Anana the Banana is sent to our galaxy and charged with granting a 5‑year‑old boy’s impossible birthday wish: to find the funniest joke in the universe. This plunges them into a wildly absurd journey through time, space, and dimensions riddled with dumb jokes, painful metafiction, and ridiculous footnotes. Along the way they encounter a parade of outrageous characters who gleefully break the fourth wall, smash the fifth wall, and turn the sixth wall into a terrible art exhibit. The quest builds to a punchline so simple and silly that even God has to laugh. A delightfully chaotic comedy that proves the quest for meaning is usually funnier than the answer.

"The Funniest Joke in the Universe is a brilliantly clever and genuinely funny book. It’s a love letter to absurdist humour and storytelling itself. It doesn't just tell a joke; it deconstructs the entire idea of jokes, quests, and narratives while making you laugh throughout. A highly enjoyable read for anyone who enjoys smart, meta, and deeply weird science fiction comedy."

📖 Available on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4tgNE8G

At first, silence felt holy. Then the music started—and nothing was ever the same.

In the gripping second volume of his memoir series, Chaz Holesworth steps out of the wreckage of his Philadelphia childhood and into a new wilderness: adolescence, longing, awakening, and the dangerous freedom of life beyond the rules that once defined him.

Raised in a world where faith meant fear and obedience meant survival, Chaz enters his teenage years numb and isolated. Emotions are weakness. Questions are sin. Desire is the enemy. But when first love cracks open the cage, and forbidden music floods in, everything he has been taught about identity, God, and himself begins to unravel.

With every lyric he wasn’t allowed to hear, and every mile he runs from home, Chaz discovers pieces of a self he never knew he could claim. Friends become family. Music becomes prayer. And movement becomes the only escape from a growing storm of shame, confusion, and spiritual fallout he doesn’t yet have language for.

Drugs, heartbreak, adventure, and raw curiosity collide as Chaz tries to live fast enough to stay ahead of his past. But survival has a cost, and reclaiming his voice means confronting everything silence once protected him from.

Lyrical, honest, and unflinchingly human, Life and How to Live It: Near Wild Heaven is a coming-of-age memoir about breaking indoctrination, surviving first love, and learning to choose life after years of enforced silence. Set against the pulse of mid-90s music and youth culture, it is a story for anyone who has ever tried to outrun their past, or finally stopped running.

📖 Available on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3Lyi7OA

A calm, story-driven tour through pandemics, politics, technology, and culture, where an engineer-turned-essayist uses vivid scenes and clear-eyed analysis to show how small decisions—from viruses to tariffs to algorithms—quietly shape public trust, personal freedom, and modern life.

Author website: https://gruner.com/