検索キーワード： ユーモア・風刺文学・フィクション

Reclusive author Sarah is seeking refuge in the quiet village of Budbury, and the last thing she needs is a fake boyfriend. Except that’s exactly what she gets – and the fake boyfriend just happens to be gorgeous, rugged Aidan, complete with an easy charm and an old soul that makes him seem like he’s just stepped straight out of the pages of a novel. Using him to keep her nosy family at bay, he’s happy to do her a favour in return for help with his rather unusual dog-sitting predicament.

Lucy and her eight-month-old son live in a Winnipeg housing project filled with single mothers on the dole. Still dealing with her own mother’s sudden death, and new to the ever-multiplying complications of life on welfare, Lucy strikes up a friendship with her neighbour, Lish. On the whole, they’re pretty happy… But Lucy wants to make sure they stay happy. And she has a plan.

Knute is a twenty-four-year-old single mother who returns home to Algren with her daughter to look after her father Tom, who has suffered a heart attack. Meanwhile, Hosea Funk, a friend of Tom’s and the mayor of Algren has a lot on his mind. The prime minister has promised to pay a visit to whichever town in Canada has the smallest population. Algren has held this position for some time but recent baby booms and returning families, like Knute, threaten to tip Algren over the magic 1500 …

Lucy is fifty, frazzled and fed up. After spending half her life working, she’s tired, and her idea of inner peace involves a sofa, wine and a takeaway. But when her boss announces his retirement, Lucy gears up for a well-earned promotion – that is until Tara, her annoyingly perfect colleague, swoops in, dazzling the CEO with her #BossBabe energy and commitment to a wellness bootcamp so hardcore it sounds like a cult. Desperate to compete, Lucy lies about joining the same program — even though her body feels more landfill than temple.

not to let being the number one ranked hitman at the UK’s second-best agency get in the way of her having the social life of any other 30-something Londoner, but it’s tough to date when your hours are extremely unpredictable and you can’t share any details of your day. So she can't tell her friends about the guy that keeps showing up on her missions. Will. He's cute, really cute, and he insists he has crucial information for her. Maisie is sure Will works for the competition but it soon becomes clear that a much greater danger stalks them both.

1997. It’s Red Nose Day and Tess, Candace, Dana and Arianna rock up to school dressed as the same Spice Girl. Embarrassing. But it’s the start of a friendship that will see them through the challenges of school, family life, dreaming up their future and first relationships – good, bad and unspeakable. 2019. The girls haven’t been in touch for years – since devastating secrets and the trials of adult life tore them apart. Until, one day, Candace contacts Tess and Arianna to say Dana has gone missing.

The world might be in disarray, but for one young woman, the very weave of herself seems to have loosened. Time and memories pass straight through her body, she’s afraid of her own floorboards, and ‘WHAT IS LOVE? BABY DON’T HURT ME’ plays over and over in her ears. ‘I’m sorry not to respond to your email,’ she writes, ‘but I live completely in the present now.’ But tearing through the slippery terrains of fiction and reality, the possibility for human connection seems to beckon from the other side – and with it, the chance for a blinding re-emergence into the world.

Meet Lance. Thirty-eight years old. Works a meaningless job. Still lives above his parents’ garage. By all accounts, a world-class loser. Save for one glaring exception: He has a million-dollar face. Lance has been mistaken eighty-seven times for the Oscar-winning movie star James Jansen, and for the last ten years, he’s saved his money and studied Jansen’s films, his moves, his idiosyncrasies—even the way he speaks. Now, after an unceremonious termination from his job, Lance has decided that the time has come to go after his dream of truly becoming Jansen.

Julia Rosenberg loves her brother. Really loves him. Enough to: Be the "best woman" at his wedding; leave behind her hard-won New York life, brilliant best friends, and drag brunches for Boca Raton, Florida; entertain the uptight bride-to-be and her vicious cronies; try (and fail) to dodge the hometown hookup buddy she can’t resist; and navigate the tricky dynamics with her divorced parents. She’s not that nervous. She has a supportive family that stood by her when she came out as a woman a few years ago.

