Buster “Rant” Casey just may be the most efficient serial killer of our time. A high school rebel, Rant Casey escapes from his small town home for the big city where he becomes the leader of an urban demolition derby called Party Crashing. Rant Casey will die a spectacular highway death, after which his friends gather the testimony needed to build an oral history of his short, violent life. With hilarity, horror, and blazing insight, Rant is a mind-bending vision of the future, as only Chuck Palahniuk could ever imagine.
From the hive mind behind the popular Happy Rant podcast (Ted Kluck, Ronnie Martin, and Barnabas Piper) comes this cornucopia of humorous and thought-provoking critiques of Christian culture. Come for the good-natured cynicism. Stay for the enlightenment. Ted Kluck, Ronnie Martin and Barnabas Piper, hosts of the Happy Rant podcast, take their faith-based back-and-forth from the recording booth to the book page with this collection of insightful and often hilarious takedowns of pastor trends, personality tests, political engagement, and more. The Happy Rant crew have a lot of strong opinions, and occasionally they even agree with each other! Always candid and frequently compelling, Ted, Ronnie, and Barnabas tackle everything from the divisive, hot-button issues within the church to more lighthearted fare that reminds us never to take ourselves too seriously. As entertaining as it is engaging, The Happy Rant will help you to think more critically about the world around you and enjoy a laugh or two (or maybe three) along the way.
Dennis Miller is back, and he is Ranting Again in this hilarious compendium of wit, wisdom, and righteous outrage. This is good news for all of us who fume at the country's lack of common sense, and seethe at the absurdity of the daily headlines. Setting his sights higher and wider than ever before, Dennis Miller is at the top of his game, unleashing his unique brand of scathing wit on anything and everything. Taking on such targets as illegal immigration, the sobriety movement, the American school system, and men who wear tight T-shirts even though they have big breasts, Miller proves that nobody is safe from his hilarious yet hard-hitting scrutiny. Showcasing Dennis Miller's trademark blend of wide-ranging allusions, thought-provoking insights, and outrageous opinions, Ranting Again is a brilliant collection that is his sharpest and funniest yet.
"A harrowing, perverse, laugh-aloud funny rocket ride of catastrophes…Gutsy, terse and cunning, Invisible Monsters may emerge as Palahniuk’s strongest book." —Greg Berkman, Seattle Times She’s a fashion model who has everything: a boyfriend, a career, a loyal best friend. But when a sudden freeway "accident" leaves her disfigured and incapable of speech, she goes from being the beautiful center of attention to being an invisible monster, so hideous that no one will acknowledge she exists. Enter Brandy Alexander, Queen Supreme, one operation away from becoming a real woman, who will teach her that reinventing yourself means erasing your past and making up something better. And that salvation hides in the last places you’ll ever want to look.
The world has never been perfect. The world has never been all bad. But there has always been evil and men who drink of it. This ends now. Enter Bishop Rider and people like him who have had enough and are willing to embrace what most will not. The world will never be perfect. The world will never be all bad. It’s the middle we must embrace. This, a better kind of hate. Praise for A BETTER KIND OF HATE: “Hard hitting stories of lives on the razor’s edge.” —Paul D. Brazill, author of Too Many Crooks, A Case of Noir, Guns of Brixton, The Last Laughand Kill Me Quick! “Beau Johnson is a lawless writer. Several—but not all—of the stories in his collection, A Better Kind of Hate, feature his renegade cop alter ego Bishop Rider, a battered and bruised, world-weary hero forced to operate outside a corrupt system to find justice. And that’s just what these stories have in common: justice, in all its muted, corrupt glory. Whether showcasing Rider or another flawed hero, Johnson operates in shades of gray, where sometimes all it takes is for a bad man to kill a worse one. A stark and sobering reality, and a stellar debut.” —Joe Clifford, author of the Jay Porter Thriller Series “Beau’s ability to strike at the heart of human emotion is both unnerving, uncanny, and unique. It allows him to wring tears from the darkest recesses of the human experience. A dark chameleon who slides from twisted villain to damaged innocent like a well-tuned master of fiction. A how-to on the craft of short fiction.” —Tom Pitts, author of Hustle and American Static “A Better Kind of Hate will haunt you like a specter. An uneasy collection, Beau Johnson crafts each story with masterful precision and an icy cold edge. Each page, each word, escalates the tension, ratchets the foreboding . Dripping with psychological terror, nerve racking suspense and characters unhinged, A Better Kind of Hate is an offering of patience, plans, and revenge. Johnson’s talent is spectacular and terrifying.” —Marietta Miles, author of Route 12 “Beau Johnson writes from that place inside us all that is nothing but brutal honesty and grit. And while most people avoid this place, Beau milks it for every word he can.” —Ryan Sayles, author of the Richard Dean Buckner series
Rant. Chant. Chisme. is the debut collection of poetry by south Texas native Amalia Ortiz, featuring writing from the first decade of her career. Readers will get a taste of life on the border from the perspective of a young woman of color struggling to write herself into existence. These poems introduce a unique new transcultural feminist viewpoint as the poems call for social and political change along the borderlands. Ortiz, an award-winning performance poet known for her dynamic delivery style, relinquishes control of her writing to the reader, but not without first imparting the theatrical stage directions stated in the book's title, which commands readers to recite these poems aloud in a spoken word celebration exploring culture, music, and place while encouraging the reader to embrace diversity and find their own storytelling voice.
