Two Guys Read The Obituaries

Each author combed the obituary pages for a calendar year. They wrote about the Reaper's usual harvest--the famous, the infamous and the fascinating.

“A liberating read that will cause you to act in your own best interests and the best interests of everyone working within your sphere of influence.” —John Hoover, New York Times–bestselling author of How to Work for an Idiot The number one reason cited in exit interviews for an employee quitting is “my manager.” This can be for multiple reasons—including one that many managers and executives aren’t even aware of: Today’s employees simply don’t respond to the old hands-on, militaristic management styles. They are highly independent, individual professionals with their own fully developed ideas. Leaders and managers who try to micromanage them will inevitably confront widespread disgruntlement, absenteeism, and turnover . . . and increase their own and their employees’ stress levels. The Hands-Off Manager offers a new vision for all managers. With stories, examples, and activities for the reader to practice, this book shows any manager—new or seasoned—how to coach and mentor employees rather than hover over their shoulders and goad them into action. In this system, each employee’s strength is honored and honed in a climate of partnership and mutual goal-setting—a powerful ingredient for organizational growth and success.

The first book to investigate Jane Austen's popular significance today, Everybody's Jane considers why Austen matters to amateur readers, how they make use of her novels, what they gain from visiting places associated with her, and why they create works of fiction and nonfiction inspired by her novels and life.The voices of everyday readers emerge from both published and unpublished sources, including interviews conducted with literary tourists and archival research into the founding of the Jane Austen Society of North America and the exceptional Austen collection of Alberta Hirshheimer Burke of Baltimore.Additional topics include new Austen portraits; portrayals of Austen, and of Austen fans, in film and fiction; and hybrid works that infuse Austen's writings with horror, erotica, or explicit Christianity.Everybody's Jane will appeal to all those who care about Austen and will change how we think about the importance of literature and reading today.

This is the third book in the critically acclaimed Two Guys series by Steve Chandler and Terrence Hill. This time the two guys take on their biggest challenge yet-Jane Austen. Follow their wild and often hilarious exchanges as they fly through Pride and Prejudice and the darker, more complex Mansfield Park. Often veering off into the worlds of music, sports, and history, both of these accomplished writers draw upon their lifelong friendships and shared childhood memories to give dimension to their deeply personal responses to Jane Austen's writing. These same zany digressions and non sequiturs were widely hailed in their first two books in this series, Two Guys Read Moby-Dick and Two Guys Read the Obituaries. Terrence Hill and Steve Chandler share their humorous and touching commentaries and debates with their readers in a way unlike any other, a testimony to their 53-year friendship.

Norman Mailer's Pulitzer Prize-winning and unforgettable classic about convicted killer Gary Gilmore now in a brand-new edition. Arguably the greatest book from America's most heroically ambitious writer, THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG follows the short, blighted life of Gary Gilmore who became famous after he robbed two men in 1976 and killed them in cold blood. After being tried and convicted, he immediately insisted on being executed for his crime. To do so, he fought a system that seemed intent on keeping him alive long after it had sentenced him to death. And that fight for the right to die is what made him famous. Mailer tells not only Gilmore's story, but those of the men and women caught in the web of his life and drawn into his procession toward the firing squad. All with implacable authority, steely compassion, and a restraint that evokes the parched landscape and stern theology of Gilmore's Utah. THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG is a trip down the wrong side of the tracks to the deepest source of American loneliness and violence. It is a towering achievement-impossible to put down, impossible to forget. (280,000 words)

"There is nothing funnier than wrong when it is done right. Jim does it right." -- Marc Maron "That's Jim, the cloud guy. The guy whose book of fake obituaries has now made me unable to consider eating chicken again." -- Rachel Maddow Mourning Remembrance is a collection of mocking obituaries based on the lives, and deaths, of real people. It's 276 pages of relentless insensitivity for the whole family! Created by Jim Earl, Emmy and Peabody Award winning comedy writer and former staff writer at the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Mourning Remembrance celebrates the legacies of all those dead individuals whose accomplishments spanned the spectrum from the harmlessly stupid, to the horribly evil, and helped transform our lives into the Orwellian nightmare it is today. Cover art by Tony Millionaire, and illustrated throughout by Nathan Smith.

Humorous questions about God, Jesus and the Bible.

From an acclaimed "master of suspense"(New York Times Book Review) comes a thriller in which Thorn must confront an assassin whose victims and methods are taken directly from the script of a popular TV show April Moss writes obituaries for the Miami Herald. Her son, Sawyer, also a writer, has been scripting a cable TV series called "Miami Ops" and has been using his mother's work as a central element of the show's storyline. In "Miami Ops," a serial killer is using obituaries published in the local paper as a blueprint for selecting his next victims. But midway through the season, a copycat appears off-screen, a real-life killer who is using the same strategy to select victims. When this serial killer crosses paths with the reclusive Thorn, he has no choice but to leave his sanctuary in Key Largo and join forces with a young policewoman from Oklahoma who is investigating the murders. In addition to the show's head writer, April's other son, Sawyer's twin brother, works on "Miami Ops" as the lead actor. Could one of them be involved in the killings? Or are they orchestrated by the director of the TV series, an aging mogul who badly needs a hit? And what about the female star of the show, a deliciously strange young woman who seems willing to do anything to promote her career. Thorn walks into this hotbed of entertainment business intrigue totally unprepared for the life-altering shocker he's about to face. This loner from Key Largo has brought down his share of killers, but he's never confronted one that was his own flesh and blood. With the pacing of a thriller, and the lyrical prose for which Hall is renowned, this story pits Thorn against a killer—or killers—whose motives are as elusive as their identities.