Showing results for "Shorts" in Satire

H.H. Munro (Saki) is one of the undisputed masters of the short story. In this complete compendium, the full gamut of his subjects and themes is experienced. His stories are imbued with humorous satire, biting irony, and often the macabre, all of which have one target: the stupidities and hypocrisies of Edwardian upper-class society.

Immerse yourself in a world where the wonderful Stephen Fry reads some of the more memorable short stories of our time. A brilliant combination of reader and writer come together in these seven short stories available on digital download only. Stephen writes “Saki remains, from a distance of a...

*A Short History of the Apocalypse: your comprehensive guide to the challenges of Armageddon* Join Frankie Boyle (Saturday Night Swindle; Celebrity Vengeance) and Charlie Skelton (head writer: Ad Naseum; David Suchet's News Sachet) as they debrief time traveller and bon vivant from the late 21st...

An ingenious novel about art and revenge, insisting on your dreams and hitting on your doctor, told in the form of 80 movie reviews In near-future America, film critic Noah Body uploads his reviews to a content aggregator. His job is routine: watch, seethe, pan. He dreams of making his own film...

Satire, Humor and Irony in some cases have been regarded as the most effective source to understand a society, the oldest form of social study. Contents: The Cop and the Anthem by O. Henry; The Ransom of Red Chief by O. Henry; What Stumped the Blue Jays by Mark Twain; The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain; The Toys of Peace by Saki (H. H. Munro); The Artful Hussar by Johann Peter Hebel; From The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen by Rudolf Erich Raspe; The Golden Honeymoon by Ring Lardner; When I Was a Witch by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; Micromegas: A Philosophical History by Voltaire.

Bulgakov was a Soviet playwright, novelist, and short story writer best known for his humor and penetrating satire. Because of their realism and humor, Bulgakov's works enjoyed great popularity, but their trenchant criticism of Soviet mores was increasingly unacceptable to the authorities. Bulgakov's short stories are a world unto themselves—sharp, witty, and often unsettling. In these pages, the absurdity of Soviet life collides with the supernatural, the grotesque meets the comic, and reality is always just a step away from slipping into nightmare.

Framed as a reference work of humorous “entries” that offer trenchant social commentary, Everything Abridged presages a dark vision of the near future but tells jokes in the face of it: An intelligence agency operative uncovers a conspiracy to generate conspiracies and realizes his participation in the scheme. A Caribbean monarch meets four decades of American presidents and adjusts his country’s foreign policy accordingly. Experiment participants are asked to bring back a gun as quickly as possible.

Actor Matthew McConaughey descends into a surreal desert of the soul, an admirer of Miley Cyrus performs a 3,000-word sentence in defense of his passion, an aging porn star dons a dinosaur costume to film the sex scene of a lifetime, and Leonard Cohen shills for Subway: these mercurial and wildly varied stories explode the conventions of short fiction.

In the stories of Confidence, there are ecstasy-taking PhD students, financial traders desperate for husbands, owners of failing sex stores, violent and unremovable tenants, aggressive raccoons, seedy massage parlors, experimental filmmakers who record every second of their day, and wives who blog insults directed at their husbands. There are cheating husbands. There are private clubs, crowded restaurants, psychiatric wards. There is one magic cinema, and everyone has a secret of some kind.

The world is divided between Asia and the United Continents - two great super powers locked in eternal warfare. But the balance of power is about to shift in Asia’s favor. They have developed a top-secret weapon - the cohesion projector-that could lead to annihilation on an unprecedented scale.... But as far as Lorrilard is concerned, the number one problem with the projector is that it stands in the way of his profits. Can he find a way to subvert the powerful weapon and resume his enterprising exploits?

Farmer Eben Smith heads off to the big city to trade his wagonload of produce. But he barters a lot more than goods after he stumbles across a strange crossroads in time, bargains with different cultures in alternate realities, and accidentally wreaks havoc and chaos in each.

Chris Addison – the thinking idiot's pretend anthropologist – takes us on a comic journey through the vast and rich subject of human history in these eight hilarious comedy lectures. Aided by Professor Austin Herring (aka Geoffrey McGivern), Dan Tetsell and Jo Enright, who put their considerable talents to use in sketches illustrating the lectures, he examines how Homo sapiens became Top Species, charts the rise and fall of the Western world and looks at what’s next for the future of mankind.

Seance is a famouse short story by Mikhail Bulgakov, written in 1922. Published in the magazine "Rupor" (1922, No. 4). The epigraph to the work, created on the basis of the author's life observations, is Mephistopheles' Patter "Do not invoke him!"

This short story first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in 1920, and later became part of Flappers and Philosophers. Fitzgerald was the master of exposing the underbelly of the aristocracy and the pompous, and here, Horace the prodigy falls in love with Monica the dancer. Horace puts his lofty goals on hold to pursue a more lucrative career as an acrobat, while Monica writes a book.