The sports world according to Michael Rapaport—actor, Top 50 podcaster, award-winning film maker, and sports fanatic—from the greatest and downright worst athletes, players, teams, and jerseys, but minus statistics, analytics, or anything else that isn’t pure hustle in this “hell of a book” (Shaquille O'Neal). In 1979, nine-year-old Michael Rapaport decided he was going to do whatever it took to be a pro baller. He practiced and practiced, but by the time he was fifteen, he realized there was no place for a slow, white Jewish kid in the NBA. So, he found another way to channel his obsession with sports: talking trash. In the “crazy, passionate, funny and intense” (Colin Cowherd) This Book Has Balls, Rapaport uses his signature smack-talk style and in-your-face humor to discuss everything from why LeBron will never be like Mike, that Tiger needs the ladies to get his golf game back, and how he once thought Mary Lou Retton was his true love. And, of course, why next year will be the year the New York Knicks win the championship. This book is a series of rants—some controversial, some affectionate, but all incredibly hilarious. “Something is wrong with Michael Rapaport but that’s what makes him right,” (Charlamagne tha God).
According to The Waiter, eighty percent of customers are nice people just looking for something to eat. The remaining twenty percent, however, are socially maladjusted psychopaths. Waiter Rant offers the server's unique point of view, replete with tales of customer stupidity, arrogant misbehavior, and unseen bits of human grace transpiring in the most unlikely places. Through outrageous stories, The Waiter reveals the secrets to getting good service, proper tipping etiquette, and how to keep him from spitting in your food. The Waiter also shares his ongoing struggle, at age thirty-eight, to figure out if he can finally leave the first job at which he's truly thrived.
rant (rant) n. 1. Violent or extravagant speech or writing. 2. A speech or piece of writing that incites anger or violence. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language grammar rant (gramm?r rant) n. 1. A writer's or speaker's view that language is deteriorating, and with it, the world, the people in it, and their morals. Patricia A. Dunn and Ken Lindblom Is bad grammar not just wrong but morally wrong? Do comma splices and dangling participles signal a spiritual decline among our youth? Does a double negative signal the end of civilization as we know it? How outraged should we be at errors of punctuation, syntax, diction, and just plain clumsy phrasing? Patricia A. Dunn and Ken Lindblom take on the world of grammar ranters, showing you how to take your students on a backstage tour of the ranters' claims and denunciations, and their outraged complaints about other people's language. Offering multiple examples and insights about a wide range of grammar rants, they focus on: grammar and morality grammar and intelligence spelling, texting, splices, fragments, and other "grammar traps." Each chapter includes actual rants along with extensive editorial commentary, instructional activities, and classroom lessons that will energize student discussion and educate students about language and correctness, about what it really means to be a good writer. Using Grammar Rants in writing classes will: teach students the conventions of different genres raise students' awareness of real world grammatical issues strengthen students' textual analysis and critical thinking skills break that link between error and evil. Grammar Rants provides the background teachers need to speak with authority about punctuation, correctness, and other hot-button issues. Its practical activities, handouts, and lessons will promote savvy writing by empowering teachers and students to see for themselves how best to raise the quality of their written and spoken language without resorting to ranting.
