Chuck Palahniuk, Author . Doubleday $24.95 (241p) ISBN 978-0-385-52634-0
Palahniuk’s 10th novel (after Snuff
) is a potent if cartoonish cultural satire that succeeds despite its stridently confounding prose. A gang of adolescent terrorists trained by an unspecified totalitarian state (the boys and girls are guided
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Chuck Palahniuk. Norton, $26.95 (336p) ISBN 978-0-393-65259-8
The defiance of social order well-known from Palahniuk’s Fight Club finds new—if stunted—life. As American society continues to fail the common man, the mysterious actor Talbott Reynolds appears on radio and TV promising a new system built truly by...
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Chuck Palahniuk. Doubleday, $26.95 (336p) ISBN 978-0-385-53805-3
For the first time, Palahniuk (Beautiful You) collects his short stories, which feature his signature humor, horror, and grit. Old fans will relish Tyler Durden, from Palahniuk’s debut 1996 novel Fight Club, returning in “Expedition” to spread his...
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Chuck Palahniuk. Doubleday, $25.95 (240p) ISBN 978-0-385-53803-9
Palahniuk (Fight Club; Doomed) continues to push limits in this satire of sex and consumerism, in which “the Nerd’s Cinderella,” Penny Harrigan, finds her average self in bed with tech megabillionaire Cornelius Linus Maxwell, dubbed “Climax-well,”...
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Chuck Palahniuk. Doubleday, $24.95 (336p) ISBN 978-0-385-53303-4
In his less-than-triumphant return to a satiric hell, Palahniuk offers a new installment in the story of Madison Spencer, the snide, overweight, 13-year-old heroine of Damned—who happens to be dead. When a Halloween revenge prank on some of Madison’s
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Chuck Palahniuk. Doubleday, $24.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-385-53302-7
Move over, Dante, there's a new tour guide to hell: Madison Spencer, the 13-year-old narrator of Palahniuk's cliché-ridden latest bulletin of phoned-in outrage. After self-asphyxiating, Madison wakes up in hell and quickly finds, as she's put to...
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Chuck Palahniuk, Author W. W. Norton & Company $23.95 (289p) ISBN 978-0-393-04702-8
The rise and fall of a media-made messiah is the subject of Palahniuk's impressive second novel (after the well-received Fight Club), a wryly mannered commentary on the excesses of pop culture that tracks the 15 minutes of fame of the lone living...
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Chuck Palahniuk, Author W. W. Norton & Company $13.95 (278p) ISBN 978-0-393-31929-3
Palahniuk's grotesque romp aims to skewer the ruthless superficiality of the fashion world and winds up with a tale as savagely glib as what it derides. Narrator Shannon McFarland, once a gorgeous fashion model, has been hideously disfigured in a...
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Chuck Palahniuk, Author W. W. Norton & Company $23.95 (208p) ISBN 978-0-393-03976-4
Featuring soap made from human fat, waiters at high-class restaurants who do unmentionable things to soup and an underground organization dedicated to inflicting a violent anarchy upon the land, Palahniuk's apocalyptic first novel is clearly not for
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Chuck Palahniuk, Author . Doubleday $24.95 (192p) ISBN 978-0-385-52635-7
Palahniuk's rude sendup of name-dropping and the culture of celebrity worship revolves around the fate of Katherine Kenton, a much-married star of stage, screen, and television, living in obscurity and searching for a comeback vehicle. Her...
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Palahniuk (Fight Club; Invisible Monsters) once again demonstrates his faith in the credo that before things get better, they must get much, much worse. Like previous Palahniuk protagonists, Victor Mancini is young and prematurely cynical, a med...
