{"title":"Cry Until Laugh Book Collection","description":"\u003cp\u003eBrowse all of the dark humor books from the Stories of Wonder online bookstore.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCan't find something? Head over to \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/shop\/storiesofwonder\" title=\"Stories of Wonder bookshop.org Affiliate Page\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ebookshop.org\u003c\/a\u003e for more.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNote: This collection has a sister collection \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.storiesofwonder.com\/collections\/comedy\" title=\"Comedic Book Collection\"\u003eLaugh Until You Cry Book Collection\u003c\/a\u003e that is just a bit more light-hearted. Some books may appear on both depending on their BISAC categories provided by publishers.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"murder-your-employer-rupert-holmes","title":"Murder Your Employer","description":"A New York Times bestseller! From Edgar Award-winning novelist, playwright, and story-songwriter Rupert Holmes comes a diabolical thriller with a killer concept: The McMasters Conservatory for the Applied Arts, \"a fantasy academy laid out like a combination of Hogwarts, Downton Abbey, and a White Lotus-style resort\" (Los Angeles Times) dedicated to the art of murder where students study how best to \"delete\" their most deserving victim.Who hasn't wondered for a split second what the world would be like if a person who is the object of your affliction ceased to exist? But then you've probably never heard of The McMasters Conservatory, dedicated to the consummate execution of the homicidal arts. To gain admission, a student must have an ethical reason for erasing someone who deeply deserves a fate no worse (nor better) than death. The campus of this \"Poison Ivy League\" college--its location unknown to even those who study there--is where you might find yourself the practice target of a classmate...and where one's mandatory graduation thesis is getting away with the perfect murder of someone whose death will make the world a much better place to live. Prepare for an education you'll never forget. A \"fiendishly funny\" (Booklist) mix of witty wordplay, breathtaking twists and genuine intrigue, Murder Your Employer will gain you admission into a wholly original world, cocooned within the most entertaining book about well-intentioned would-be murderers you'll ever read.","brand":"Avid Reader Press \/ Simon \u0026 Schuster","offers":[{"title":"English \/ Paperback; 416 pages","offer_id":66571148099888,"sku":"9781451648225","price":18.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0936\/4930\/5904\/files\/murder-your-employer-rupert-holmes-cover.jpg?v=1785365087"},{"product_id":"hurricane-girl-marcy-dermansky","title":"Hurricane Girl","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA propulsive and daring new novel by the author of Very Nice about a woman on the run from catastrophe, searching for love, home, a swimming pool, and for someone who can perhaps stop the bleeding from her head.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAllison Brody is thirty-two and newly arrived on the East Coast after just managing to flee her movie producer boyfriend. She has some money, saved up from years of writing and waitressing, and so she spends it, buying a small house on the beach. But then a Category 3 hurricane makes landfall and scatters her home up and down the shore, leaving Allison adrift.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShould she go home from the bar with the strange cameraman and stay in his guest room? Is that a glass vase he smashed on her skull? Can she wipe the blood from her eyes, get in her car, and drive to her mother's? Does she really love the brain surgeon who saved her, or is she just using him for his swimming pool? And is it possible to ever truly heal without seeking some measure of revenge?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA gripping, provocative novel that walks a knife's edge between comedy and horror, Hurricane Girl is the work of a singular talent, a novelist unafraid to explore the intersection of love, sex, violence, and freedom--while celebrating the true joy that can be found in a great swim and a good turkey sandwich.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":66697448423728,"sku":"9780593315354","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0936\/4930\/5904\/files\/hurricane-girl-marcy-dermansky-cover.jpg?v=1785364344"},{"product_id":"if-this-book-exists-jason-pargin","title":"If This Book Exists, You're In The Wrong Universe","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author Jason Pargin's hilarious and horrifying John Dies at the End series continues with \u003ci\u003eIf This Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Within the snarky humor is an incisive commentary on social media and the state of our connected world, and a story about trauma and how people lash out when they're hurt...This isn't just a funny tale of inept supernatural investigators; it's a story of people struggling through pain to find a better path. Pargin offers us a welcome note of hope.\" -- \u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf the broken neon signs, shuttered storefronts, and sub-standard housing didn't tip you off, you've just wandered into the city of \"Undisclosed\". You don't want to be caught dead here, because odds are you just might find yourself rising from the grave. That hasn't stopped tourists from visiting to check out the unusual phenomena that hangs around our town like radioactive fallout. Interdimensional parasites feeding on human hosts, paranormal cults worshipping demonic entities, vengeful teenage sorcerers, we've got it all.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDid I mention the possessed toy? It's a plastic football-sized egg that's supposed to hatch an adorable, colorful stuffed bird when a child \"feeds\" it through a synchronized smartphone app. What's actually inside is an otherworldly monstrosity that's enticing impressionable wayward youth into murdering folks and depositing their body parts inside the egg as if it's a hungry piggy bank to trigger the end of the world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat's where Dave, John, and Amy come in. They face supernatural threats so the rest of us don't have to--and sometimes even earn a couple of bucks to so do. But between the bloody ritual sacrifices and soul-crushing nightmares, our trio realizes this apocalypse is way above their pay grade.