59 Results for : mordant

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    The Magnificent Esme Wells: A Novel , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 635min
    From the nationally best-selling author of The True Memoirs of Little K, a deeply felt and historically detailed novel of family, loss, and love, told by an irrepressible young girl - the daughter of a two-bit gangster and a movie showgirl - growing up in golden-age Hollywood and Las Vegas in its early days. Esme Silver has always taken care of her charming ne'er-do-well father, Ike Silver, a small-time crook with dreams of making it big with Bugsy Siegel. Devoted to her daddy, Esme is often his "date" at the racetrack, where she amiably fetches the hot dogs while keeping an eye to the ground for any cast-off tickets that may be winners. In awe of her mother, Dina Wells, Esme is more than happy to be the foil who gets the beautiful Dina into meetings and screen tests with some of Hollywood's greats. When Ike gets an opportunity to move to Vegas - and, in what could at last be his big break, to help the man she knows as "Benny" open the Flamingo Hotel - life takes an unexpected turn for Esme. A stunner like her mother, the young girl catches the attention of Nate Stein, one of the Strip's most powerful men. Narrated by the 20-year-old Esme, The Magnificent Esme Wells moves between pre-WWII Hollywood and postwar Las Vegas - a golden age when Jewish gangsters and movie moguls were often indistinguishable in looks and behavior. Esme's voice - sharp, observant, and with a quiet, mordant wit - chronicles the rise and fall and further fall of her complicated parents, as well as her own painful reckoning with love and life. A coming-of-age story with a tinge of noir, and a tale that illuminates the promise and perils of the American dream and its dreamers, The Magnificent Esme Wells is immersive, moving, and compelling. ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Saskia Maarleveld. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/harp/007084/bk_harp_007084_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.
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    • Price: 9.95 EUR excl. shipping
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    Spending the Holidays with People I Want to Punch in the Throat: Yuletide Yahoos, Ho-Ho-Humblebraggers, and Other Seasonal Scourges , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 318min
    For fans of Laurie Notaro and Jenny Lawson comes an uproarious and oddly endearing essay collection for anyone trying to survive the holidays in one piece. When it comes to time-honored holiday traditions, Jen Mann pulls no punches. In this hilarious collection of essays, Jen Mann, nationally best-selling author of People I Want to Punch in the Throat, turns her mordant wit on the holidays. On Mann's naughty list: mothers who go way overboard with their Elf on the Shelf, overzealous carolers who can't take a hint, and people who write their Christmas cards in the third person ("Joyce is enjoying Bunko. Yeah, Joyce, we know you wrote this letter."). And on her nice list...well, she's working on that one. Here, no celebration is off-limits. The essays include: "You Can Keep Your Cookies, I'm Just Here for the Booze""Nice Halloween Costume. Was Skank Sold Out?""Why You Won't Be Invited to Our Chinese New Year Party"From hosting an ill-fated Chinese New Year party, to receiving horrible gifts from her husband on Mother's Day to reluctantly telling her son the truth about the Easter Bunny, Mann knows the challenge of navigating the holidays while keeping her sanity intact. And even if she can't get out of attending another Christmas cookie exchange, at least she can try again next year. Praise for Spending the Holidays with People I Want to Punch in the Throat:“Mann’s writing has transcended from witty anecdotes and complaints to notable satire. Hidden among the many laugh-out-loud zingers are lessons on how we relate to each other, and how ridiculous parenting culture has become.” (Associated Press)“Following the success of her first book, she is now punching throats at holidays, starting from her being age two and continuing to the present, where she is a harried mother bemoaning not just Christmas but all holidays.... Harried holiday haters will chuckle and perh ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Jen Mann. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/rand/004350/bk_rand_004350_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.
