The “wise, wildly funny story” of a self-destructive writer’s lost weekend by a Pulitzer Prize–winning, New York Times–bestselling author (Chicago Tribune).
A wildly successful first novel made Grady Tripp a young star, and seven years later he still hasn’t grown up. He’s now a writing professor in Pittsburgh, plummeting through middle age, stuck with an unfinishable manuscript,...

Riley lives in TropeTown, where everyone plays stock roles in novels. Riley, a Manic Pixie Dream Boy, is sent to group therapy after going off-script. Riley knows that breaking the rules again could get him terminated, yet he feels there must be more to life than recycling the same clichés for readers' entertainment. Then he meets Zelda, a Manic Pixie Dream Girl (Geek Chic subtype), and falls head over heels in love. Zelda's in therapy too, along...

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is a humorous 1889 novel by American writer Mark Twain. In it, a Connecticut engineer is accidentally transported back to the time of King Arthur. He convinces the inhabitants of that time that he is a magician, and uses his knowledge of modern technology to stun them with such feats as demolitions, fireworks, and the shoring up of a holy well. Twain wrote the book as a satire of Romantic notions of chivalry...

One of George Bernard Shaw's best-known plays, Pygmalion is based on ancient Greek mythology. Pygmalion fell in love with one of his sculptures, which then came to life. The general idea of that myth was a popular subject for Victorian era British playwrights. Shaw's updated and revised version of this ancient Greek legend was first presented in England in 1914. Poking fun of the antiquated British class system, it introduces Henry Higgins, a professor...

"What if your two favorite people hated each other with a passion? The wife has it all. A big house in a nice neighborhood, a ride-or-die snarky best friend, Temi, with whom to laugh about facile men, and a devoted husband who loves her above all else--even his distate for Temi. On a seemingly normal day, Temi comes over to spend a lazy afternoon with the wife: drinking wine, eating snacks, and laughing caustically about the husband's shortcomings....