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"St. Martin's Griffin","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":66790170755376,"sku":"9781250195838","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0936\/4930\/5904\/files\/if-this-book-exsists-youre-in-the-wrong-universe-jason-pargin-cover.jpg?v=1784950586"},{"product_id":"bunny-mona-awad","title":"Bunny","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e\"We were just these innocent girls in the night trying to make something beautiful. We nearly died. We very nearly did, didn't we?\"\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSamantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other \"Bunny,\" and seem to move and speak as one.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled \"Smut Salon,\" and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. The edges of reality begin to blur as Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies' sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus \"Workshop\" where they conjure their monstrous creations. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe spellbinding new novel from one of our most fearless chroniclers of the female experience, \u003ci\u003eBunny \u003c\/i\u003eis a down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, and the fantastic and terrible power of the imagination.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Penguin Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":66870448816432,"sku":"9780525559757","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0936\/4930\/5904\/files\/bunny-mona-awad-cover.jpg?v=1788969480"},{"product_id":"dead-but-dreaming-of-electric-sheep-paul-tremblay","title":"Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Paul Tremblay is on fire. . . .As entertaining and pop-culture savvy as this novel can be, it's emotionally wrenching and truly scary.\"\u003cbr\u003e--Ed Park, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist \u003ci\u003eSame Bed, Different Dreams\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eAn Oral History of Atlantis\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePhilip K. 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But he's not \u003ci\u003edead\u003c\/i\u003e dead.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMeet a middle-aged man who wakes within a disorienting hellscape filled with monstrous grotesqueries. Worse than the fluid, morphing reality in which he's trapped, he has no memory of who he is. He certainly doesn't remember getting the rabbit tattoo on his arm. He only knows that he must find a certain person. Who? He can't remember.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUsing a cell phone modeled after a video game controller, Julia fumblingly navigates the man she calls \"Bernie\" from the company campus and onto planes and through one of the largest airports in America. All the while, the man endures an ever-changing and worsening nightmare that offers clues as to who he was--and who he must track down. And as their two lives intertwine, Julia and Bernie become unlikely allies and fugitives on a collision course with reality.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eDead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep\u003c\/i\u003e is a heady, horrific genre-bender from one of the most groundbreaking voices in fiction today.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"William Morrow \u0026 Company","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67417675563312,"sku":"9780063398467","price":30.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0936\/4930\/5904\/files\/dead-but-dreaming-of-electric-sheep-paul-tremblay-cover.jpg?v=1787663468"},{"product_id":"remarkably-bright-creatures-shelby-van-pelt","title":"Remarkably Bright Creatures","description":"\u003cp\u003eAfter Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she's been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn't dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors--until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEver the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova's son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it's too late.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShelby Van Pelt's debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ecco Press","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":67456762183984,"sku":"9780063204157","price":29.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":67456762216752,"sku":"9780063204164","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0936\/4930\/5904\/files\/remarkably-bright-creatures-shelby-van-pelt-cover-hardcover.jpg?v=1787663469"},{"product_id":"a-series-of-unfortunate-events-the-bad-beginning","title":"A Series of Unfortunate Events #1: The Bad Beginning","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIn this limited-run deluxe edition, \u003cem\u003eThe Bad Beginning\u003c\/em\u003e will receive a luxurious soft touch cover with gold foil stamping, full-color digital edges and endpapers, and bonus content written by the elusive Lemony Snicket and illustrated by his esteemed associate, Mr. Brett Helquist.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eImagine, if you will, a series of tales so terrible that over 50 million innocent minds have been ruined by them--stories so indelibly horrid that the world has remained rapt for more than a quarter of a disturbed century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNow visualize this scourge on society being suddenly available in a shameful new edition so sensational, so irresistible, so spectacular that Snicket fans and schadenfreude enjoyers from all walks of life will fiend to get their grubby hands upon its newly gilded cover.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLock your doors and hide your little ones, for this is no mere fancy. The reviled Lemony Snicket's \u003cem\u003eThe Bad Beginning\u003c\/em\u003e--book the first in the Series of Unfortunate Events--may only be available in this wretched yet ravishing edition for a limited time. But Count Olaf has been known to do more harm in the blink of an eye . . . so heed this warning!\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"HarperCollins","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67548917006640,"sku":"9780063437531","price":18.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0936\/4930\/5904\/files\/series-of-unfortunate-events-bad-beginnings-deluxe-cover.jpg?v=1787866105"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0936\/4930\/5904\/collections\/series-of-unfortunate-events-bad-beginnings-deluxe-cover.jpg?v=1788392820","url":"https:\/\/www.storiesofwonder.com\/collections\/dark-humor.oembed","provider":"Stories of Wonder, LLC","version":"1.0","type":"link"}