Christopher Buckley
All Books By Christopher Buckley
Boomsday
- By: Christopher Buckley
- Narrator: Janeane Garofalo
- Length: 10 hours 20 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: April 02, 2007
- Language: English
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3.72(8837 ratings)
But Enough About You
- By: Christopher Buckley
- Narrator: Bob Walter
- Length: 16 hours 28 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2014
- Language: English
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3.64(286 ratings)
An extraordinary wide-ranging collection of essays with “distinctive wordplay and quirky opinions…Christopher Buckley is good company whether you’re looking for two quick pages and a smile, or want to linger” (The New York Times Book Review).
Christopher Buckley, like his terrific volume But Enough About You, contains multitudes. Tackling subjects ranging from “How to Teach Your Four-Year-Old to Ski” to “A Short History of the Bug Zapper,” and “The Art of Sacking” to literary friendships with Joseph Heller and Christopher Hitchens, he is at once a humorous storyteller, astute cultural critic, adventurous traveler, and irreverent historian.
Reading these essays is the equivalent of being in the company of a tremendously witty and enlightening companion. Praised as “both deeply informed and deeply funny” by The Wall Street Journal, Buckley will have you laughing and reflecting in equal measure. This is a rare combination of big ideas and truly fun writing.
Florence of Arabia
- By: Christopher Buckley
- Narrator: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 8 hours 49 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2004
- Language: English
The bestselling author who made mincemeat of political correctness in Thank You for Smoking, conspiracy theories in Little Green Men, and Presidential indiscretions No Way to Treat a First Lady now takes on the hottest topic in the entire world–Arab-American relations–in a blistering comic novel sure to offend the few it doesn’t delight.
Appalled by the punishment of her rebellious friend Nazrah, youngest and most petulant wife of Prince Bawad of Wasabia, Florence Farfarletti decides to draw a line in the sand. As Deputy to the deputy assistant secretary for Near East Affairs, Florence invents a far-reaching, wide-ranging plan for female emancipation in that part of the world.
The U.S. government, of course, tells her to forget it. Publicly, that is. Privately, she’s enlisted in a top-secret mission to impose equal rights for the sexes on the small emirate of Matar (pronounced “Mutter”), the “Switzerland of the Persian Gulf.” Her crack team: a CIA killer, a snappy PR man, and a brilliant but frustrated gay bureaucrat. Her weapon: TV shows.
The lineup on TV Matar includes A Thousand and One Mornings, a daytime talk show that features self-defense tips to be used against boyfriends during Ramadan; an addictive soap opera featuring strangely familiar members of the Matar royal family; and a sitcom about an inept but ruthless squad of religious police, pitched as “Friends from Hell.”
The result: the first deadly car bombs in the country since 1936, a fatwa against the station’s entire staff, a struggle for control of the kingdom, and, of course, interference from the French. And that’s only the beginning.
A merciless dismantling of both American ineptitude and Arabic intolerance, Florence of Arabia is Christopher Buckley’s funniest and most serious novel yet, a biting satire of how U.S. good intentions can cause the Shiite to hit the fan.
... Read moreFlorence of Arabia
- By: Christopher Buckley
- Narrator: Patricia Kalember
- Length: 5 hours 36 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2004
- Language: English
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3.63(2659 ratings)
The bestselling author who made mincemeat of political correctness in Thank You for Smoking, conspiracy theories in Little Green Men, and Presidential indiscretions No Way to Treat a First Lady now takes on the hottest topic in the entire world–Arab-American relations–in a blistering comic novel sure to offend the few it doesn’t delight.
Appalled by the punishment of her rebellious friend Nazrah, youngest and most petulant wife of Prince Bawad of Wasabia, Florence Farfarletti decides to draw a line in the sand. As Deputy to the deputy assistant secretary for Near East Affairs, Florence invents a far-reaching, wide-ranging plan for female emancipation in that part of the world.
The U.S. government, of course, tells her to forget it. Publicly, that is. Privately, she’s enlisted in a top-secret mission to impose equal rights for the sexes on the small emirate of Matar (pronounced “Mutter”), the “Switzerland of the Persian Gulf.” Her crack team: a CIA killer, a snappy PR man, and a brilliant but frustrated gay bureaucrat. Her weapon: TV shows.
