surround him and which only his fabled sweetness and light can unravel.Joy in the MorningA Jeeves and Wooster novelTrapped in rural Steeple Bumpleigh, a man less stalwart than Bertie Wooster would probably give way at the knees. For among those present were Florence Craye, to whom Bertie had once been engaged and her new fiancé ‘Stilton’ Cheesewright, who sees Bertie as a snake in the grass. And that biggest blot on the landscape, Edwin the Boy Scout, who is busy doing acts of kindness out of sheer malevolence.All Bertie’s forebodings are fully justified. For in his efforts to oil the wheels of commerce, promote the course of true love and avoid the consequences of a vendetta, he becomes the prey of all and sundry. In fact only Jeeves can save him …Summer LightningA Blandings novelThe Empress of Blandings, prize-winning pig and all-consuming passion of Clarence, Ninth Earl of Emsworth, has disappeared. Blandings Castle is in uproar and there are suspects a-plenty - from Galahad Threepwood (who is writing memoirs so scandalous they will rock the aristocracy to its foundations) to the Efficient Baxter, chilling former secretary to Lord Emsworth. Even Beach the Butler seems deeply embroiled. And what of Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe, Clarence’s arch-rival, and his passion for prize-winning pigs?With the castle full of deceptions and impostors, will Galahad’s memoirs ever see the light of day? And will the Empress be returned …?Meet Mr MullinerIn the Angler’s Rest, drinking hot scotch and lemon, sits one of Wodehouse’s greatest raconteurs. Mr Mulliner, his vivid imagination lubricated by Miss Postlethwaite the barmaid, has fabulous stories to tell of the extraordinary behaviour of his far-flung family: In particular there’s Wilfred, inventor of Raven Gypsy face-cream and Snow of the Mountain Lotion, who lights on the formula for Buck-U-Uppo, a tonic given to elephants to enable them to face tigers with the necessary nonchalance. Its explosive effects on a shy young curate and then the higher clergy is gravely revealed. And there’s his cousin James, the detective-story writer, who has inherited a cottage more haunted than anything in his own imagination. And stuttering George the crossword whizz. And Isadore Zinzinheimer, head of the Bigger, Better & Brighter Motion Picture Company. Tall tales all – but among Wodehouse’s best.
Clips From A Life
by Denis NordenClassic stills from the life of one of Britain's most venerated entertainers.
Cock-A-Doodle-Do! (Mudpuddle Farm)
by Michael MorpurgoJoin the fun on the farm! A charming story from award-winning author Michael Morpurgo, hilariously illustrated throughout by Shoo Rayner, and perfect for readers of 5 and up.
Collins Taak of the Toon: How To Speak Geordie
by Sid WaddellGain an insight into the English language, via one of the UK’s richest dialects: Geordie.
Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-up in the 1970s Changed America
by Richard ZoglinWhen Lenny Bruce overdosed in 1966, he left behind an impressive legacy of edgy, politically charged comedy. Four short years later, a new breed of comic, inspired by Bruce's artistic fearlessness, made telling jokes an art form, forever putting to rest the stereotype of the one-liner borscht belt set. During the 1970s, a small group of brilliant, iconoclastic comedians, led by George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and Robert Klein, tore through the country and became as big as rock stars in an era when Saturday Night Live and SCTV were the apotheosis of cool, and the Improv and Catch a Rising Star were the hottest clubs around. That a new wave of innovative comedians, like Steve Martin, Albert Brooks, Robin Williams, and Andy Kauffman followed closely behind only cemented comedy's place as one of the most important art forms of the decade. In Comedy at the Edge, Richard Zoglin explores in depth this ten-year period when comedians stood, with microphone in hand, at the white-hot center of popular culture, stretching the boundaries of the genre, fighting obscenity laws, and becoming the collective voices of their generation. In the process, they revolutionized an art form. Based on extensive interviews with club owners, booking agents, groupies, and the players themselves, Zoglin traces the decade's tumultuous arc in this no-holds barred, behind-the-scenes look at one of the most influential decades in American popular culture.
Coming Up Next
by Penny SmithA darkly comic novel about the fall and rise of a TV presenter. Written by an insider, it’s a page-turning account of life on the sofa and in front of the cameras.
The Complete Book of Mothers-in-Law: A Celebration
by Dr Luisa DillnerMost of us either have a mother-in-law or will be one, and it's not a role most women take on gladly. Mothers-in-law are traditionally the butt of jokes, declared to be nasty, possessive and interfering - but are they really as bad as this reputation suggests? Luisa Dillner looks beyond the stereotype of the mother-in-law and finds they come in many different varieties, from loveable and loyal to lonely, ferocious and scheming. She traces their history, from Ancient Greece and Rome to modern times, through fairy tales and traditions, in this celebration of this most complicated of relationships.
Crowning Glory (The Princess Diaries #10)
by Meg CabotPrincess Mia Thermopolis is about to turn eighteen and has decided to put down her princess pen for good. But how will it end? Is the practically perfect J.P. the real love of Mia's life? Will an election in Genovia mean the end of princessdom for Mia? Is she really the last virgin at Albert Einstein High? And finally, crucially, will Michael Moscovitz return from Japan and make a last-minute romantic gesture just in time to save Mia from making a HUGE mistake?Previously published as Ten Out of Ten, Meg Cabot's Crowning Glory is the tenth novel in the hilarious The Princess Diaries.
The Curse of the Wolf: Book 4 (Something Wickedly Weird #4)
by Chris MouldThe island of Crampton Rock has emerged from pirate battle. But something far more sinister is on the move ...What claim does the Darkling family have on Stanley Buggles' home?And do the Darkling twins really keep a two-headed snake as a pet?Originally published under the title 'The Darkling Curse'.
Daisy and the Trouble with Giants (Daisy Fiction #3)
by Nick Sharratt Garry Parsons Kes GrayFee Fi Fo Fum! What has Daisy gone and done?! Daisy has decided she wants to meet a REAL giant! If Daisy met a real giant he'd pick Daisy up and put her on his shoulder and they'd have giant adventures! They'd eat crunchy creams as big as tractor tyres, and if she got thirsty, they'd have giant lemonades out of giant straws. It would be sooooo gooood! Trouble is . . . if you want to meet a giant you need a magic bean. And finding magic beans can be troublesome . . . The trouble with giants is they really shouldn't live at the top of magic beanstalks. If giants didn't live at the top of magic beanstalks then Daisy is convinced that she wouldn't have got into big trouble AGAIN!
Daisy and the Trouble with Zoos (Daisy Fiction #2)
by Nick Sharratt Garry Parsons Kes GrayIt's Daisy's birthday and she's having a special birthday treat! Mum has invited her best friends, Gabby and Dylan, on a trip to the zoo - and, best of all, Mum has arranged for Daisy to go into the actual penguin cage with the actual zoo keeper and FEED actual penguins! REAL ACTUAL PENGUINS! With actual beaks and everything!! Trouble is, Daisy doesn't just feed the penguins, she 'adopts' one to take home and everything . . .