Damned If You Do

Damned If I Do is a set of brilliantly postmodern short stories from Percival Everett, author of The Trees, Dr No and Erasure, now an Oscar-nominated film. An artist, a cop, a cowboy, several fly fishermen and even a reluctant romance novelist inhabit these revealing and often hilarious stories. An old man ends up in a high-speed chase with the cops after stealing the car that blocks the garbage bin at his apartment building. A stranger gets a job at a sandwich shop and fixes everything in sight: a manual mustard dispenser, a mouthful of crooked teeth, thirty-two parking tickets and a sexual identity problem. Everett skewers race, class, identity, surrealism and much more in this masterful short story collection from one of America's most inventive living writers. Part of the Picador Collection, a series celebrating fifty years of Picador books and showcasing the best of modern literature.

Would you rather… Be rich and stupid or smart and poor? Have the CIA after you or have the Mafia after you? Be on vacation with your 60-year-old parents and have your mom insist on wearing a thong bikini or have your dad insist on wearing a tiny, Euro-style bathing suit? Warning! This book contains shocking content meant to inspire hilarious discussion. These field-tested conversation starters are guaranteed to provoke ridiculous fun, break the ice, and—if played correctly—open a unique window into the twisted imaginations of friends and family. It’s an addictive game in a book that challenges readers to ask—and answer—more than 100 questions that rank from the heinous to the outrageously funny.

First published in 1998, Anthony McMahon details the accounts of public agency child welfare dealing abused and neglected children and their families and the pressures on child welfare workers. Opening up the discussion on the ambiguities whilst dealing with balancing child welfare work whilst dealing with the societal pressure of the non-intrusion into family life.

Hades is dead and the Agency needs a replacement, a new apprentice to carry on its good work. After a vote, corpse number 72 18 9 11 12 13 49 is selected and promptly yanked from his grave, to serve a seven day trial sentence. Each day our hapless narrator is to assist Death in the killing of one unfortunate soul, but as he encounters each victim, and as he begins to grasp the functions of Death and the other three modern-day Horsemen, he begins to unlock strange memories of his own prior life. It is not until he understands the backhanded politics of the Four Horsemen's run-down row house, and the sinister circumstances of his predecessor's demise, that he can recognize his true purpose in, well, er, life...

Police Chief Jesse Stone returns in another outstanding entry in the New York Times-bestselling series. The woman on the bed was barely out of her teens. She wasn’t exactly beautiful, but she’d tried to make the most of her looks. And now, alone in a seedy beachfront motel, she was dead. Paradise Police Chief Jesse Stone doesn’t know her name. Whoever she is, she didn’t deserve to die. Jesse starts digging, only to find himself caught in the crosshairs of a bitter turf war between two ruthless pimps. And more blood will spill before it’s over.

"This is the revealing, personal story of the man behind the controversial pro-euthanasia movement, told in his own words. Medical doctor, humanist, author and founder/director of Exit International, Philip Nitschke's life has always been in the spotlight. The book spans Philip's early days, from his curious, activist student days in Adelaide, to working with Aboriginal land rights groups in Australia's Far North; to his successful campaign to have euthanasia legalised in Australia and his assistance in four people ending their lives before the law was overturned. It covers the controversy surrounding Philip's work, including the banning in Australia of his international bestselling book The Peaceful Pill, and disturbing reports that many young people overdosed on Nembutal, the drug that Exit International recommends for suicide. Ultimately, Philip believes that the right to one's own death is as fundamental as the right to control one's own life- 'It seems we demand humans to live with indignity, pain and anguish whereas we are kinder to our pets when their suffering becomes too much.'"

We both stood there exhausted, looking at each other like they do in old western films. "I just need to talk to you Archer, please don't throw more stuff at me. I would never hurt you or your family." He glared at me while lifting his arm back up. I glanced to his sides to see what else he had to throw but didn't see anything. Then it sunk in that the only other thing around us both was my car. It was levitating above me as I looked at Archer who was glaring at me again. "Speak then, but when you are finished know that I will destroy your car and you under it." I could feel my eyes stinging as tears began to form. I wasn't ready to die but I was stuck at this point.

Think adolescence is hell? You have no idea... Welcome to Dante's Inferno, by way of The Breakfast Club, from the mind of American fiction's most brilliant troublemaker. "Death, like life, is what you make out of it." So says Madison, the whip-tongued 11-year-old narrator of Damned, Chuck Palahniuk's subversive homage to the young adult genre. Madison is abandoned at her Swiss boarding school over Christmas while her parents are off touting their new film projects and adopting more orphans. Over the holidays she dies of a marijuana overdose--and the next thing she knows, she's in Hell. This is the afterlife as only Chuck Palahniuk could imagine it: a twisted inferno inspired by both the most extreme and mundane of human evils, where The English Patient plays on repeat and roaming demons devour sinners limb by limb. However, underneath Madison's sad teenager affect there is still a child struggling to accept not only the events of her dysfunctional life, but also the truth about her death. For Madison, though, a more immediate source of comfort lies in the motley crew of young sinners she meets during her first days in Hell. With the help of Archer, Babette, Leonard, and Patterson, she learns to navigate Hell--and discovers that she'd rather be mortal and deluded and stupid with those she loves than perfect and alone.

They killed my sister and infected me. Now I have to pick up the pieces before I die. I've spent the last five months trying to find the bastard who did this. Yet, even with the help of a hot amnesiac vampire named Jude, I've had zero luck. Until now. And it could change everything. Even though I grew up in a family that hunted the supernatural, there were still things I didn't believe in. Now I have to hurry for the slim chance that I could save us all. Because when you fight against immortal vampires, you're the one who's running out of time.