Showing titles in Humorous

Bette loves Mei, but Bette and Mei are on a break, so Bette can catch-up on the decade of dating experiences she missed before she came out. So Bette is (reluctantly) on a dating odyssey: a quest to have lots of casual sex with lots of hot women and come back to Mei more experienced and more certain about what she wants. And now she has new friend Ruth as her queer dating guide, she can't possibly fail. It's just three months, then she'll be back with Mei. It's the perfect plan … isn't it?

For more than three decades Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City has blazed its own trail through popular culture...from a groundbreaking newspaper serial, to a classic novel, to a television event that entranced millions around the world. The first of six novels about the denizens of the mythic apartment house at 28 Barbary Lane, Tales of the City is both a sparkling comedy of manners and an indelible portrait of an era that changed forever the way we live.

Paul Delamare has been roped into accompanying his old friend on a luxury cruise aboard the magnificent superyacht Mal de Mer. It’s all plain sailing until his friend’s priceless necklace is stolen, and everyone falls under suspicion. As Paul races to catch the thief, the ship begins to drift off-course, veering into the storm-lashed mid-Atlantic. Then one of the passengers is found dead in mysterious circumstances, in a pool of coffee and surrounded by cake crumbs. It’s all hands on deck to catch the killer, but Paul soon discovers guests and crew are harbouring deadly secrets.

Hugo Hunter was the most celebrated gay novelist of the 20th century. He published two masterpieces, securing his place alongside the dazzling literary greats of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, and rubbing shoulders with everyone from Truman Capote to James Baldwin. But after decades of fame and excess, just as New York City enters the 1980s and awakes to the coming horror of AIDS, Hugo finds himself running out of money. Out of nowhere, he receives an extraordinary lifeline: an offer from his longtime publisher. The money will solve all his problems – except for one thing. Hugo Hunter is an imposter.

James is 34 and fed up. His six-year relationship with Adam has imploded, he hates his job making up celebrity gossip and his best friend, Bella, has just announced she's moving to Russia. Adrift and single in loved-up London, James needs to break out of his lonely, drunken comfort zone. Encouraged by Bella, he throws himself headlong into online dating, blogging each encounter anonymously as the mysterious Romeo.

London, 2014. Hal Lancaster – twenty-two, gay, Catholic, chops lines of cocaine with his myWaitrose card – is the reluctant heir of his father Henry, the sixteenth Duke of Lancaster. Henry is half tyrant, half martyr, with an investment in his eldest son that has grown into an obsession. While Hal floats between internships and drinking sessions, Henry keeps him in check with passive-aggression, religious guilt, and a cruelty that Hal sometimes confuses for tenderness.

Millie wants to graduate, get a job and buy a house. She’s slowly saving up from her job on campus, but when a visiting professor offers her an unusual opportunity to make some extra money, she jumps at the chance. Agatha is a writer, recovering from a break-up while researching attitudes towards weddings and money for her new book. She strikes gold when interviewing the girls in Millie’s dorm, but her plans take a turn when she realises that the best material is unfolding behind closed doors.

Enid is many things: lesbian, serial dater, deaf in one ear, space obsessive, true crime fanatic. When she's not listening to grizzly murder podcasts, she's managing her crippling phobia of bald people and trying hard not to think about her mortifying teenage years—which is hard, when she's lost the password to her old YouTube account and the (many) vlogs that her teen self once uploaded. She's worried about herself, her depressive mother, and what the deal is with gender reveal parties.

Fern's mother is a social climber and a former ballet dancer who lives a plush life in a London townhouse. Fern's father only climbs if there's a bottle at the top, has an IQ of 133 and lives hand-to-mouth in Californian motels. Aged 14, Fern has spent equal time with each of her parents. That is, until an unexpected visitor triggers a life-changing dilemma – whether she should get on a plane to London to be with her mother, or stay in California with her father. Here, Fern's narrative splices in two.

For fans of Torrey Peters's Detransition, Baby and HBO’s Search Party—Jenny Fran Davis's Dykette is an addictive, absurd, and darkly hilarious debut novel about a young woman who embarks on a ten-day getaway with her partner and two older queer couples.

