Books like 'The Designated Mourner'
Readers who enjoyed The Designated Mourner by Wallace Shawn also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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Forever Freed by Kathleen Brooks
Rated: 4.75 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsJackson Parker has seen evil first hand as a Tier 1 government asset with the FBI Hostage Rescue Team. After months of black ops work overseas, he’s finally coming home for a break. But with Keeneston’s wedding of the century, a stowaway on the run, and a plot that could kill thousands of civilians, Jackson gets anything but rest and relaxation... -
![The Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (abridged) by Adam Long, Daniel Singer]()
The Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (abridged) by Adam Long, Daniel Singer
Rated: 4.45 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsRevised from the rather long original complete works of Shakespeare, this abridged version is written by three Americans, with no qualifications worth speaking of. The playtext is reproduced here with footnotes which will be of no help to anyone and a letter from the authors to the Queen... -
![The Complete Yes Prime Minister by Jonathan Lynn, Antony Jay]()
The Complete Yes Prime Minister by Jonathan Lynn, Antony Jay
Rated: 4.58 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsPresented in the form of diaries, official documents, and letters, rather than simply transcribed scripts, this book is a companion to the successful BBC series, "Yes Prime Minister... -
![The Compromise by Sergei Dovlatov]()
The Compromise by Sergei Dovlatov
Rated: 4.39 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsBased on Dovlatov's experiences as a journalist in the Soviet Republic of Estonia, this is an acidly comic picture of ludicrous bureaucratic ineptitude, which obviously still continues... -
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![Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle by Harold Bloom, Terry Southern]()
Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle by Harold Bloom, Terry Southern
Rated: 4.35 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsA critical overview of the work features the writings of Terry Southern, William S. Doxey, Jerome Klinkowitz, Richard Giannone, John L. Simons, James Lundquist, and other scholars.- After the bomb, Dad came up with ice / Terry Southern- Vonnegut's Cat's cradle / William S... -
![The Suitcase by Sergei Dovlatov]()
The Suitcase by Sergei Dovlatov
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSergei Dovlatov’s subtle, dark-edged humor and wry observations are in full force in The Suitcase as he examines eight objects—the items he brought with him in his luggage upon his emigration from the U.S.S.R... -
![Steel Magnolias by Robert Harling, Frances Fisher]()
Steel Magnolias by Robert Harling, Frances Fisher
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsWithin the walls of Truvy's beauty shop are six women whose lives increasingly hinge on the existence of one another. Together, they absorb the passing seasons, just like the weathered wooden structure of the salon "home" that they share.An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast production, starring Frances Fisher, Jeanie Hackett, Shannon Holt, Amy Pietz, Brittany Snow, and Jocelyn Towne... -
![Die Känguru-Apokryphen by Marc-Uwe Kling]()
Die Känguru-Apokryphen by Marc-Uwe Kling
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSensation, Sensation: Archäologen haben in einem Geheimfach in Marc-Uwes Schreibtisch neue Geschichten vom Känguru und seinem Kleinkünstler gefunden! Dies ist nicht die Fortsetzung der Fortsetzung der Fortsetzung der Känguru-Chroniken. Triologie bleibt Triologie. Aber ein anständiger Kleinkünstler hat natürlich eine Zugabe vorbereitet... -
![Duncan by Xyla Turner]()
Duncan by Xyla Turner
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsPortia: The man started his very first conversation with me, by asking me for my hand in marriage. That was a negative. Forget that he's a Republican, rude and intrusive. He is also different from any man that I have ever met. Yet, there is a side to him that forces me to pay attention. Not the constant counting, the stupid surveys and his defense of building walls. That is simply annoying, but. -
![Mr. Hot Grinch by Lindsey Hart]()
Mr. Hot Grinch by Lindsey Hart
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsI landed myself a hot Grinch for Christmas.And it's my new boss!I was kind of desperate,So, I hired her.She might not be nanny material.She might burn food faster than I can grunt.She might talk back to me like she is the boss.She might even be on the brink of becoming my archnemesis.But my son adores her and that's all that counts... -
![Noises Off by Michael Frayn]()
Noises Off by Michael Frayn
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsNoises Off, the classic farce by the Tony Award—winning author of Copenhagen, is not one play but two: simultaneously a traditional sex farce, Nothing On, and the backstage “drama” that develops during Nothing On’s final rehearsal and tour... -
![The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh]()
The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsA writer in a totalitarian state is interrogated about the gruesome content of his short stories and their similarities to a number of child-murders that are happening in his town.'Sometimes you don't even know what you've been craving until the real thing comes along.' New York Times'McDonagh is more than just a very clever theatrical stylist. His tricks and turns have a purpose... -