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    • Price: 9.95 EUR excl. shipping
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    Unsuccessful Thug: One Comedian's Journey from Naptown to Tinseltown , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 355min
    From Naptown to Tinseltown - legendary stand-up comedian and actor Mike Epps finally tells all in this outrageous, hilarious, no-holds-barred memoir. Before starring in Def Comedy Jam and Showtime at the Apollo - before the sold-out comedy shows, Uncle Buck, and becoming his hero Richard Pryor in a biopic - there was Indianapolis. And not the good part. Mike Epps is one of America’s favorite and funniest people, but the path to fame was paved with opportunities to mess it up. And mess it up he did. Growing up in “Naptown” - what people who live there really call rough-around-the-edges Indianapolis - Epps found himself forced to hustle from an early age. Despite his mother’s best efforts, and the love of his well-behaved brother, “Chaney”, and his beloved sister, Julie, Epps was drawn to a life of crime, but as he quickly discovered, stealing and dealing didn’t really fit his sweet sensibilities. Not to mention he wasn’t very good at it - take, for example, the day he had to call the cops on himself when a dog wouldn’t let him leave a house he was burgling. After several arrests and more than a few months in jail, Epps finally realized that he was an unsuccessful thug, and instead turned to the next most obvious career path: stand-up comedy. Heading first to New York, then all over the country, and finally to Hollywood, Mike Epps carved out a unique place in American comedy, combining hysterical tales of his family and friends with a mordant take on life in the Naptowns of America. Comedy saved Mike Epps, and here he reveals exactly how he finally grew up and got out, barely. And when describing how he survived when so many of his friends didn’t, Epps makes clear what he’s thankful for and sorry about. Unsuccessful Thug is about growing up black in America, facing down racism in Hollywood, and ultimately how it feels to fail at thugdom, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, and end up selling out arenas ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: J.D. Jackson. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/harp/007092/bk_harp_007092_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.
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    One Day I Shall Astonish the World
    From the prize-winning author of Reasons to be Cheerful comes a story about the ebb and flow of female friendship over half a lifetime'A true gift of a novel, I utterly adored it. For as long as I could make it last, the world just felt a bit nicer' Meg Mason'Stibbe turns out more perfect, sharp, unique sentences than anyone else' Caitlin Moran'Stibbe has an extraordinary gift' Marian Keyes'Nina Stibbe makes being funny look easy, but that's just because she's very, very good at it' Clare Chambers________________________________________________Susan and Norma have been best friends for years, at first thrust together by force of circumstance (a job at The Pin Cushion, a haberdashery shop in 1990s Leicestershire) and then by force of character (neither being particularly inclined to make friends with anyone else). But now, thirty years later, faced with a husband seeking immortality and Norma out of reach on a wave of professional glory, Susan begins to wonder whether she has made the right choices about life, love, work, and, most importantly, friendship. Nina Stibbe's new novel is the story of the wonderful and sometimes surprising path of friendship: from its conspiratorial beginnings, along its irritating wrong turns, to its final gratifying destination. _________________________________________________'Nina Stibbe's very funny novels are full of charm, and her latest brilliantly captures the mordant humour of British suburban life' Evening Standard'I absolutely loved every single page of it! I honestly think it's the funniest thing she's ever written' Garth Jennings'I'm not surprised to see that Stibbe's writing has been compared to Jane Austen's' Emma Healey'I am already longing for Nina Stibbe's next book' Observer'Stibbe is one of the all-time greats' Daisy Buchanan'Clever and funny, it takes a sharp look at the intricacies of marriage, friendship, work and driving. As with all Stibbe's writing there is a pleasingly perfect balance of wisdom with jokes' Cathy Rentzenbrink'Nina Stibbe is not just very funny but absolutely life-affirming' Jenny Colgan'For beautifully funny and well-observed comic writing, Nina Stibbe is your go-to author. In her latest release, a tale of lifelong friendship between Susan and Norma, she explores the mistakes, rivalries and love we all experience in life' Stylist'One of the great comic writers of our time' Irish Times
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    • Price: 12.99 EUR excl. shipping
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    One Day I Shall Astonish the World (eBook, ePUB)