Set at the fag-end of the 60s at the moment when Swinging London is starting to take on a darker hue in the wake of Charles Manson's murders, and framed as a novel within a novel published by a seedy Piccadilly-based publisher of pulp fiction, Man-Eating Typewriter is a homage to the great oulipo experiments in fiction. It is the story of a psychopath called Raymond Novak and his untimely demise told entirely in 'polari' - a language developed and used mainly amongst the metropolitan homosexual community in the time when being gay was still a criminal offence.

Grace Warner spends her days teaching four sections of Beowulf for Cretins to bored students at one of New England's “hidden ivy” colleges. Not long after she is dumped by her longtime girlfriend, Grace meets the engaging and mysterious Abbie on a cross-country flight. Sparks fly on and off the plane as the two strangers give in to one night of reckless passion with no strings attached and no contact information exchanged.

Can 'no' be a declaration of love? What happens when love is savage, dangerous and all-consuming? In this gorgeous and unsettling collection, women navigate the complexities and cruelties of desire across time and place, from a medieval convent to a Victorian parlour to a 1990s high school. Intensely atmospheric, surprising and darkly funny, this collection is a richly flavoured feast from a brilliant writer in full command of the form.

1972. Ten years on from the events of The Miseducation of Evie Epworth and Evie is settled in London working for the BBC. She has everything she's ever dreamed of (a career, a leatherette briefcase, an Ossie Clark poncho) but, following an unfortunate incident involving Princess Anne and a Hornsea Pottery mug, she finds herself having to rethink her life and piece together work, love, grief and multiple pairs of cork-soled platform sandals.

Where do you get an abortion in 1960 Georgia, especially if your small town’s midwife goes to the same church as your parents? For seventeen-year-old Doris Steele, the answer is Atlanta, where her favorite teacher, Mrs. Lucas, calls upon her brash, wealthy childhood best friend, Sylvia, for help. While waiting to hear from the doctor who has agreed to do the procedure, Doris spends the weekend scandalized by, but drawn to, the people who move in and out of Sylvia’s orbit.

Keith Ridgway, author of the acclaimed Hawthorn & Child, writes about people whose understanding of their own situation is only ever partial and fuzzy, who are consumed by emotions and anxieties and narratives, or the lack thereof, that they cannot master. He focuses on peripheral figures who mean well and to whom things happen, and happen confusingly, and his fictional strategies reflect this focus. In a deftly conjured high-wire act, Ridgway achieves the fine balance between the imperatives of drama and fidelity to his characters.

Eliot Weiner – snob, shameless opportunist, Morris dancing-obsessive – is on a mission. He has got wind of a trunk of bawdy love letters by Warren Harding, ‘the shallowest President in history’, now guarded by his octogenarian mistress on her crumbling Hollywood Hills estate. They could reignite his failing academic career – and there’s no depth to which he won’t stoop, no preposterous scheme he won’t undertake, to get at them.

Noel Savino has no problems attracting women. After several failed relationships, she's more than happy to keep it casual. Sunny Chase is willing to be another notch on Noel's bedpost after a tragedy of her own. Despite their playful intentions, they find themselves poised to fall, especially if Noel's old-school Italian mother and Sunny's cross-dressing uncle have anything to say about it. The only thing standing in their way is Noel's niece, Harper, who is also captivated by one of the Chase women.

Years after fleeing San Francisco and getting sober, Jhanvi has made a life for herself working at a grocery co-op and saving for her surgeries. But when her friend (and sometimes more) Henry mentions that he and his techie festival-goer friends spent $100,000 to transform a warehouse basement into a sex dungeon, Jhanvi starts wondering if there's a way to exploit these gullible idiots. She returns to San Francisco, hatching a plan to marry Henry for his company's generous healthcare benefits.

When 79-year-old Arthur gathers his family together to share some important news, no one is prepared for the bombshell he drops: he's gay, and after a lifetime in the closet, he's about to come out. Arthur's daughter, Elizabeth, storms out. She swears that she won't have anything to do with her father again—and she forbids her children from seeing him too. Arthur's 21-year-old grandson, Teddy, has a secret of his own: he's also gay, and developing serious feelings for his colleague Ben. But Teddy doesn't feel remotely ready to come out yet.