![বহুব্রীহি by Humayun Ahmed]()
বহুব্রীহি by Humayun Ahmed
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsভূমিকাবহুব্রীহি নাম দিয়ে একটি টিভি সিরিয়েল লিখেছিলাম, এই বহুব্রীহিকে সেই টিভি সিরিয়েলের উপন্যাস রূপান্তর মনে করা ঠিক হবে না। আমি যা করেছি তা হচ্ছে মূল কাঠামো ঠিক রেখে একটা মজার উপন্যাস লেখার চেষ্টা। কিন্তু অন্য ধরনের কথা হাসি তামশা মাঝখানে আছে। আশা করছি সেই সব কথা রঙ্গ রসিকতায় পুরোপুরি ঢাকা পড়বে না। কিছু না থেকেই যাবে।পাঠক পাঠিকাদের- আমার এই উপন্যাস টিভি সিরিয়েলের সঙ্গে মিলিয়ে পড়লে হোঁচট... -
![CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders]()
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsIn six stories and the novella, Bounty, Saunders introduces readers to people struggling to survive in an increasingly haywire world...Categorized as:
classics post-apocalyptic postmodernism 20th-century 21st-century adult anthologies audiobook -
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![Torch Song Trilogy by Harvey Fierstein]()
Torch Song Trilogy by Harvey Fierstein
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsDrama, American Literature, Gay and Lesbian Studies, PlaysTorch Song Trilogy is a collection of three plays by Harvey Fierstein rendered in three acts: International Stud, Fugue in a Nursery, and Widows and Children First! The story centers on Arnold Beckoff, a torch song singing Jewish drag queen living in New York City in the late 1970 and 1980s... -
![Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec]()
Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsLife: A User's Manual is an unclassified masterpiece, a sprawling compendium as encyclopedic as Dante's Commedia and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and, in its break with tradition, as inspiring as Joyce's Ulysses... -
![A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz]()
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAn irreverent comic adventure, spanning three continents, about a father and son against each other and against the world.For most of his life, Jasper Dean couldn’t decide whether to pity, hate, love, or murder his certifiably paranoid father, Martin, a man who overanalyzed anything and everything and imparted his self-garnered wisdom to his only son... -
![Barney's Version by Mordecai Richler]()
Barney's Version by Mordecai Richler
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsEbullient and perverse, thrice married, Barney Panofsky has always clung to two cherished beliefs: life is absurd and nobody truly ever understands anybody else. But when his sworn enemy publicly states that Barney is a wife abuser, an intellectual fraud and probably a murderer, he is driven to write his own memoirs... -
![Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.]()
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 76 ratingsTold with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction preys on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon and, worse still, surviving it ...Dr Felix Hoenikker, one of the founding 'fathers' of the atomic bomb, has left a deadly legacy to the world. For he's the inventor of 'ice-nine', a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet... -
![Played by the Rockstar: A laugh out loud rom com escape! by Christina Hovland]()
Played by the Rockstar: A laugh out loud rom com escape! by Christina Hovland
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsA rock star walks into a bar…Certified behavioral counselor (and former band groupie) Becca Forrester needs a break. Taking a leave of absence from her job, she moves into the apartment over her parents’ garage, and clinches a gig waitressing at a dive bar known for bringing in big name musicians.Cedric “Linx” Lincoln is a certified rock star... -
![The Collected Plays, Vol. 1 by Neil Simon]()
The Collected Plays, Vol. 1 by Neil Simon
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThis first volume of The Collected Plays of Neil Simon contains the triumphs that put his unique brand of comic genius on the American stage, and made him the most successful playwright of his generation... -
![The Complete Plays by Joe Orton]()
The Complete Plays by Joe Orton
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThis volume contains every play written by Joe Orton, who emerged in the 1960s as the most talented comic playwright in recent English history and was considered the direct successor to Wilde, Shaw, and Coward... -
![Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Fo, Joseph Farrell]()
Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Fo, Joseph Farrell
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn its first two years of production, Dario Fo's controversial farce, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, was seen by over half a million people. It has since been performed all over the world and is widely recognised as a classic of modern drama... -
![Milea: Suara Dari Dilan by Pidi Baiq]()
Milea: Suara Dari Dilan by Pidi Baiq
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 20 ratings“Dilan memberi penggambaran lain dari sebuah penaklukan cinta & bagaimana indahnya cinta sederhana anak zaman dahulu.” @refaniris“Cuma satu yang kuinginkan, aku ingin cowok seperti Dilan.” @_SLovaFC“Dilan brengsek! Dia selalu tahu caranya menjadi pusat perhatian, bahkan ketika jadi buku, setiap serinya selalu ditunggu.” @Tedy_Pensil“Membaca Dilan itu seperti jatuh cinta lagi, lagi, dan lagi... -
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![What a Carve Up! by Jonathan Coe]()
What a Carve Up! by Jonathan Coe