    From the prize-winning author of Reasons to be Cheerful comes a story about the ebb and flow of female friendship over half a lifetime'A true gift of a novel, I utterly adored it. For as long as I could make it last, the world just felt a bit nicer' Meg Mason'Stibbe turns out more perfect, sharp, unique sentences than anyone else' Caitlin Moran'Stibbe has an extraordinary gift' Marian Keyes'Nina Stibbe makes being funny look easy, but that's just because she's very, very good at it' Clare Chambers________________________________________________Susan and Norma have been best friends for years, at first thrust together by force of circumstance (a job at The Pin Cushion, a haberdashery shop in 1990s Leicestershire) and then by force of character (neither being particularly inclined to make friends with anyone else). But now, thirty years later, faced with a husband seeking immortality and Norma out of reach on a wave of professional glory, Susan begins to wonder whether she has made the right choices about life, love, work, and, most importantly, friendship. Nina Stibbe's new novel is the story of the wonderful and sometimes surprising path of friendship: from its conspiratorial beginnings, along its irritating wrong turns, to its final gratifying destination. _________________________________________________'Nina Stibbe's very funny novels are full of charm, and her latest brilliantly captures the mordant humour of British suburban life' Evening Standard'I absolutely loved every single page of it! I honestly think it's the funniest thing she's ever written' Garth Jennings'I'm not surprised to see that Stibbe's writing has been compared to Jane Austen's' Emma Healey'I am already longing for Nina Stibbe's next book' Observer'Stibbe is one of the all-time greats' Daisy Buchanan'Clever and funny, it takes a sharp look at the intricacies of marriage, friendship, work and driving. As with all Stibbe's writing there is a pleasingly perfect balance of wisdom with jokes' Cathy Rentzenbrink 'Nina Stibbe is not just very funny but absolutely life-affirming' Jenny Colgan'For beautifully funny and well-observed comic writing, Nina Stibbe is your go-to author. In her latest release, a tale of lifelong friendship between Susan and Norma, she explores the mistakes, rivalries and love we all experience in life' Stylist'One of the great comic writers of our time' Irish Times
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    • Price: 14.99 EUR excl. shipping
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    The Idiot
    A New York Times Book Review Notable Book Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction "An addictive, sprawling epic; I wolfed it down." -Miranda July, author of The First Bad Man and It Chooses You "Easily the funniest book I've read this year." -GQ A portrait of the artist as a young woman. A novel about not just discovering but inventing oneself. The year is 1995, and email is new. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. She signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, befriends her charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate, Svetlana, and, almost by accident, begins corresponding with Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary. Selin may have barely spoken to Ivan, but with each email they exchange, the act of writing seems to take on new and increasingly mysterious meanings. At the end of the school year, Ivan goes to Budapest for the summer, and Selin heads to the Hungarian countryside, to teach English in a program run by one of Ivan's friends. On the way, she spends two weeks visiting Paris with Svetlana. Selin's summer in Europe does not resonate with anything she has previously heard about the typical experiences of American college students, or indeed of any other kinds of people. For Selin, this is a journey further inside herself: a coming to grips with the ineffable and exhilarating confusion of first love, and with the growing consciousness that she is doomed to become a writer. With superlative emotional and intellectual sensitivity, mordant wit, and pitch-perfect style, Batuman dramatizes the uncertainty of life on the cusp of adulthood. Her prose is a rare and inimitable combination of tenderness and wisdom; its logic as natural and inscrutable as that of memory itself. The Idiot is a heroic yet self-effacing reckoning with the terror and joy of becoming a person in a world that is as intoxicating as it is disquieting. Batuman's fiction is unguarded against both life's affronts and its beauty--and has at its command the complete range of thinking and feeling which they entail. Named one the best books of the year by Refinery29 • Mashable One • Elle Magazine • The New York Times • Bookpage • Vogue • NPR • Buzzfeed •The Millions
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    • Price: 10.49 EUR excl. shipping
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    Give Speech A Chance (eBook, ePUB)
    Give Speech A Chance, a timely and prescient anthology of scintillating essays by Harley Price, Ph.D., a brilliant social and political commentator, is "a dazzling collection of mordant essays on the aberrant Zeitgeist," according to Paul Gottfried in Chronicles magazine. In his Preface to the book, William Gairdner states that "In addition to being a very clear thinker with a profound historical and aesthetic sense of almost the entire Western tradition in literature, religion, poetry, mythology, and art - Harley is also a very amusing fellow." The Preface provides excerpts from the book on atheism, discrimination, victimology, abortion, conservatism, liberalism, and Jesus. In her Foreword, Fran Griffin of FGF Books, the book's publisher, calls this book "a remarkable collection of some of the best essays on our culture and society available today. ... As the conservator of the 40-year legacy of writer and author, Joseph Sobran (1946-2010), the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation could not be more pleased that this new book is dedicated to him." Noting Sobran's "satirical vivisections of the liberal 'hive,'" which "will inspire conservatives for generations," Dr. Price states in his Dedication to this book that "none will approach" Sobran's "brilliance, eloquence or wit." Paul Gottfried, disagrees as he has "discovered ample evidence of Sobran's special talents in Dr. Price's argumentative verve, elegant self-expression, and defenses of Catholic moral teachings. ...Perhaps it is hard to imagine a more worthy successor" to Joe Sobran. There is a common thread in this book, which is summed up in the apt subtitle, Heretical Essays on What You Can't Say or Even Think. Dr. Price points out that there is "an ever-expanding list of things you cannot say in this age of progressive 'tolerance,' and it begets the sort of self-censorship that has always been the norm in totalitarian regimes." As Canadian columnist Rory Leishman notes, "No one can refute Price's central thesis that our society is hovering on the brink of a totalitarian dictatorship where 'non-progressive opinion' -- i.e., any criticism of homosexuality, transgenderism, or a woman's 'right to choose' -- is criminalized as 'hate speech.'" Paul Tuns of The Interim notes that Harley Price "inveighs against every intellectually fashionable trend with acuity and wit, delivering devastating blows to the pantheon of social justice and human rights: abortion, sexual promiscuity, transgenderism, atheism, anti-capitalism." Allan Carlson of The Natural Family writes that Harley Price exhibits "a rare voice combining eminent learning, moral decency, and common sense." Author Robert Reilly observes that Harley Price is "a classically educated, erudite man who reacts to our current moral and cultural catastrophes with scorn, sarcasm, and humor -- essential ingredients to maintaining any semblance of sanity today." Author Brian Mitchell asserts, "Dr. Price has written a witty, erudite defense of commonsense enlightened by the wisdom of the ancients and the Gospel of Jesus Christ." Christopher Check of Catholic Answers adds that Price "looks at the whole range of human experience through the only lens worth using - the Incarnation. It is for this very reason his brilliant prose style, delightful wit, and profound learning are put in the service of something much greater than himself: the Truth and bringing his readers to it."
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    • Price: 12.95 EUR excl. shipping
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    Les bonnes moeurs
    Les bonnes moeurs - Un roman iniatique mordant: ab 9.99 €
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    • Price: 9.99 EUR excl. shipping
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    Midsummer
    Recorded in 2010 at Townend Studios (Berlin), Klangwolke (Berlin), OrBeat-Studios (Berlin), Eastgate-Studios (Vienna) Track 1 and 5 produced by Quaeschning/Heidemann Track 2 by Beator Track 3 by Quaeschning/Djirre Track 4, 6 and 8 by Beator/Quaeschning Track 7 by Quaeschning Thorsten Quaeschning - Synthesizer, Piano, Memotron, Guitar, Vocoder, Vocals, Boomwhakers, Percussion, Stones Sascha Beator - Synthesizer Kai Hanuschka - Drums, Vocals, Percussion Djirre - Guitar, Vocals, Vocoder Juergen Heidemann - Singing Stones, Stones, Vocals, Boomwhakers David See - Stones Nadine Gomez - Violin, Vocals Picture Palace Music is an electronic music band from Berlin, Germany, the city where serious electronic music was born. Thorsten 'Q' Quaeschning, keyboardplayer in Tangerine Dream, is head of the project. The main idea of the group that was founded in 2003 is to reproduce the musical dynamic and experiments of old live accompaniment for silent movies and to give them a modern soundtrack with nowadays-technical options. This shows that the old silent movies are not mouldy: they are timeless and fascinating! The music is inspired by more than eighty years old silent movies. Take a deep trip into a mystical world of sounds! Picture Palace Music already has quite a number of releases out, some only available as download but also some on the Manikin electronic music label from Berlin. 'Midsummer' is the first one that was released on Groove Unlimited. The theme behind the album is 'music for sound divers and baptism-ceremonies'. The band is celebrating a wonderful summer sun-worshipping the solstice and the associated famous white nights and blue hours. Vuvuzelas (remember those from the Word Championship soccer?) as an essential part of this particular summer will be heard as well as the beautiful noise of sound-stones. So join the band having a trip through the whole gamut of emotions regarding/reflecting this eventful year - 2010. And a band it is. Apart from Thorsten 'Q' the band consists of Sacha Beator (keyboards, who also does a lot of composing), Djirre and Stephen Mortimer on guitars, Vincent Novak on drums and Juergen Heidemann on various instruments and sounds. Of course, with a man like 'Q' in the band, a comparison can be made with the music of Tangerine Dream. But Picture Palace Music is more than that: melodically, lively, rocky and even at some cases progressive ('Q' is a fan of progrock and alternative rockmusic which can be heard throughout the album). With 'Chill Crystal Zone' the album already starts in a progressive way with fierce guitars and drums. But on many occasions the band takes