In the cult classic novel Bunny, Samantha Heather Mackey, a lonely outsider student at a highly selective MFA program in New England, was first ostracised and then seduced by a clique of her saccharine sweet, rich girl cohort (who call one another ‘Bunny’). An invitation to the Bunnies’ Smut Salon leads Samantha down a dark rabbit hole (pun intended) into the violently surreal world of their off-campus Workshops where monstrous creations are conjured with wondrous yet deadly consequences.

In this wickedly satiric romp, Paul Theroux captures the essence of Hawaii as it has never been depicted. The novel's narrator, a down-on-his-luck writer, escapes to Waikiki and soon finds himself the manager of the Hotel Honolulu, a low-rent establishment a few blocks off the beach.

Christine can’t believe her luck. The iconic Gloria Beaufort, founder of the billion-dollar beauty empire Glo, has personally chosen her to cover her grandson’s wedding for Bespoke, the cult fashion magazine that every A-list bride dreams of being featured in. A career-making scoop and a free trip to a castle turned five-star hotel on the Emerald Isle? It feels too good to be true… Because it is.

In the cult classic novel Bunny, Samatha Heather Mackey, a lonely outsider student at a highly selective MFA program in New England, was first ostracized and then seduced by a clique of creepy-sweet rich girls who call themselves “Bunny.” An invitation to the Bunnies’ Smut Salon leads Samantha down a dark rabbit hole (pun intended) into the violently surreal world of their off-campus workshops where monstrous creations are conjured with deadly and wondrous consequences.

When Gilbert Williams, a resident at Sunset House Care Home, claims to have once killed someone, care assistant Will Cavanagh initially dismisses his claims – he’s frail and vulnerable, he can’t imagine him ever killing someone – but he can’t seem to let his comments go. What if it’s true? What if he really did kill someone and he’s forgotten that he isn’t supposed to tell anybody…

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.

In 2023 John Finnemore and the Souvenir Programme team returned to Radio 4 with a new format – annual, one-off, 45-minute Specials. Some are in the style of Series 1-8, with sketches, jokes and songs, while others are more discursive and experimental, like Series 9. Collected together here, they all feature his trusty ensemble cast of Margaret Cabourn-Smith, Simon Kane, Lawry Lewin and Carrie Quinlan.

John Dies at the End is a genre-bending, humorous account of two college drop-outs inadvertently charged with saving their small town—and the world—from a host of supernatural and paranormal invasions.

Lily Holmes is ready for a fresh start. And there's no better place to begin again than the idyllic seaside town of Marram Bay. All Lily wants to do is focus on making her new deli a success and ensuring her son's happiness. Not the postcard creeping out of her handbag, and definitely not finding a new man in her life! But this isn't going to be as easy as she first thought. The town is in uproar about the city girl who's dared to join them and she's fighting a battle at every turn.

Many full moons ago, a young American boy with ambition in his belly and the moon in his veins followed his destiny west, determined to carve a path to success no matter the carnage. Two centuries later, a city is captivated by the strange and savage murder of a young woman. Her roommate, Natasha, no longer able to afford their apartment alone—and hounded by both rumors of wolves and a pop-star’s angry fan-swarm—has resorted to living in her car. There’s nothing left for her ... except vengeance.

Noah desperately needs a new job that involves less blood and piss than his current one. So, when he spots an ad for a newspaper with ‘No experience preferred,’ he puts on his good shirt and marches down to their average-looking office to unknowingly sign his life away. Malachia is the only human left in the City of Silence and she spends her time wandering its empty, bone-filled streets. Until one day she finds a lone figure hunched over a typewriter, his fingers enmeshed with the keys. Could he be the answer to finding her missing girlfriend?