Daniel Handler zeichnet sich durch eine literarische Stimme aus, die sowohl verspielt als auch scharfsinnig ist und sich der Erforschung komplexer menschlicher Emotionen und Beziehungen widmet. Seine Prosa verbindet meisterhaft geistreichen Witz mit tiefgründigen Beobachtungen und bietet den Lesern ein einzigartig fesselndes und zum Nachdenken anregendes Erlebnis. Handler widmet sich konsequent unkonventionellen Themen und präsentiert oft eine weltmüde Perspektive, die jedoch von Momenten unerwarteter Einsichten und Menschlichkeit durchbrochen wird. Dieses gekonnte Zusammenspiel von Humor und Ernsthaftigkeit macht ihn zu einem Autor, der diejenigen anspricht, die intelligente, berührende und wirklich originelle Erzählungen suchen.
Ed ist der Star der Basketballmannschaft, Min eine sensible, künstlerisch angehauchte Filmnärrin, die kein Blatt vor den Mund nimmt. Als sich beide auf einer Party begegnen, funkt es gewaltig. Doch beim näheren Kennenlernen zeigt sich, wie grundverschieden sie sind. Ihre Beziehung wird kurz, aber heftig – voller Überraschungen und Entdeckungen, voll Bemühen und Enttäuschung. Als es aus ist, schreibt Min einen glühenden, virtuosen Brief und gibt Ed all die Dinge zurück, die in ihrer Beziehung eine Rolle gespielt haben. Dieses einfühlsame Jugendbuch erzählt vom Erwachsenwerden, von Liebe und Trennung – anhand von 43 illustrierten Objekten, die am Ende zurückbleiben.
Flannery Culp recounts her tumultuous senior year filled with the chaos of teenage life, including tyrants, crushes, and the influence of absinthe. As she navigates the drama with her friends in the Basic Eight, her life takes a dark turn when she is labeled a murderer on tabloid television. Flannery insists on her innocence, claiming the title of "murderess" instead, highlighting the absurdity and pressures of high school. The story blends humor and tragedy as it explores themes of identity and the complexities of adolescence.
The book features a vibrant mix of characters and unexpected plot twists that keep readers engaged. It explores diverse themes and offers a unique perspective on contemporary issues, making it both entertaining and thought-provoking. The narrative is filled with humor and depth, ensuring a memorable reading experience that resonates with a wide audience.
Tolstoy wrote that happy families are alike and that each unhappy family is unhappy in a different way.In Watch Your Mouth, Daniel Handler takes "different" to a whole new level....
'I'm telling you why we broke up, Ed. I'm writing it in this letter, the whole truth of why it happened.' Min Green and Ed Slaterton are breaking up, so Min is writing Ed a letter and giving him a box. Inside the box is why they broke up. Two bottle caps, a movie ticket, a folded note, a box of matches, a protractor, books, a toy truck, a pair of ugly earrings, a comb from a motel room, and every other item collected over the course of a giddy, intimate, heartbreaking relationship. 'A poignant tale of adolescent heartbreak' - Telegraph.
A boat has gone missing. Goods have been stolen. There is blood in the water. It is the twenty-first century and a crew of pirates is terrorizing the San Francisco Bay. Phil is a husband, a father, a struggling radio producer and the owner of a large condo with a view of the water. But he'd like to be a rebel and a fortune hunter. Gwen is his daughter. She's fourteen. She's a student, a swimmer and a best friend. But she'd like to be an adventurer and an outlaw. Phil teams up with his young, attractive assistant. They head for the open road, attending a conference to seal a deal. Gwen teams up with a new, fierce friend and some restless souls. They head for the open sea, stealing a boat to hunt for treasure. We Are Pirates! is a novel about our desperate searches for happiness and freedom, about our wild journeys beyond the boundaries of our ordinary lives. Also, it's about a teenage girl who pulls together a ragtag crew to commit mayhem in the San Francisco Bay, while her hapless father tries to get her home.
A razor-sharp tale of two couples, two marriages, a bar, and a San Francisco start-up from a best-selling, award-winning novelist. This is a story about two marriages. Or is it? It begins with a wedding, held in the small San Francisco forest of Bottle Grove--bestowed by a wealthy patron for the public good, back when people did such things. Here is a cross section of lives, a stretch of urban green where ritzy guests, lustful teenagers, drunken revelers, and forest creatures all wait for the sun to go down. The girl in the corner slugging vodka from a cough-syrup bottle is Padgett--she's keeping something secreted in the woods. The couple at the altar are the Nickels--the bride is emphatic about changing her name, as there is plenty about her old life she is ready to forget. Set in San Francisco as the tech-boom is exploding, Bottle Grove is a sexy, skewering dark comedy about two unions--one forged of love and the other of greed--and about the forces that can drive couples together, into dependence, and then into sinister, even supernatural realms. Add one ominous shape-shifter to the mix, and you get a delightful and strange spectacle: a story of scheming and yearning and foibles and love and what we end up doing for it--and everyone has a secret. Looming over it all is the income disparity between San Francisco's tech community and . . . everyone else.
“Fascinating, profane . . . One of the most original and realistic depictions of the sex lives of young people to come around in a long time” (LA Times), from bestselling, award-winning Daniel Handler. Cole is a boy in high school. He runs cross country, he sketches, he jokes around with friends. But none of this quite matters next to the allure of sex. "Let me put it this way," he says. "Draw a number line, with zero is, you never think about sex and ten is, it's all you think about, and while you are drawing the line, I am thinking about sex." Cole fantasizes about whomever he's looking at. He consumes and shares pornography. And he sleeps with a lot of girls, which is beginning to earn him a not-quite-savory reputation around school. This leaves him adrift with only his best friend for company, and then something startling starts to happen between them that might be what he's been after all this time--and then he meets Grisaille. All the Dirty Parts is an unblinking take on teenage desire in a culture of unrelenting explicitness and shunted communication, where sex feels like love, but no one knows what love feels like. With short chapters in the style of Jenny Offill or Mary Robison, Daniel Handler gives us a tender, brutal, funny, intoxicating portrait of an age when the lens of sex tilts the world. "There are love stories galore," Cole tells us. "This isn't that. The story I'm typing is all the dirty parts."