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsIf Charles Dickens and Agatha Christie had ever managed to collaborate, they might have produced this shamelessly entertaining novel, which introduces readers to what may be the most powerful family in England--and is certainly the vilest. A tour de force of menace, malicious comedy, and torrential social bile, this book marks the American debut of an extraordinary writer... -
![Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.]()
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 70 ratingsAlternate cover for this ISBN can be found hereIn Breakfast of Champions, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s most beloved characters, the aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. What follows is murderously funny satire, as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth... -
![The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Martin McDonagh]()
The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Martin McDonagh
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSet in the mountains of Connemara, County Galway, The Beauty Queen of Leenane tells the darkly comic tale of Maureen Folan, a plain and lonely woman in her early forties, and Mag her manipulative aging mother whose interference in Maureen's first and potentially last loving relationship sets in motion a train of events that is as gothically funny as it is horrific... -
![Riotous Assembly by Tom Sharpe]()
Riotous Assembly by Tom Sharpe
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsOffering all the qualities of his general bestselling fiction, this is Tom Sharpe's blazing satire of South African apartheid, companion to Indecent Exposure... -
![Revenge of the Lawn: Stories 1962-1970 by Richard Brautigan]()
Revenge of the Lawn: Stories 1962-1970 by Richard Brautigan
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA collection of 62 very short stories set in 1960s California, particularly around the author's home town of San Francisco. Richard Brautigan is the author of "Willard & His Bowling Trophies", "Trout Fishing in America", "In Watermelon Sugar" & "A Confederate General From Big Sur"... -
![Harvey by Mary Chase]()
Harvey by Mary Chase
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsWhen Elwood P. Dowd starts to introduce his imaginary friend Harvey, a six and a half foot rabbit, to guests at a dinner party, his sister, Veta, has seen as much of his eccentric behavior as she can tolerate. She decides to have him committed to a sanitarium to spare her daughter, Myrtle Mae, and their family, from future embarrassment... -
![Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau]()
Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThe plot of Exercises in Style is simple: a man gets into an argument with another passenger on a bus. However, this anecdote is told 99 more times, each in a radically different style, as a sonnet, an opera, in slang, and with many more permutations. This virtuoso set of variations is a linguistic rust-remover, and a guide to literary forms... -
![Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson]()
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 72 ratingsFear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the best chronicle of drug-soaked, addle-brained, rollicking good times ever committed to the printed page. It is also the tale of a long weekend road trip that has gone down in the annals of American pop culture as one of the strangest journeys ever undertaken... -
![Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins]()
Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 44 ratingsThis is a gutsy, fun-loving, and provocative novel in which a bean can philosophises, a dessert spoon mystifies, a young waitress takes on the New York art world, and a rowdy redneck welder discovers the lost god of Palestine... -
![The Odd Couple by Neil Simon, Nathan Lane]()
The Odd Couple by Neil Simon, Nathan Lane
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsComedy / 6m, 2f / Int. This classic comedy opens as a group of the guys assembled for cards in the apartment of divorced Oscar Madison. And if the mess is any indication, it's no wonder that his wife left him. Late to arrive is Felix Unger who has just been separated from his wife... -
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![Molloy by Samuel Beckett]()
Molloy by Samuel Beckett
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsMolloy, the first of the three masterpieces which constitute Samuel Beckett’s famous trilogy, appeared in French in 1951, followed seven months later by Malone Dies (Malone meurt), and two years later by The Unnamable (L’Innommable). Few works of contemporary literature have been so universally acclaimed as central to their time and to our understanding of the human experience... -
![Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins]()
Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 56 ratingsStill Life with Woodpecker is a sort of a love story that takes place inside a pack of Camel cigarettes. It reveals the purpose of the moon, explains the difference between criminals and outlaws, examines the conflict between social activism and romantic individualism, and paints a portrait of contemporary society that includes powerful Arabs, exiled royalty, and pregnant cheerleaders... -
![The Saturday Night Sauvignon Sisterhood by Gill Sims]()
The Saturday Night Sauvignon Sisterhood by Gill Sims
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIt’s time for a w(h)ine‘Oh, for f*ck’s sake’ muttered Claire under her breath, as she opened the fridge to see what she could find for a no effort dinner. The children continued to fight behind her... -
![Mr. Bossy Devil by Lindsey Hart]()