The lineup on TV Matar includes A Thousand and One Mornings, a daytime talk show that features self-defense tips to be used against boyfriends during Ramadan; an addictive soap opera featuring strangely familiar members of the Matar royal family; and a sitcom about an inept but ruthless squad of religious police, pitched as “Friends from Hell.”
The result: the first deadly car bombs in the country since 1936, a fatwa against the station’s entire staff, a struggle for control of the kingdom, and, of course, interference from the French. And that’s only the beginning.
A merciless dismantling of both American ineptitude and Arabic intolerance, Florence of Arabia is Christopher Buckley’s funniest and most serious novel yet, a biting satire of how U.S. good intentions can cause the Shiite to hit the fan.
... Read moreHas Anyone Seen My Toes?
- By: Christopher Buckley
- Narrator: Gibson Frazier
- Length: 8 hours 34 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
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3.44(247 ratings)
From the bestselling author of Thank You for Smoking and Make Russia Great Again comes a comic tour de force, the story of one man’s spiraling journey through lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic.
During the pandemic, an aging screenwriter is holed up in a coastal South Carolina town with his beloved second wife, Peaches. He’s been binge-eating for a year and developed a notable rapport with the local fast-food chain Hippo King. He struggles to work–on a ludicrous screenplay about a Nazi attempt to kidnap FDR and, naturally, an article for Etymology Today on English words of Carthaginian origin. He’s told Peaches so often about the origins of the world mayonnaise that she’s developed an aversion to using the condiment. He thinks he has Covid. His wife thinks he is losing his mind. In short, your typical pandemic worries. Things were going from bad to worse even before his doctor suggested a battery of brain tests. He knows what that means: dementia!
But even in these scary times, there are plenty of things to distract him. His iPhone is fat-shaming him. He’s been trying to read Proust and thinks the French novelist missed his true calling as a parfumier. And he’s discovered nefarious Russian influence on the local coroner’s race. Why is Putin so keen to control who decides who died peacefully and who by foul play in Pimento County? Could it be the local military base?
Has Anyone Seen My Toes? is a hilarious romp through a time that has been anything but funny.
Little Green Men
- By: Christopher Buckley
- Narrator: Mark Linn-Baker
- Length: 6 hours 26 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2000
- Language: English
In 1994, Christopher Buckley published one of the most acclaimed and successful comic novels of the decade, Thank You for Smoking. Now Buckley returns to the strange land of Washington, D.C., in Little Green Men, a millennial comedy of manners about aliens and pundits . . . and how much they have in common.
The reluctant hero of this hilarious novel is John Oliver Banion, a stuffy Washington talk-show host, whose privileged life is thrown into upheaval when aliens abduct him from his exclusive country-club golf course.
But were his gray-skinned captors aliens . . . or something far more sinister? After Banion is abducted again–this time in Palm Springs–he believes he has been chosen by the extraterrestrials to champion the most important cause of the millennium, and he embarks on a crusade, appearing before a convention of UFO believers and demanding that Congress and the White House seriously investigate UFOs. His friends and family suspect that Banion is having some kind of manic-depressive midlife crisis and urge him to seek therapy before his credibility as a pillar of the punditocracy is ruined.
So John Oliver Banion must choose: keep his establishment status or become the leader of millions of impassioned and somewhat scruffy new friends who want to expose the government’s secret alien agenda.
Little Green Men proves once and for all that the truth is out there. Way out there. And it reaffirms Christopher Buckley’s status as the funniest humanoid writer in the universe.
Coming soon from Christopher Buckley: One of Our Whales Is Missing
... Read moreLosing Mum and Pup
- By: Christopher Buckley
- Narrator: Christopher Buckley
- Length: 6 hours 21 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: May 06, 2009
- Language: English
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3.83(2604 ratings)
As Buckley tells the story of their final year together, he takes readers on a surprisingly entertaining tour through hospitals, funeral homes, and memorial services, capturing the heartbreaking and disorienting feeling of becoming a 55-year-old orphan. Buckley maintains his sense of humor by recalling the words of Oscar Wilde: “To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness.”
