Bill schmalfeldt (11 Ergebnisse)

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Megan Hamilton has a perfectly ordinary life.She works at a bookstore in Myrtle Beach, has a small circle of friends, and shares her apartment with Monty-a friendly black cat with three white hairs on his chest, an appetite for trouble, and absolutely no respect for personal property.Then one evening, Megan asks Monty if he wants turkey for dinner.And Monty says, 'No.'Not meows. Not something that sounds like no.He says it.Within days, a video of the talking cat goes viral. Reporters descend. Scientists come calling. Strangers demand answers to questions about their marriages, their careers, and their futures. And when people discover that Monty may possess an ability far more extraordinary than speech, the United States government becomes very interested indeed.Megan soon learns that having the most remarkable cat in the world is one thing.Keeping him is another.The Cat Who Said No is a darkly comic story about fame, friendship, science, bureaucracy, greed, and one stubborn little black cat who discovers that sometimes the most powerful word in the English language has only two letters.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - History is written by the winners. Religion is written by the faithful. Noir is written by guys in trench coats. And cats, apparently, are running the government.In Alienated Affeckshuns and Other Inflammatory Short Stories, Bill Schmalfeldt cheerfully wanders into places where good judgment might suggest he stay outside.An outgoing president reveals that the real genius behind his administration was an invisible Maine Coon named Mr. Floofy Butt. A lifelong bigot suffers a traumatic brain injury and awakens with a horrifying new affliction: empathy. Job finally gets tired of God's questions and starts asking a few of his own. Abraham Lincoln's friends try to help him plan a pleasant evening at the theater. Judas Iscariot takes Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to court. A Milwaukee private eye discovers that organized crime is no match for bad judgment, a good right knee, and a woman from Shorewood who knows kung fu.And in the title story, a 1940 Massachusetts courtroom must determine whether Brutus Ragdish unlawfully alienated the affeckshuns of Henry Fimbleman's beloved woomin-a legal proceeding involving adultery, questionable paternity, unexpected revelations, and one hand placed upon a poop deck under highly disputed circumstances.Irreverent, profane, occasionally tender, and deeply suspicious of anyone who takes himself too seriously, Alienated Affeckshuns is a collection about history, religion, prejudice, love, politics, crime, cats, and the infinite human capacity to make an absolute mess of things.Seven stories. Several centuries. Numerous bad decisions.No sacred cow is entirely safe.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - When a series of catastrophic EMP attacks plunges America into darkness, the people of Clinton, Iowa suddenly find themselves cut off from the rest of the country - no electricity, no phones, no internet, no clear idea whether the United States government even still exists.Mayor Frank Ramey is doing his best to hold the town together with Coleman lanterns, rationed fuel, and whatever remains of common sense. Unfortunately, common sense becomes increasingly difficult to find after local National Guard commander Spencer Tweed decides the crisis requires bold leadership, emergency military authority, and the creation of something called the Republic of Eastern Iowa.As frightened citizens struggle to survive shortages, rumors, refugees, and each other, Frank finds himself navigating a growing political absurdity involving armed checkpoints, curfews, soup regulations, accidental coups, and one deeply exhausted First Sergeant who slowly realizes somebody may need to stop Spencer before people start getting killed over something unbelievably stupid.By turns funny, tense, absurd, and surprisingly heartfelt, The Republic of Eastern Iowa is a sharply observed comic novel about what happens when ordinary people are forced to rebuild civilization using little more than stubbornness, practical improvisation, and casseroles.Because when the lights go out, humanity doesn't disappear.It just gets weirder.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - When a series of catastrophic EMP attacks plunges America into darkness, the people of Clinton, Iowa suddenly find themselves cut off from the rest of the country - no electricity, no phones, no internet, no clear idea whether the United States government even still exists.Mayor Frank Ramey is doing his best to hold the town together with Coleman lanterns, rationed fuel, and whatever remains of common sense. Unfortunately, common sense becomes increasingly difficult to find after local National Guard commander Spencer Tweed decides the crisis requires bold leadership, emergency military authority, and the creation of something called the Republic of Eastern Iowa.As frightened citizens struggle to survive shortages, rumors, refugees, and each other, Frank finds himself navigating a growing political absurdity involving armed checkpoints, curfews, soup regulations, accidental coups, and one deeply exhausted First Sergeant who slowly realizes somebody may need to stop Spencer before people start getting killed over something unbelievably stupid.By turns funny, tense, absurd, and surprisingly heartfelt, The Republic of Eastern Iowa is a sharply observed comic novel about what happens when ordinary people are forced to rebuild civilization using little more than stubbornness, practical improvisation, and casseroles.Because when the lights go out, humanity doesn't disappear.It just gets weirder.