Books like The Best Awful — picked by fans

An Arab and a Jew open a restaurant together across the street from the United Nations....

It sounds like the beginning of an ethnic joke, but it's the axis around which this gutsy, fun-loving, and alarmingly provocative novel spins, in which a bean can philosophizes, 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-while the illusions that obscure humanity's view of the true universe fall away, one by one, like Salome's veils.

Skinny Legs and All deals with today's most sensitive issues:… show more.

One of America's greatest writers gives us his unique perspective on our fears of nuclear annihilation

Experiment.

Told 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.

Solution.

Dr Felix Hoenikker, one of the founding fathers of the atomic bomb, has left a deadly legacy to the world. For he is the inventor of ice-nine, a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet. The search for its whereabouts leads to Hoenikker's three eccentric children, to a crazed dictator in the Caribbean, to… show more.

The birth of Jesus has been well chronicled, as have his glorious teachings, acts, and divine sacrifice after his thirtieth birthday. But no one knows about the early life of the Son of God, the missing years - except Biff, the Messiah's best bud, who has been resurrected to tell the story in this divinely hilarious, yet heartfelt work 'reminiscent of Vonnegut and Douglas Adams' (Philadelphia Inquirer). Verily, the story Biff has to tell is a miraculous one, filled with remarkable journeys, magic, healings, kung fu, corpse reanimations, demons, and hot babes, Even the considerable wiles and devotion of the… show more.

With more than four million copies sold, Wifey is Judy Blume's hilarious, moving tale of a woman who trades in her conventional wifely duties for her wildest fantasies-and learns a lot about life along the way.

Sandy Pressman is a nice suburban wife whose boredom is getting the best of her. She could be making friends at the club, like her husband keeps encouraging her to do. Or working on her golf game. Or getting her hair done.

But for some reason, these things don't interest her as much as the naked man on the motorcycle...

Pulitzer Prize–nominated author of Wasted, Marya Hornbacher's astonishing New York Times best-selling memoir from the belly of bipolar disorder.

Marya Hornbacher tells the story that until recently she had no idea was hers to tell: that of her life with Type I ultra-rapid-cycle bipolar disorder, the most severe form of bipolar disease.

In Madness, Hornbacher relates that bipolar can spawn eating disorders, substance abuse, promiscuity, and self-mutilation, and that for too long these symptoms have masked, for many of the three million people in America with bipolar, their underlying illness. Hornbacher’s fiercely self-aware portrait of bipolar, starting as early as… show more.

A nuanced psychological portrait of Abraham Lincoln that finds his legendary political strengths rooted in his most personal struggles.

Giving shape to the deep depression that pervaded Lincoln's adult life, Joshua Wolf Shenk’s Lincoln’s Melancholy reveals how this illness influenced both the President’s character and his leadership. Mired in personal suffering as a young man, Lincoln forged a hard path toward mental health. Shenk draws on seven years of research from historical record, interviews with Lincoln scholars, and contemporary research on depression to understand the nature of Lincoln’s unhappiness. In the process, Shenk discovers that the President’s coping strategies—among them,… show more.

Edgar Allan Poe is credited with having pioneered the short story, having perfected the tale of psychological horror, and having revolutionised modern poetics. The entirety of Poe's body of imaginative work encompasses detective tales, satires, fables, fantasies, science fiction, verse dramas, and some of the most evocative poetry in the English language. This omnibus edition collects all of Poe's fiction and poetry in a single volume, including The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Pit and the Pendulum,." "The Raven," "Annabel Lee," the full-length novel "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket", and much more.… show more.

The lifetime risk of developing bipolar II disorder is 5-7%, yet the condition is often poorly detected. Mood elevation states are less extreme than in bipolar I disorder although the depressive episodes are usually severe. When correctly treated, the outcome is positive, but bipolar II is often poorly managed, resulting in a high suicide rate. This is the only academic and clinical management review focused entirely on bipolar II, scrutinizing history, epidemiology, burden and neurobiology and including an extensive clinical debate by international experts about effective management strategies. Now in its third edition, this book features new chapters on the… show more.

This collection of letters from the 26th President of the United States to his six children was an immediate bestseller when it was originally published in 1919, shortly after Roosevelt's death. Written between 1898 and 1911, the letters show Roosevelt as a devoted and encouraging father, with a sense of humor and a skilled sketching hand.