Burn the Midnight Oil with Humorous Fiction
Laugh through the night with these hilarious fiction books! Discover witty reads perfect for burning the midnight oil—humor, satire, and fun await!
Book
Heart Seizure
by Bill Fitzhugh
Spence Tailor, a lawyer with an actual set of principals, loves his mama, Rose. Rose—with advanced cardiomyopathy and a rare blood type—is scheduled for a heart transplant. But when the president's heart craps out during a photo op three months before the national election, the White House chief of staff orders the FBI to seize the heart that was going to Rose—all in the name of democracy. But Spence isn't about to let anybody steal what rightfully belongs to his mom. So with the help of his reluctant older brother, they hijack the heart, inadvertently kidnap a beautiful cardiac surgery resident, and take to the road in a '65 Mustang—with all the president's men in potentially murderous pursuit.
Book
Nature Girl
by Carl Hiaasen
From "the funniest important writer in America" (Miami Herald) comes a tale that is gleefully zany and incisively sharp and now available in trade paperback for the first time.
Book
The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse
by Robert Rankin
Jack sets out to seek his fortune in Toy City and hooks up with Eddie Baer as they try to stop a serial killer who is murdering old nursery rhyme characters.
Book
The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove
by Christopher Moore
The town psychiatrist has decided to switch everybody in Pine Cove, California, from their normal antidepressants to placebos, so naturally—well, to be accurate, artificially—business is booming at the local blues bar. Trouble is, those lonely slide-guitar notes have also attracted a colossal sea beast named Steve with, shall we say, a thing for explosive oil tanker trucks. Suddenly, morose Pine Cove turns libidinous and is hit by a mysterious crime wave, and a beleaguered constable has to fight off his own gonzo appetites to find out what's wrong and what, if anything, to do about it.
Book
Lamb
by Christopher Moore
The birth of Jesus has been well chronicled, as have his glorious teachings, acts, and divine sacrifice after his thirtieth birthday. But no one knows about the early life of the Son of God, the missing years -- except Biff, the Messiah's best bud, who has been resurrected to tell the story in the divinely hilarious yet heartfelt work "reminiscent of Vonnegut and Douglas Adams" (Philadelphia Inquirer). Verily, the story Biff has to tell is a miraculous one, filled with remarkable journeys, magic, healings, kung fu, corpse reanimations, demons, and hot babes. Even the considerable wiles and devotion of the Savior's pal may not be enough to divert Joshua from his tragic destiny. But there's no one who loves Josh more -- except maybe "Maggie," Mary of Magdala -- and Biff isn't about to let his extraordinary pal suffer and ascend without a fight.
Book
A Dirty Job
by Christopher Moore
Charlie Asher is a pretty normal guy with a normal life, married to a bright and pretty woman who actually loves him for his normalcy. They're even about to have their first child. Yes, Charlie's doing okay—until people start dropping dead around him, and everywhere he goes a dark presence whispers to him from under the streets. Charlie Asher, it seems, has been recruited for a new position: as Death. It's a dirty job. But, hey! Somebody's gotta do it.
Book
Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story
by Christopher Moore
When aspiring young writer Tommy Flood meets beautiful Jody on her nocturnal visit to the supermarket, he unwittingly begins an eternal relationship with a vampire
Book
Pest Control
by Bill Fitzhugh
Bob Dillon can't get a break. A down-on-his-luck exterminator, all he wants is his own truck with a big fiberglass bug on top -- and success with his radical new, environmentally friendly pest-killing technique. So Bob decides to advertise. Unfortunately, one of his flyers falls into the wrong hands. Marcel, a shady Frenchman, needs an assassin to handle a million-dollar hit, and he figures that Bob Dillon is his man. Through no fault -- or participation -- of his own, this unwitting pest controller from Queens has become a major player in the dangerous world of contract murder. And now Bob's running for his life through the wormiest sections of the Big Apple -- one step ahead of a Bolivian executioner, a homicidal transvestite dwarf, meatheaded CIA agents, cabbies packing serious heat ... and the world's number-one hit man, who might just turn out to be the best friend Bob's got.
Book
Cross Dressing
by Bill Fitzhugh
Big-shot ad exec Dan Steele feels entitled to the best life has to offer -- even if he has to live way beyond his means to acquire it. But there's hope on the horizon. Dan has just stolen what's sure to be an award-winning idea for a multimillion-dollar account. If he can keep the creditors at bay long enough, he'll get the keys to the executive restroom and all his problems will be solved. Unfortunately, that's when his brother, a Catholic priest, shows up at Dan's door in need of a loan to pay for some essential medical attention. Being both financially and morally challenged, Dan hands over his insurance card instead of his credit card. But it's too late. After running up a bill for $300,000, Father Michael goes the way of all flesh. Now Dan has a choice: go to prison for insurance fraud or take a vow of poverty and become a man of the cloth. Before he can say "God bless," Dan finds himself pursued by a relentless insurance investigator, the psychopathic copywriter whose idea he stole, and a deadly killer from his brother's mysterious past. And, as if that wasn't enough, Dan finds himself falling in love with a gun-toting nun. Let us pray.