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Some mysteries are better left unsolved. Some insurance claims are better left unpaid.Max Payload has had enough of murder.After a particularly unpleasant case involving five dead debutantes and an exceptionally ugly cat, the hard-boiled Boston private detective decides it's time for a quieter line of work.Life insurance.His first assignment for Eternal Rest Mutual Life & Casualty seems simple enough. A fellow named Wilbur Whateley wants to collect $2,500 on his mother's life insurance policy.There's just one problem.Nobody can find the body.Max drives to the isolated Massachusetts village of Dunwich, expecting to spend a couple of days interviewing witnesses and sorting out a suspicious claim.Instead, he encounters a fifteen-year-old beneficiary who looks forty, a farmhouse with enormous doors on the second floor, and something upstairs that sounds like an ox dragging a piano.Then there's the university librarian who keeps warning him about an ancient book, the locals who communicate primarily by spitting tobacco juice, and the increasingly disturbing possibility that the Whateley family has been hiding something considerably larger than an insurance fraud.Max has investigated murderers, liars, and lunatics. But he's never investigated anything quite like this.And all he wanted was a nice, quiet job with a steady paycheck.Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft's classic tale of cosmic horror, Max Payload Meets the Dunwich Horror is an illustrated, hard-boiled detective mystery that combines supernatural terror, outrageous characters, and the sort of dark humor that would make Raymond Chandler reach for another drink.The insurance investigator in Max says there's probably a perfectly reasonable explanation.The former private detective in him says the insurance investigator is an idiot.Welcome to Dunwich.A Crooked Smile Press publication. Where Wit Leaves a Mark.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - What if the end of the world were postponed because the invading aliens got overbooked What if artificial intelligence suddenly began answering every question exactly the way a cat would What if Death quietly took a well-earned vacation.and nobody on Earth could die anymore What if the Second Coming returned to Earth only to discover that miracles are no substitute for proper paperwork And what if the most frightening thing in the Book of Revelation wasn't the Beast.but the Standards and Practices department In Tiptoe Through the Zeitgeist, I invite you to join me as we traverse twenty darkly comic worlds where the impossible is treated as perfectly reasonable-and where humanity responds to the extraordinary with committees, forms, permits, regulations, bureaucracy, and just enough optimism to make everything slightly worse.From talking cats and apocalyptic morning television to immortal mosquitoes, honey badgers demanding better public relations, philosophical poems, reinvented fairy tales, and ordinary people confronting gloriously absurd circumstances, these stories balance satire with warmth, wit with melancholy, and laughter with the occasional uncomfortable truth.Because sometimes the best way to understand the strange times we're living through.is to make them just a little stranger.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - It's January 2029. The voters voted.The states certified.The Electoral College met.Congress prepared to count the votes.Everything was proceeding exactly as the Founders intended.Donald Trump had other ideas.As America stumbles toward Inauguration Day, a President-elect demands answers, a Vice President certifies his own political extinction, journalists chase rumors through Washington, generals rediscover constitutional law, and a weary Speaker of the House quietly waits for everyone else to realize that the republic may yet be saved-not by heroes-but by committee assignments, procedural rules, and a healthy appreciation for the consequences of bad behavior.Funny, unsettling, and occasionally absurd, The Eternal Trump is a satirical exploration of power, personality, and a question every democracy must eventually answer: What happens when the last person to learn that an election is over is the person who cannot imagine losing one.…

Zustand: New.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - The apocalypse has arrived. Unfortunately, it brought company.What happens when civilization collapses, the sun explodes, middle age attacks, or the incoming President of the United States discovers that the outgoing administration has left behind something considerably worse than a budget deficit You laugh.Or at least Bill Schmalfeldt hopes you do.APOCALYPSE NOW - Four Illustrated Doomsday Scenarios adapts four stories from Schmalfeldt's satirical collection Tiptoe Through the Zeitgeist into a full-length illustrated comic anthology.In 'Good Luck, Mr. President!', President-elect Michael Donnelly arrives at the White House expecting a routine final briefing. What he receives instead is a catalog of increasingly impossible catastrophes.In 'Elegy for an Aging Goth Girl,' a woman who once regarded sunlight as an insult discovers that time has transformed her into something far more terrifying than anything she encountered in tragic Russian literature: a reasonably well-adjusted adult who understands the practical value of mulch.In 'The Last Two Survivors,' Elmer and Jasper Whitmore have spent years warning everyone about lizard people, chemtrails, Atlantis, murderous animals, space aliens, and Armageddon. Nobody listened. Then, inconveniently, they turn out to be right.And in 'The Last Morning TV Show,' Jack Hanley and Kelly Morgan host humanity's final morning broadcast with the cheerful professionalism of people who understand that even the extinction of all life should not interfere with the cooking segment.Dark, absurd, irreverent, and unexpectedly human, APOCALYPSE NOW finds comedy in the one subject guaranteed eventually to affect everyone: The end.…