a rest, like in the atmospheric 'Midsummer's Morning' in which we hear 'Q''s Memotronflutes and 'Drowning Someone's Sorrow Into The Ocean, part I' (a great title!). He also plays a fine steelguitar: that can be heard in 'Seduction Crossing' and even sings, like in 'Midsummer's Night'. The texts are by William Shakespeare and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Picture Palace Music creates music that is a perfect mix between electronic music, rock and prog and therefore may attract a diversity of music lovers. And also live, like on the 'E-Live festival' in 2010 they proved they are a rising force in EM. Press Information It's quite difficult to describe the music of Picture Palace Music so much that she's so disparate. Since the release of Somnambulistic Tunes in 2007, Thorsten Quaeschning's group doesn't stop amazing by an impressive variety of styles and tones. Midsummer, their 1st album on Groove Unlimited was revealed during the E-Live2010 festival during a hectic concert that totally amazed the audience. And with good cause! Beyond a hymn to summer, it's solstice, the sun and it's worshippers, Midsummer embraces big synth rock and keeps an attentive ear to rustles o bluish nights, there where festivities of a world of excitement cross the parallelism of dualistic universes of Picture Palace Music. Chill Crystal Zone reminds us above all that the leader of PPM is also behind the keyboards of Tangerine Dream. Midsummer's introductory track starts with a slightly fluty synth dandling on a fine sequential line which waves such a prismatic rivulet on a cozy bed of twinkling arpeggios and guitar notes scrolling in loops. The rhythm is nervous, crossing the wriggling guitar of The Edge (U2) as well as naive and tremulous sequences of Dream from the Rockoon years. A feverish guitar of which riffs are fading behind floating vocalizes shapes a strange melody gnawed by a latent madness. The pace is increasing with more sustained percussions and crystalline chords which waddle innocently before the guitar becomes more mordant and that an avalanche of percussions tumbles with crash, dividing Chill Crystal Zone between a soft melody and an astounding musical fury that PPM had already flooded us with Damsel Dive and Help Murder Help which we find on Fairy Marsh Districts. Moreover, Midsummer will constantly be torn between melodies and anguishes as well as between brightness and blackness. Midsummer's Eve follows with an introduction rather similar to Chill Crystal Zone weakened rhythm, except that the rhythm explodes heavily with furious percussions, a line of hemmed bass and nervous guitar riffs which plunges us into the somber universe of King Crimson (Red and Starless and Bible Black). An explosive track where the guitar drags it's solos on a hybrid structure with a rhythm broken by short aired interludes, leaning over heavy riffs and dark lines of synth which roar in a cacophony of sounds reminding us that Midsummer is also an album for sound divers as well as for baptism ceremonies, but surely baptisms of another religious order. Sounds, sounds and sounds. Midsummer's Morning is full of those and this up to the last hidden recesses of it's mystery. It's a wonderful ode to schizophrenia with a delicious piano which spreads a magnificent meditative melody where voices drag in a furrow disturbing of emotionalism and eclecticism. A soft piano which reminds me the Añoranza on Curicculum Vitae 1 whose atmosphere is similar to it with all this array of sounds as heterogeneous as troubling which crosses this delicate duel piano / flute. Midsummer's Day cross a little bit the light rhythmics of the Dream in the Miramar years with it's lively tempo where guitar riffs flow on nervous percussions and limpid sequences fidgeting beneath delicate strata of synth. A track which flirts a little more towards the big synth rock, quite as the powerful and colliding Right of Ascension Day, and which knows it's increases of creativity with a beautiful guitar and vocals of festivities which plunge Midsummer's Day in an unreal African rave-up, especially with vuvuzelas which buzz around vocoders. Seduction Crossing is also tinted of this Tangerine Dream universe, but a darker Dream brought out of Legend paths. A fine sequence swirls after an atonal intro with anguishing breezes. A sequence of which chords are trickling away under good striking of muffed percussions and others which are deeply colliding quite as on Legend. A line of bass fed this spiral sequence where keyboard keys water this strange melody of glass tones. A great track which depicts a nightmarish paranoia, especially when are adding superb spectral guitars strata which sway with stridence, tearing this suave to schizophrenic seduction which lives in Seduction Crossing, one excellent track within Midsummer. Our eardrums, still knocked out by strikes of the heavy and captivating Right of Ascension, are wrapped by the eclectic and hollow intro of Drowning Someone's Sorrow into the Ocean Part I. Drops stream in the echo of dark caves of which curves go on towards a heterogeneous sound universe where caustic reverberations cross an array of fluty breezes and metallic hoops. A sequence is emerging from it and discreetly astride this plain fossilized of metallic humming. The movement is delicate and is increasing with the appearance of the P
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    • Price: 29.91 EUR excl. shipping

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