Just as Calvin Trillin and Joan Didion gave readers solace and insight into the experience of losing a spouse, Christopher Buckley offers consolation, wit, and warmth to those coping with the death of a parent, while telling a unique personal story of life with legends.
Make Russia Great Again
- By: Christopher Buckley
- Narrator: Gibson Frazier
- Length: 8 hours 25 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2020
- Language: English
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3.69(1624 ratings)
In “the Trump satire we’ve been waiting for” (The Washington Post), award-winning and bestselling author of Thank You for Smoking delivers a hilarious and whipsmart fake memoir by Herb Nutterman–Donald Trump’s seventh chief of staff–who has written the ultimate tell-all about Trump and Russia.
Herb Nutterman never intended to become Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff. Herb served the Trump Organization for twenty-seven years, holding jobs in everything from a food and beverage manager at the Trump Magnifica to being the first general manager of the Trump Bloody Run Golf Course. And when his old boss asks “his favorite Jew” to take on the daunting role of chief of staff, Herb, spurred on by loyalty agrees.
But being the chief of staff is a lot different from being a former hospitality expert. Soon, Herb finds himself deeply involved in Russian intrigue, deflecting rumors about Mike Pence’s high school involvement in a Satanic cult, and leading President Trump’s reelection campaign.
What Nutterman experiences is outrageous, outlandish, and otherwise unbelievable–therefore making it a deadly accurate account of being the chief of staff during the Trump administration. With hilarious jabs at the biggest world leaders and Washington politics overall, Make Russia Great Again is a timely political satire from “one of the funniest writers in the English language” (Tom Wolfe).
No Way to Treat a First Lady
- By: Christopher Buckley
- Narrator: Tim Matheson
- Length: 6 hours 15 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2002
- Language: English
Christopher Buckley, the bestselling author of the comic classics The White House Mess and Thank You for Smoking, returns to the funniest place in America: Washington, D.C.
Elizabeth Tyler MacMann, the First Lady of the United States, has been charged with killing her philandering husband, the President of the United States. In the midst of a bedroom spat, she allegedly hurled a historic Paul Revere spittoon at him, with tragic results. The attorney general has no choice but to put the First Lady on trial for assassination.
The media has never warmed to Beth MacMann (her nickname in the tabloids is “Lady Bethmac”), and as America girds for a scandalous, sensational trial, Beth reaches out to the only defense attorney she trusts, Boyce “Shameless” Baylor, who charges $1,000 an hour and has represented a Who’s Who of scoundrels: murderous running backs, society wife-killers, Los Alamos spies, and national-security sellouts.
Why Boyce Baylor? Because Beth loved him once, when they were law students. Boyce wanted to marry her, but Beth chose the future President instead. Now, after all these years, Boyce has a second chance. To what lengths will a shameless lawyer go to win the Trial of the Millennium and regain the love of his life?
Buckley has been described by the Los Angeles Times Book Review as “one of the best and surest political humorists in America” and by Entertainment Weekly as “a superb writer of politically incorrect satire.” No Way to Treat a First Lady is flat-out hilarious. And furthermore, it’s a love story for our time.
... Read moreSupreme Courtship
- By: Christopher Buckley
- Narrator: Anne Heche
- Length: 8 hours 38 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: September 03, 2008
- Language: English
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3.67(4078 ratings)
Will Pepper, a straight-talking Texan, survive a confirmation battle in the Senate? Will becoming one of the most powerful women in the world ruin her love life? And even if she can make it to the Supreme Court, how will she get along with her eight highly skeptical colleagues, including a floundering Chief Justice who, after legalizing gay marriage, learns that his wife has left him for another woman.
Soon, Pepper finds herself in the middle of a constitutional crisis, a presidential reelection campaign that the president is determined to lose, and oral arguments of a romantic nature. Supreme Courtship is another classic Christopher Buckley comedy about the Washington institutions most deserving of ridicule.
The Judge Hunter
- By: Christopher Buckley
- Narrator: James Langton
- Length: 9 hours 44 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2018
- Language: English
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3.83(988 ratings)
The latest comic novel from Christopher Buckley, in which a hapless Englishman embarks on a dangerous mission to the New World in pursuit of two judges who helped murder a king.
