Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Comedy & Humor

Outsider. Misfit. Criminal. Convict. . . . Movie star. Family man. Comedy legend. Joey Diaz has been called every name in the book (and then some). Now, for the first time, he shares the story of his unlikely rise to fame in his own words—with no punches pulled.

Charles Mason (1728-1786) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733-1779) were the British surveyors best remembered for running the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland that we know today as the Mason-Dixon Line. Here is their story as re-imagined by Thomas Pynchon, featuring Native Americans and frontier folk, ripped bodices, naval warfare, conspiracies erotic and political, and major caffeine abuse. We follow the mismatched pair - one rollicking, the other depressive; one Gothic, the other pre-Romantic.

The daughter of a narcissistic film star and a billionaire, Madison is abandoned at her Swiss boarding school over Christmas, while her parents are off touting their new projects and adopting more orphans. She dies over the holiday of a mari­juana overdose - and the next thing she knows, she’s in Hell. 

As Constantinople is being pillaged and burned in April 1204, a young man, Baudolino, manages to save a historian and a high court official from certain death at the hands of crusading warriors. Born a simple peasant, Baudolino has two gifts: his ability to learn languages and to lie. A young man, he is adopted by a foreign commander who sends him to university in Paris. After he allies with a group of fearless and adventurous fellow students, they go in search of a vast kingdom to the East.

They say you can’t teach stand-up comedy, but you can certainly give a lot of good advice. In the Recorded Books Original 28 Stand-Ups, the best stand-up comedians in the business share tips of the trade and full-fledged stories to impart the lessons they learned treading the boards, hitting the road, and of course, on occasion, bombing.

The Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual is a comprehensive guide to the UCB style of long form comedy improvisation. Written by UCB founding members Matt Besser, Ian Roberts, and Matt Walsh, the manual covers everything from the basics of two person scene work (with a heavy emphasis on finding "the game" of the scene), to the complexities of working within an ensemble to perform long form structures, such as "The Harold" and "The Movie".  

The Upright Citizens Brigade knows comedy, but more than that, they know how to coach aspiring comics and average joes alike on the ins and outs of how to create your own stand-out, unique voice. Led by UCB founders Matt Besser, Ian Roberts, and Matt Walsh, this series features conversations with experts in the field including Amy Poehler, Adam McKay, Ben Schwartz, Lennon Parham, Jessica St. Clair, Andy Daly, Bobby Moynihan, and Nick Kroll, among others. 

What I wanted more than anything was to be standing beside Schmidt, in concert with Schmidt, at the foot of Saint Sebastian’s Abyss along with Schmidt, hands cupped to the sides of our faces, debating art, transcendence, and the glory of the apocalypse.” Former best friends who built their careers writing about a single work of art meet after a decades-long falling-out. One of them, called to the other’s deathbed for unknown reasons by a “relatively short” nine-page email, spends his flight to Berlin reflecting on Dutch Renaissance painter Count Hugo Beckenbauer.

She’s a fashion model who has everything: a boyfriend, a career, a loyal best friend. But when a sudden freeway "accident" leaves her disfigured and incapable of speech, she goes from being the beautiful center of attention to being an invisible monster, so hideous that no one will acknowledge she exists. Enter Brandy Alexander, Queen Supreme, one operation away from becoming a real woman, who will teach her that reinventing yourself means erasing your past and making up something better. And that salvation hides in the last places you’ll ever want to look.

Tender Branson - last surviving member of the so-called "Creedish Death Cult" - is dictating his incredible life story into the flight recorder of Flight 2039, cruising on autopilot at 39,000 feet somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. He is all alone in the plane, which will shortly reach terminal velocity and crash into the vast Australian outback.

Have you ever been badgered by an annoying pick-up artist at the bar? Ever felt a burning desire to emotionally torture a friend’s boyfriend in an act of revenge? Have you ever endured just talking to a man before? If so, then this book is for you. With more than 100 phrases, questions, and comebacks, How to Piss Off Men is your essential guide to sending even the most relentless mansplainer into an existential crisis.

Have you just been fired? Did that job you were hoping to get not pan out? Did you recently end up embarrassing yourself in a major way in front of people you really wanted to impress? Not to worry. There’s a way out of whatever you’re going through, and Anthony Scaramucci—or “The Mooch,” as he’s known to his friends—is the perfect person to point you in the right direction. Whatever you’re going through, he’s been through it already. Probably twice. And he’s learned a whole lot of lessons along the way.

Two auditors for the US egg industry go rogue and conceive a plot to steal a million chickens in the middle of the night - an entire egg farm's worth of animals. Janey and Cleveland - a spirited former runaway and the officious head of audits - assemble a precarious, quarrelsome team and descend on the farm on a dark spring evening. A series of catastrophes ensues. 

Dorothy Jean Wetstra, 87, is the town matriarch in Partonville, Illinois. Fully aware of both her strengths and flaws, she often asks "the Big Guy" in heaven for help: "Dear Lord, DO SOMETHING!"

Oreo is raised by her maternal grandparents in Philadelphia. Her black mother tours with a theatrical troupe, and her Jewish deadbeat dad disappeared when she was an infant, leaving behind a mysterious note that triggers her quest to find him. What ensues is a playful, modernized parody of the classical odyssey of Theseus with a feminist twist, immersed in seventies pop culture, and mixing standard English, black vernacular, and Yiddish with wisecracking aplomb.

Dr. Siri Paiboun, the ex-national coroner of Laos, may have more experience dissecting bodies than making art, but when he manages to smuggle a fancy movie camera into the country he devises a plan to shoot a Lao adaptation of War and Peace. The only problem? The Ministry of Culture must approve the script first. That and he can't figure out how to turn on the camera. Meanwhile, the skeleton of a woman has appeared under the Anusawari Arch in the middle of the night. Siri assists his friend, the newly promoted Senior Police Inspector Phosy Vongvichai, with the ensuing investigation.

In big stakes bass fishing tournaments, contestants will do anything to win. Maybe that's why there is a corpse floating in Coon Bog. Now it's up to R J Decker, novice private investigator, to find out who was dying to get the biggest fish. Help comes in the unlikely form of Skink, a half-mad hermit with a taste for road kill.

She was the most beautiful British bauble in Europe’s jet-set playgrounds. Now she’s broke, furious, and limping down a backwoods road in an ugly pink southern belle gown. He’s a tall, lean Texan who’s sure to regret stopping his car for this woebegone, surly Scarlett. Meet Francesca Day and Dallie Beaudine, two incredible characters whose tangled love affair is at the heart of this ravishing New York Times best seller from award-winning author Susan Elizabeth Phillips.

In this follow-up to Austenland, Charlotte Kinder is eager to escape the numbness she feels after her divorce. Deciding to get away, she visits the Regency-themed Pembrook Park resort in England, where talented actors set the perfect scene. But with everyone playing a role, it’s hard to distinguish reality from fantasy. So when Charlotte’s heart stirs, she wonders if she’s simply caught up in the experience - or if her ability to feel is finally returning.

Welcome to the wonderful world of beige parenting, where newborns are swaddled in soothingly sophisticated taupe muslin blankies and toddlers play only with wooden toys in shades ranging from oatmeal to sand. In Dress Your Baby in Sage and Taupe, Hayley DeRoche, the creator known online as @sadbeige, delivers a witty, illustrated satire of the perfectly monochromatic curated lifestyle embraced by modern parents.