Mr. Bossy Devil by Lindsey Hart
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsOperation ex-stepsister seductionI know how it sounds.And no, I'm not backing off.There was a time when we were more best friends than siblings,Until the great fall-out between our parents.I always wondered how she was doing.But I never looked her up.I was too busy making billions... -
![The Book and the Brotherhood by Iris Murdoch]()
The Book and the Brotherhood by Iris Murdoch
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA story about love and friendship and Marxism Many years ago Gerard Hernshaw and his friends “commissioned” one of their number to write a political book. Time passes and opinions change. “Why should we go on supporting a book which we detest?” Rose Curtland asks. “The brotherhood of Western intellectuals versus the book of history,” Jenkin Riderhood suggests... -
![Posh by Laura Wade]()
Posh by Laura Wade
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIn an oak-paneled room in Oxford, ten young punks with cut-glass vowels and deep pockets are meeting, intent on restoring their right to rule. Members of an elite student dining society, the boys are bunkering down for a wild night of debauchery, decadence and good wine. But this isn't just a jolly: they're planning a revolution.Welcome to the Riot Club... -
![The Clown by Heinrich Böll]()
The Clown by Heinrich Böll
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsAcclaimed entertainer Hans Schnier collapses when his beloved Marie leaves him because he won’t marry her within the Catholic Church. The desertion triggers a searing re-examination of his life—the loss of his sister during the war, the demands of his millionaire father and the hypocrisies of his mother, who first fought to “save” Germany from the Jews, then worked for “reconciliation” afterwards... -
![Captain Pantoja and the Special Service by Mario Vargas Llosa]()
Captain Pantoja and the Special Service by Mario Vargas Llosa
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThis delightful farce opens as the prim and proper Captain Pantoja learns he is to be sent to Peru's Amazon frontier on a secret mission for the army - to provide females for the amorous recruits. Side-splitting complications arise as world of Captain Pantoja's remarkable achievements start to spread... -
![The Abortion by Richard Brautigan]()
The Abortion by Richard Brautigan
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA reclusive young man works in a San Francisco library for unpublishable books. Life's losers, an astonishing number of whom seem to be writers, can bring their manuscripts to the library, where they will be welcomed, registered and shelved. They will not be read, but they will be cherished. In comes Vida, with her manuscript. Her book is about her gorgeous body, in which she feels uncomfortable... -
![Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann]()
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsLATTICING one cherry pie after another, an Ohio housewife tries to bridge the gaps between reality and the torrent of meaningless info that is the United States of America. She worries about her children, her dead parents, African elephants, the bedroom rituals of “happy couples”, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and how to hatch an abandoned wood pigeon egg... -
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![Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene]()
Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA morally complex and mature work from a modern masterIn this later novel by Graham Greene—featuring a new introduction—the author continues to explore moral and theological dilemmas through psychologically astute character studies and exciting drama on an international stage... -
![The Beautiful Room Is Empty by Edmund White]()
The Beautiful Room Is Empty by Edmund White
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWhen the narrator of White's poised yet scalding autobiographical novel first embarks on his sexual odyssey, it is the 1950s, and America is "a big gray country of families on drowsy holiday." That country has no room for a scholarly teenager with guilty but insatiable stirrings toward other men... -
![The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard]()
The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe play begins with Max and Charlotte, a couple whose marriage seems about to rupture. But nothing one sees on a stage is the real thing, and some things are less real than others. Charlotte is an actress who has been appearing in a play about marriage written by her husband Henry. Max, her leading man, is also married to an actress, Annie... -
![Private Lives an Intimate Comedy in Three Acts by Noël Coward]()
Private Lives an Intimate Comedy in Three Acts by Noël Coward
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThis scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages... -
![Rumors: A Farce by Neil Simon]()
Rumors: A Farce by Neil Simon
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsKen and Chris have found their host Charley, a prominent Government official, in his bedroom, too dazed to speak, with a bullet wound in his ear lobe! Len and Claire arrive, themselves injured in a car crash, and are soon joined by Ernest and Cookie, Glenn and Cassie, each with their own problems... -
![God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.]()
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 53 ratingsSecond only to Slaughterhouse-Five of Vonnegut's canon in its prominence and influence, God Bless You, Mr...
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