London, 1664. Twenty years after the English revolution, the monarchy has been restored and Charles II sits on the throne. The men who conspired to kill his father are either dead or disappeared. Baltasar “Balty” St. Michel is twenty-four and has no skills and no employment. He gets by on handouts from his brother-in-law Samuel Pepys, an officer in the king’s navy.
Fed up with his needy relative, Pepys offers Balty a job in the New World. He is to track down two missing judges who were responsible for the execution of the last king, Charles I. When Balty’s ship arrives in Boston, he finds a strange country filled with fundamentalist Puritans, saintly Quakers, warring tribes of Indians, and rogues of every stripe. Helped by a man named Huncks, an agent of the Crown with a mysterious past, Balty travels colonial America in search of the missing judges. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Samuel Pepys prepares for a war with the Dutch that fears England has no chance of winning.
Christopher Buckley’s enchanting new novel spins adventure, comedy, political intrigue, and romance against a historical backdrop with real-life characters like Charles II, John Winthrop, and Peter Stuyvesant. Buckley’s wit is as sharp as ever as he takes readers to seventeenth-century London and New England. We visit the bawdy court of Charles II, Boston under the strict Puritan rule, and New Amsterdam back when Manhattan was a half-wild outpost on the edge of an unmapped continent. The Judge Hunter is a smart and swiftly plotted novel that transports readers to a new world.
The Relic Master
- By: Christopher Buckley
- Narrator: James Langton
- Length: 10 hours 56 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2015
- Language: English
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3.75(3972 ratings)
Christopher Buckley’s “hilarious, bawdy, and irreverent frolic of a tale” about a sixteenth-century relic hunter and the artist Albrecht Durer who conspire to fabricate Christ’s burial shroud reads “like Indiana Jones gone medieval” (USA TODAY).
The year is 1517. Dismas is a relic hunter who procures “authentic” religious relics for wealthy and influential clients. His two most important patrons are Frederick the Wise and soon-to-be Cardinal Albrecht of Mainz. While Frederick is drawn to the recent writing of Martin Luther, Albrecht pursues the financial and political benefits of religion and seeks to buy a cardinalship through the selling of indulgences. When Albrecht’s demands for grander relics increase, Dismas and his artist friend Durer fabricate a shroud to sell to the unsuspecting noble. Unfortunately Durer’s reckless pride exposes the trickery, so Albrecht puts Dismas and Durer in the custody of four mercenaries and sends them all to steal Christ’s burial cloth (the Shroud of Chambery), Europe’s most celebrated artifact. On their journey to Savoy where the Shroud will be displayed, they battle a lustful count and are joined by a beautiful female apothecary. It is only when they reach their destination they realize they are not alone in their intentions to acquire a relic of dubious legitimacy.
“A rollicking good time, Christopher Buckley has transported his signature wit and irreverence from the Beltway to sixteenth-century Europe in The Relic Master” (GQ). This epic quest, “as rascally and convivial as any that Mr. Buckley has written” (The Wall Street Journal), is filled with fascinating details about art, religion, politics, and science; Vatican intrigue; and Buckley’s signature wit “holds the reader till the very last page” (The New York Times Book Review).
They Eat Puppies, Don’t They?
- By: Christopher Buckley
- Narrator: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 10 hours 46 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: May 08, 2012
- Language: English
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3.46(2045 ratings)
In an attempt to gain congressional approval for a top-secret weapons system, Washington lobbyist “Bird” McIntyre teams up with sexy, outspoken neocon Angel Templeton to pit the American public against the Chinese. When Bird fails to uncover an authentic reason to slander the nation, he and Angel put the Washington media machine to work, spreading a rumor that the Chinese secret service is working to assassinate the Dalai Lama.
Meanwhile in China, mild-mannered President Fa Mengyao and his devoted aide Gang are maneuvering desperately against sinister party hard-liners Minister Lo and General Han. Now Fa and Gang must convince the world that the People’s Republic is not out to kill the Dalai Lama, while maintaining Fa’s small margin of power in the increasingly militaristic environment of the party.
On the home front, Bird must contend with a high-strung wife who entertains Olympic equestrian ambition, and the qualifying competition happens to be taking place in China. As things unravel abroad, Bird and Angel’s lie comes dangerously close to reality. And as their relationship rises to a new level, so do mounting tensions between the United States and China.
... Read more