Showing results for "The Letters" in Satire

Penniless and downtrodden at the loss of his wife and one of his daughters, Samuel Clemens turned to writing. The short stories and essays in Letters from the Earth find Clemens—under the pseudonym of Mark Twain—at perhaps his most quizzical and questioning state ever. Written as diary entries, Twain penned a series of letters from the point of view of a dejected angel on Earth who observes the many curious natures of man. These pieces, gathered by Twain's literary executor, feature sharp takes on the inconsistencies of Christianity and farcical criticisms of American life.

A hilarious and moving story of one girl’s fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin...

In this darkly comic novel, a group of women inhabits a world of constant surveillance, where informants lurk in the flower beds and false reports fly. Conspiracies abound in a community that normalizes paranoia and suspicion. Some try to flee - whether to a mysterious gambling bordello or to ancestral homes that can be reached only underground through muddy caves, sewers, and tunnels. Others seek out the refuge of Nest County, where traditional Chinese herbal medicines can reshape or psychologically transport the self. Each life is circumscribed by secrets and transcendent delusions.

George Horace Lorimer (1867-1937) was an American journalist, author, and publisher. He is best known as the editor of The Saturday Evening Post, which he led from 1899 to 1936. This work contains the correspondence between the fictional self-made Chicago millionaire "Gorgon" Graham and his son Pierrepont who is coming of age and about to enter the family business. The letters are witty and filled with sound advice, like “I remember reading once that some fellows use language to conceal thought; but it's been my experience that a good many more use it instead of thought.”

The land of Ignorantia...bears striking similarities to the modern West. One of its older faithfuls writes to warn a young missionary who will soon arrive on Ignorantian shores. It is not as advertised. Steeples and cathedrals abound. Platitudinous and syrupy words drip from the lips of the Ignorantian churchmen. They have become convinced they know a book they seldom read, and it is no small Ignorantian tragedy. The letters seem to straddle the border of fiction and reality, but the state of affairs is familiar!

Krystal Heeling is the CEO of Verdant Corpora, a boutique wellness brand, and when she writes an email to her brand ambassadors, she doesn’t pull her punches. Heeling’s underlings fall like flies as they unwittingly fall short of the Paltrowian ideals to which Heeling so ardently aspires; principles that she herself cannot consistently achieve. Yours in Wellness is a short, incisive, humorous take on the wellness industry that you will be sure to enjoy while sipping an $11 acai-wheatgrass kombucha. As we say in the land of coffee enemas, “Bottoms up!”

This is a fabulous collection of four stories by the great Russian master of the short form Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852). It includes his famous "The Fair at Sorochyntsi", "A Bewitched Place", "The Lost Letter", and "St. John's Eve" - all superb examples of Gogol's unsurpassed sense of humor and flair for satire.

Julian ‘Jilly’ Tetanich is a retired mafia contract killer who now owns a Pittsburgh bar full of colorful characters and whose best friend happens to be a slightly lapsed fantasy football-loving Catholic priest. When rogue Archangel Uriel descends from above with his God Squad sidekicks, they try to enlist Jilly to perform one more hit and save his immortal soul. All Hell breaks loose as the forces of good and evil prepare for this comedic showdown. Jilly will have to decide whether he should stick to his guns or dust them off one last time.

In our bureaucratized culture, we’re inundated by documents: itineraries, instruction manuals, permit forms, primers, letters of complaint, end-of-year reports, accidentally forwarded email, traffic updates, ad infinitum. David Shields and Matthew Vollmer, both writers and professors, have gathered 40 short fictions that they’ve found to be seriously hilarious and irresistibly teachable (in both writing and literature courses): counterfeit texts that capture the barely suppressed frustration and yearning that percolate just below the surface of most official documents.

What if your cat could really tell you what he or she thinks of you? What if you could actually begin to understand how and what a cat thinks? A cat finally makes an attempt to bridge the communication gap with her owner - really, her pet - as she sees the human.