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Chuck Palahniuk, Author , read by James Colby. Recorded Books $24.99 (
, unabridged, five CDs, 5.5 hrs., $24.99 ISBN ) ISBN 978-1-4361-4960-0
, unabridged, five CDs, 5.5 hrs., $24.99 ISBN ) ISBN 978-1-4361-4960-0
The 2008 audio edition of Palahniuk’s ground-breaking 1996 novel provides a timely opportunity to contemplate the direction of Generation X and the wider, popular culture over the past dozen years. The white, male, 20-something angst of the...
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Chuck Palahniuk, Author . Doubleday $24.95 (416p) ISBN 978-0-385-50948-0
What elevates Palahniuk's best novels (e.g., Fight Club
) above their shocking premises is his ability to find humanity in deeply grotesque characters. But such generosity of spirit is not evident in his latest, which charts the trials of a...
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Chuck Palahniuk, Author . Doubleday $24.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-385-50447-8
"I need to rebel against myself. It's the opposite of following your bliss. I need to do what I most fear." Beleaguered reporter Carl Streator is stuck writing about SIDS and grieving for his dead wife and child; he copes by building...
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Chuck Palahniuk, Author . Crown $16 (176p) ISBN 978-1-4000-4783-3
Beginning with the premise that "everyone looking to make a new life migrates west," Palahniuk (Fight Club; Lullaby) portrays Portland as a city that attracts a sort of modern-day pioneering—or at least innovative—spirit. And...
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Chuck Palahniuk, Author . Doubleday $24.95 (272p) ISBN 978-0-385-50947-3
With a first page that captures the reader hook, line and sinker, Palahniuk (Choke; Lullaby) plunges into the odd predicament of Waytansea Island resident and ex-art student Misty Marie Kleinman, whose husband, Peter, lies comatose in a hospital bed
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Chuck Palahniuk, Author . Doubleday $23.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-385-50448-5
This collection from shock novelist Palahniuk (Choke
; Lullaby
) is an eye-opening look at the raw material that goes into Palahniuk's fiction, as well as proof that the novelist's art is derived from keen observation and recording of...
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Chuck Palahniuk, Author , read by Todd McLaren. Tantor Audio $24.99 (
, unabridged, five CDs, 5.5 hrs., $24.99 ISBN ) ISBN 978-1-84657-918-9
, unabridged, five CDs, 5.5 hrs., $24.99 ISBN ) ISBN 978-1-84657-918-9
Palahniuk delivers another entertaining and cynical social commentary on American materialism and gluttony. In her final pornographic performance, Cassie Wright has decided to be on the receiving end of a 600-man gangbang. Neither Cassie nor the men
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Chuck Palahniuk, Author . Doubleday $24.95 (336p) ISBN 978-0-385-51787-4
Buster Casey, destined to live fast, die young and murder as many people as he can, is the rotten seed at the core of Palahniuk's comically nasty eighth novel (after Haunted
; Lullaby
; Diary
; etc.). Set in a future where urbanites are...
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Chuck Palahniuk, Author . Doubleday $24.95 (197p) ISBN 978-0-385-51788-1
Palahniuk’s audacious ninth novel tells the story of Cassie Wright, an aging porn queen who intends to put an exclamation point on her career by having sex with 600 men in one day on film. The story begins with Mr. 600—the pornosaur who...
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Chuck Palahniuk, Author, Various, Read by , Read by Scott Brick, Marc Cashman, Erik Daries, Kimberly Farr, Arthur Morey, Random House Audio $39.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-7393-0286-6
One of Palahniuk's more sweeping and macabre offerings, this is a collection of 23 short stories and poems generated at a fictional writer's retreat turned grotesque survival camp. The pieces range from the stomach-turning to the satirical...
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Chuck Palahniuk, Author, Chuck Palahniuk, Read by , read by the author. Random House Audible $31.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-7393-0402-0
While it's always interesting to hear authors read their own work, this production is not likely to prompt a narrating career for Palahniuk (Fight Club) on par with his literary accomplishments. That's not to say, however, that his style...
