Insufferable

These five astonishing stories, along with two compelling essays, show Bolano as a magician, pulling bloodthirsty rabbits out of his hat. The stories in The Insufferable Gaucho — unpredictable and daring, highly controlled yet somehow haywire — might concern a stalwart rat police detective investigating terrible rodent crimes, or an elusive plagiarist, or an elderly Argentine lawyer giving up city life for an improbable return to the familye state on the Pampas, now gone to wrack and ruin. These five astonishing stories, along with two compelling essays, show Bolano as a magician, pulling bloodthirsty rabbits out of his hat.

What happens when your crime-fighting sidekick grows up to be an arrogant, ungrateful douchebag who makes Kanye look humble? Worse, what on Earth could force the two of you together for one last case? Nocturnus and his former protege, Galahad, will find out—if they don't kill one another first. Collects Issues #1-4.

Jim Morris has been responsible for some of the most memorable ad campaigns in history. He knows best that bad ads don’t just create themselves. Part indictment on the advertising industry, part cautionary tale on what not to do with your ads, Jim pulls no punches to better ad people everywhere. “How many ads have you seen that made you question the intelligence of whomever designed it? Probably too many. If every ad person read Badvertising, the world would be a more intelligent and prosperous place.” —Jonah Berger, New York Times bestselling author of Contagious and The Catalyst “Incisive and daring, Badvertising is the only book you need to truly understand both the inner workings of America’s ad agencies, and the minds of those who never cease to astound us with both their creative genius and profound stupidity. After just one reading, you’ll never see advertising the same way again.” —Drew Eric Whitman, bestselling author of Cashvertising How can the ad industry even exist when almost all of the products that it produces fall on a continuum from flawed to failed? What is it about this industry and the process of creating, selling, and producing ads that causes so much advertising to be so bad? These are the questions answered in Badvertising. A provocative, truth-to-power exposé of ad agencies’ flaws, foibles, and failings—and why they matter to the consumer and to those in the business. Morris, an advertising legend known as “Tagline Jim,” surveys myriad advertising “agents of stupidity.” Hilarious, horrifying, and insightful, each chapter is a grenade lobbed into America’s ad bunkers. Badvertising is a candid, never-seen-before accumulation of real-world don’ts and more don’ts, providing valuable cautionary tales of advertising’s stupid side.

In the eyes of society, I'm the perfect man. Charitable, kind hearted...a role model to all. For the ones seeking death, I'm their salvation. They think when they come to my door that I'll assist with the one thing they're afraid to do alone. Die. Little do they know, I have a lot more in store than a one way ticket to heaven or hell. Four weeks of being my slave and I'll grant their suicidal wish...or so they think. When Death sought Diane, I wasn't leaving her a choice to seek out my help. Her pain and determination was more than I'd ever seen and I knew I was the only one who could save her. Even if it meant becoming the hell she was so desperate to escape. But will it be enough to make her choose life? Will I be able to let her go when she gets better? Or will the Master in me deny freedom to the perfect slave?WARNING: THIS IS A DARK EROTIC ROMANCE AND CONTAINS DISTURBING SITUATIONS, DUBIOUS CONSENT, EXPLICIT SEXUAL CONTENT, AND VERY GRAPHIC LANGUAGE. (Also includes knife play/blood play, consensual cutting, and breath play. If you are not comfortable with these situations, DO NOT read this book!

Meet Roxy. For fans of Where’d You Go, Bernadette and Bridget Jones’s Diary comes “just the kind of comic novel we need right now” (The Washington Post) about an Austin artist trying to figure out her life one letter to her ex-boyfriend at a time. Bridget Jones penned a diary; Roxy writes letters. Specifically: she writes letters to her hapless, rent-avoidant ex-boyfriend—and current roommate—Everett. This charming and funny twenty-something is under-employed (and under-romanced), and she’s decidedly fed up with the indignities she endures as a deli maid at Whole Foods (the original), and the dismaying speed at which her beloved Austin is becoming corporatized. When a new Lululemon pops up at the intersection of Sixth and Lamar where the old Waterloo Video used to be, Roxy can stay silent no longer. As her letters to Everett become less about overdue rent and more about the state of her life, Roxy realizes she’s ready to be the heroine of her own story. She decides to team up with her two best friends to save Austin—and rescue Roxy’s love life—in whatever way they can. But can this spunky, unforgettable millennial keep Austin weird, avoid arrest, and find romance—and even creative inspiration—in the process?

Welcome to Downtrodden Abbey, where a battle for the deed to the property is waged between legitimate aristocrats and literal pretenders to the throne. The Crawfish family—Marry, Supple, Enid, Lady Flora, and Lord Roderick—are content wiling their days away with naughty charades and twenty-two course dinners until the sinking of the Gigantic takes down the next in line to inherit Downtrodden. Soon, cousin Isabich and her son, Atchew, the rightful heir to the Abbey, arrive to claim what's theirs. Downstairs, the servants are running amok, as crippled weakling Brace is aggressively courted by teen hottie Nana, and lady's maid "Potatoes" O'Grotten and her flamboyant sidekick, Tomaine, cause trouble at every turn. The ensuing, insufferably overwrought melodrama takes the reader upstairs and downstairs, into parlours and drawing rooms, boudoirs and bathrooms, and across every class—from the classiest to the classless—in the social pecking order of Edwardian England. Uproariously funny, with a wicked sense of humor that Downton Abbey diehards will enjoy, Gillians Fetlocks skewers your favorite characters with panache in this winning parody

One of Oprah Daily's 20 Favorite Books of 2021 • Selected as one of Pitchfork's Best Music Books of the Year “One of the best books of its kind in decades.” —The Wall Street Journal An epic achievement and a huge delight, the entire history of popular music over the past fifty years refracted through the big genres that have defined and dominated it: rock, R&B, country, punk, hip-hop, dance music, and pop Kelefa Sanneh, one of the essential voices of our time on music and culture, has made a deep study of how popular music unites and divides us, charting the way genres become communities. In Major Labels, Sanneh distills a career’s worth of knowledge about music and musicians into a brilliant and omnivorous reckoning with popular music—as an art form (actually, a bunch of art forms), as a cultural and economic force, and as a tool that we use to build our identities. He explains the history of slow jams, the genius of Shania Twain, and why rappers are always getting in trouble. Sanneh shows how these genres have been defined by the tension between mainstream and outsider, between authenticity and phoniness, between good and bad, right and wrong. Throughout, race is a powerful touchstone: just as there have always been Black audiences and white audiences, with more or less overlap depending on the moment, there has been Black music and white music, constantly mixing and separating. Sanneh debunks cherished myths, reappraises beloved heroes, and upends familiar ideas of musical greatness, arguing that sometimes, the best popular music isn’t transcendent. Songs express our grudges as well as our hopes, and they are motivated by greed as well as idealism; music is a powerful tool for human connection, but also for human antagonism. This is a book about the music everyone loves, the music everyone hates, and the decades-long argument over which is which. The opposite of a modest proposal, Major Labels pays in full.