Book
Organ Grinders
by Bill Fitzhugh
Bill Fitzhugh strikes again! Following his widely acclaimed debut novel, Pest Control (The [London] Times called it "one of the funniest, most off-beat thrillers in years"), Fitzhugh turns his satirical eye to the merging of medical science and big business -- with hilarious and outrageous results. Paul Symon is an environmentalist who's out to make the world a better place, but he faces too much disjointed information, public apathy, and self-serving talk. Not to mention greedy despoiler Jerry Landis, a venture capitalist dying of a rare disease that accelerates the aging process. Landis cares only about making more money and finding a way to arrest his medical condition. That brings him and his fortune to the wild frontier of biotechnology, where his people are illegally experimenting with cross-species organ transplantation in California while breeding genetically altered primates at a secret site in the piney woods of south-central Mississippi. There's also an eco-terrorist on the loose, bent on teaching hard lessons to people who think the Earth and its creatures are theirs to destroy. These forces, together with fifty thousand extra-large chacma baboons, collide in an explosion of laughter and wonder that Bill Fitzhugh's growing league of admirers is coming to recognize as his very own.
Book
Tourist Season
by Carl Hiaasen
The only trace of the first victim was his Shriner's fez washed up on the Miami beach. The second victim, the head of the city's chamber of commerce, was found dead with a toy rubber alligator lodged in his throat. And that was just the beginning... Now Brian Keyes, reporter turned private eye, must move from muckraking to rooting out murder, in a caper that will mix football players, politicians, and police with a group of fanatics and a very hungry crocodile.
Book
Native Tongue
by Carl Hiaasen
Now reissued--one of the most beloved novels by the "New York Times" bestselling author in which dedicated, if somewhat demented, environmentalists battle sleazy real estate developers in the Florida Keys.
Book
Double Whammy
by Carl Hiaasen
R.J. Decker, star tenant of the local trailer park and neophyte private eye is fishing for a killer. Thanks to a sportsman's scam that's anything but sportsmanlike, there's a body floating in Coon Bog, Florida -- and a lot that's rotten in the murky waters of big-stakes, large-mouth bass tournaments. Here Decker will team up with a half-blind, half-mad hermit with an appetite for road kill; dare to kiss his ex-wife while she's in bed with her new husband; and face deadly TV evangelists, dangerously seductive women, and a pistol-toting redneck with a pit bull on his arm. And here his own life becomes part of the stakes. For while the "double whammy" is the lure, first prize is for the most ingenious murder.
Book
Skin Tight
by Carl Hiaasen
Somebody wants Mick Stranahan dead. Mick is sure of this, because he just had to dispatch a pistol-packing intruder with the help of a stuffed marlin head. But who would want to hurt a former Florida state investigator? The answer is plenty of peopleas Stranahan soon finds himself acquainted with a litter of nefarious players, including a hit man whose skin problems could fill a comprehensive (if bizarre) medical textbook, a lawyer of questionable repute who advertises on billboards, and a TV show host whose taste for sensationalism is exceeded only by his vanity. The whole thing gets downright harrowing for the ex-cop in one of Hiaasen's most breathtaking, madcap romps everwhere even a plastic surgeon with extremely shaky hands waits to wring Stranahan's neck....
Book
Atomic Lobster
by Tim Dorsey
Batten the hatches, don the life jackets, and take cover--Serge A. Storms is setting sail on a cruise ship to hell in this latest manic adventure from the acclaimed author of "Hurricane Punch."
Book
The Big Bamboo
by Tim Dorsey
His marriage plans fizzled, so Floridaphile serial killer Serge A. Storms is on a new mission: to convince the West Coast movie industry bigwigs to do their business in his beloved Sunshine State. So it's off to Tinseltown with his substance-sustained sidekick, Coleman—to schmooze with craven cokehead producers and visiting Yakuza, who are wrestling to salvage the most disastrous big-budget stinkeroo in the history of celluloid . . . and to radically reduce the rampaging population of true Hollywood slimeballs.
Book
Torpedo Juice
by Tim Dorsey
The drinks are on us! Serge A. Storm returns -- and so does Tim Dorsey -- for another hilarious tour of the wacky underside of the Sunshine State. And this time our lovable but maniacal hero is on a mission: Stay off police radar and reinvent himself. Naturally Serge makes a beeline to the Reinvention Capital of the United States, the Florida Keys, where nobody is who they seem to be and the freaks are the least of your worries. The perfect place for Serge to blend in! Unfortunately, some other less likable lunatics have latched on to the same idea, and the sheriff's fax machine keeps jamming because of all the APBs coming in like a storm front about to break ... Lurking beneath paradise are many questions: Who is the mystery driver of the metallic green Trans Am? The brown Plymouth Duster with Ohio plates? What about the white Mercedes with tinted windows? Who can keep it all straight? Serge can! At least when he's not conch blowing, Seven-Mile Bridge running, underwater romancing, operating an all-inclusive twelve-step program, or trying to convince his accidental posse that he's not the messiah. But the questions only lead to more questions: Why is everyone afraid to set foot on No Name Key? Why are they more afraid of the smuggler left over from the old days, when all the phone booths are covered with drug dealers' numbers? What was Serge thinking when he got married? What was she thinking? Who rises from the dead to wreak havoc on the newlyweds' bliss? Will the Skunk Ape win the scavenger hunt? Who will survive the Key West beach bash from hell? And why is everyone hammered all the time? Maybe it's something in the Torpedo Juice ...
Book
Hammerhead Ranch Motel
by Tim Dorsey
There's a different schemer or slimeball behind every door: cocaine duckpins who have survived only by the dumbest fortune, hard-luck gigolos desperate to score, undercover cops busting undercover cops who are running sting operations on undercover cops. And just down the row, local historian and spree killer Serge A. Storms -- who has stopped keeping up with his meds -- is still looking for a briefcase stuffed with five million dollars...and is now capable of wreaking more havoc than hurricane Rolando-berto, the big wind gathering force offshore, just waiting for the opportunity to blow everything straight to hell. Pack up your bags and head south to sunny Florida. Leave your rational mind at home and come well armed. There's a room with your number on it at the Hammerhead Ranch Motel.