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Chuck Palahniuk, read by Tai Sammons. Blackstone Audio, unabridged, seven CDs, 7.5 hrs., $29.95 ISBN 978-1-4417-9282-2
A teenage girl named Madison dies of a drug overdose and awakens in hell, alongside every stereotypical character in the history of bad writing: a jock, a cheerleader, a headbanger, and, naturally, a science dweeb. The twist is that this is a hell...
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Chuck Palahniuk, Cameron Stewart, and Dave Stewart. Dark Horse, $29.99 (256p) ISBN 978-1-61655-945-8
Since igniting Project Mayhem 10 years ago, the dangerously anarchic personality called Tyler Durden has been submerged into the narrator (now named Sebastian) with pills, a mundane job, and a life of textbook suburban domesticity. That state is...
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Chuck Palahniuk, Author, Todd McLaren, Read by Tantor Media $24.99 (0p) ISBN 978-1-4001-0733-9
Palahniuk delivers another entertaining and cynical social commentary on American materialism and gluttony. In her final pornographic performance, Cassie Wright has decided to be on the receiving end of a 600-man gangbang. Neither Cassie nor the men
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Chuck Palahniuk, read by Hillary Huber, Blackstone Audio, unabridged, five CDs, 5.5 hrs., $32.95 ISBN 978-1-4417-3506-5
Palahniuk channels old Hollywood in this homage to Billy Wilder's classic film Sunset Boulevard. Mazie Coogan tends to the needs of Katherine Kenton, a washed-up film star who still believes she lives in the spotlight. When a stranger enters their...
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Chuck Palahniuk, Author, Fields Anna, Read by , read by Anna Fields. Blackstone Audio $24.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-7861-6238-3
Welcome to the world of perverse self-mutilation, insane coincidences and extreme makeovers speckled with violent acts and prescription drugs. After surviving a gunshot wound that destroyed half her face, Shannon meets the vivacious Brandy Alexander,
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Chuck Palahniuk, Author, Michael Garcia, Read by , read by Paul Michael Garcia. Blackstone Audio $24.95 (0p) ISBN 978-1-4332-7723-8
Palahniuk's eponymous protagonist, a highly skilled terrorist, infiltrates an American family by posing as an African pygmy on a student exchange. He relates his sinister albeit humorous escapades in a stunted and ungrammatical prose. While the
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Chuck Palahniuk, Author, Martha Plimpton, Read by , read by Martha Plimpton. Random House Audio $34.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-7393-0284-2
Although this work is a departure from Palahniuk's previous novels Fight Club
, Lullaby
and Choke
, it contains many of the author's signature elements: complex, tortured characters; eyebrow-raising descriptions of people and places; and an
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Chuck Palahniuk. Grand Central, $27 (288p) ISBN 978-1-5387-1795-0
Palahniuk (Adjustment Day) delivers a fine book on writing, full of advice and anecdotes garnered from his career as a novelist, that will help both those aspiring to write bestsellers and those hoping to write from the heart. His practical tips...
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Chuck Palahniuk. Grand Central, $27 (240p) ISBN 978-1-5387-1800-1
Palahniuk (Fight Club) puts a wickedly playful spin on the mechanics of horror filmmaking in this genre-bending novel. Mitzi Ives is the proprietor of Ives Foley Arts, a sound effects company that specializes in selling canned screams to the film...
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Chuck Palahniuk. Simon & Schuster, $26.99 (238p) ISBN 978-1-6680-2141-5
Palahniuk (The Invention of Sound) delivers a grisly yet hazy satire of slasher stories. Two 20-something brothers embrace a murderous strain of arrested development in their upper-crust household in present-day Wales, where they listen to stories...
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Chuck Palahniuk. Simon & Schuster, $26.99 (240p) ISBN 978-1-6680-2144-6
In the latest bracing satire from Palahniuk (Fight Club), a wave of high school suicides roils the country. The narrative centers on Samantha Deel, a brilliant and resourceful teenager who’s hit hard by the suicide of her boyfriend, Garson. When her
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