W101 Uses for a Dead Cat, by Simon Bond (1947—2011), was a bestselling collection of macabre cartoons. The book was promoted with the tag line, "Since time immemorial mankind has been plagued by the question, 'What do you do with a dead cat?'" It consisted of cartoons depicting the bodies of dead cats being used for various purposes, including anchoring boats, sharpening pencils and holding bottles of wine.
WThe Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a first-person narrative novel by Sherman Alexie, from the perspective of a Native American teenager, Arnold Spirit Jr., also known as "Junior", a 14-year-old promising cartoonist. The book is about Junior's life on the Spokane Indian Reservation and his decision to go to an all-white public high school off of the reservation. The graphic novel includes 65 comic illustrations that help further the plot.
WAll My Friends Are Dead is an illustrated dark comedy book published by Chronicle Books in 2010. It was written by Avery Monsen and Jory John and illustrated by Avery Monsen.
WAn American Demon: A Memoir is a 2011 novel/memoir by Jack Grisham that mixes a detailed account of the author's life until the end of the 1980s with bits of philosophical fiction. The book deals with themes of religion, substance abuse, recovery programs, depression, child abuse, family relationships, punk rock, surfing, and cross dressing.
WBefore She Met Me is a novel by English writer Julian Barnes, first published in 1982 by Jonathan Cape. It is a black comedy which scrutinizes the awakening of sexual jealousy in a dull and otherwise sensible college lecturer.
WThe Book of Bunny Suicides: Little Fluffy Rabbits Who Just Don't Want to Live Any More (2003) is a bestselling collection of mostly one-image black comedy cartoons drawn by author Andy Riley.
WA Boy Born from Mold and Other Delectable Morsels is the second book of children’s short stories by Lorin Morgan-Richards. Originally published in 2010, Richards's book of gloomy tales pokes fun at the absurdities of life.
WThe Broom of the System is the first novel by the American writer David Foster Wallace, published in 1987.
WThe Cat is a novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon, released in 1967.
WCatch-22 is a satirical war novel by American author Joseph Heller. He began writing it in 1953; the novel was first published in 1961. Often cited as one of the most significant novels of the twentieth century, it uses a distinctive non-chronological third-person omniscient narration, describing events from the points of view of different characters. The separate storylines are out of sequence so the timeline develops along with the plot.
WCity of Thieves is a 2008 historical fiction novel by David Benioff. It is, in part, a coming of age story set in the World War II Siege of Leningrad. It follows the adventures of two youths as they desperately search for a dozen eggs at the behest of a Soviet NKVD officer, a task which takes them far behind enemy lines.
WCreepy Susie and 13 Other Tragic Tales for Troubled Children is a 1999 collection of illustrated short stories written by Angus Oblong. The stories mostly feature children and adolescents, although one story is about a dog. Several of the characters were eventually adapted for use in the animated television series The Oblongs. Contrary to the title, children are not the book's target audience, as the book contains sexual situations, cannibalism and murder.
WThe Death of Bunny Munro is a 2009 novel written by Nick Cave, best known as the lead singer of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. It is his second and most recent novel, the first being And the Ass Saw the Angel, published in 1989.
WThe Devil's Dictionary is a satirical dictionary written by American Civil War soldier, journalist, and writer Ambrose Bierce consisting of common words followed by humorous and satirical definitions. The lexicon was written over three decades as a series of installments for magazines and newspapers. Bierce's witty definitions were imitated and plagiarized for years before he gathered them into books, first as The Cynic's Word Book in 1906 and then in a more complete version as The Devil's Dictionary in 1911.
WThe Dreaded Summons and Other Misplaced Bills, published on May 15, 2017, is the third collection of children’s short stories written by Lorin Morgan-Richards.
WDreaming of Babylon: A Private Eye Novel 1942 is Richard Brautigan's eighth novel and was published in 1977. It is a black comedy set in San Francisco in 1942. The central character, C. Card, is no Sam Spade, but actually does do detective work of a sort, when he's not off dreaming of Babylon.
WEvery Day is Mother's Day is the first novel by British author Hilary Mantel, published in 1985 by Chatto and Windus. It was inspired in part by Hilary Mantel's own experiences as a social work assistant at a geriatric hospital which involved visits to patients in the community and access to case notes, the loss of which play an important part of the novel.
WEvil Cats: When Fluffy Cats Get Mean (2009) is the second published work by author/illustrator Elia Anie. It is a collection of dark humor cartoons in the style of The Book of Bunny Suicides, The Far Side, and her first work, Evil Penguins.
WEvil Penguins: When Cute Penguins Go Bad (2008) is the first published work by author/illustrator Elia Anie. It is a collection of dark humor cartoons in the style of The Book of Bunny Suicides and The Far Side.
WFearsome Tales for Fiendish Kids is a 1996 children's fantasy horror book written by British author Jamie Rix. It is the third book in the Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids series. It was published by Hodder Children's Books and was the last in the series to be published before the cartoon adaptation, containing 16 short stories, one story more than the previous two books.
WThe Gashlycrumb Tinies: or, After the Outing is an abecedarian book written by Edward Gorey that was first published in 1963. Gorey tells the tale of 26 children and their untimely deaths in rhyming dactylic couplets, accompanied by the author's distinctive black-and-white illustrations. It is one of Edward Gorey's best-known books, and is the most notorious amongst his roughly half-dozen mock alphabets. It has been described as a "sarcastic rebellion against a view of childhood that is sunny, idyllic, and instructive". The morbid humor of the book comes in part from the mundane ways in which children die, such as falling down the stairs or choking on a peach. Far from illustrating the dramatic and fantastical childhood nightmares, these scenarios instead poke fun at the banal paranoias that come as a part of parenting.
WGhostly Tales for Ghastly Kids is a 1992 children's fantasy horror book of cautionary tales written by British author Jamie Rix and is the second book in the Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids series. It was published by André Deutsch and contains 15 short stories.
WGo the Fuck to Sleep is a black comedy book written by American author Adam Mansbach and illustrated by Ricardo Cortés. Described as a "children's book for adults", it reached No. 1 on Amazon.com's bestseller list a month before its release, thanks to an unintended viral marketing campaign during which booksellers forwarded PDF copies of the book by e-mail.
WGrizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids is the debut book by British author Jamie Rix and was the first book in the children's cautionary horror book series Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids. It was published on 17 May 1990 by André Deutsch Limited and contains 15 short cautionary tales. These stories featured a monster maths teacher, animal nannies, a barber that specialised in making rude children behave themselves, a giant that cannot stop growing, a magical hat, a magic book, magic scissors, and a sweet shop full of mannequins.
WHangover Square is a 1941 novel by English playwright and novelist Patrick Hamilton (1904–1962). Subtitled A tale of Darkest Earl's Court it is set in that area of London in 1939.
WAn Ice-Cream War (1982) is a darkly comic war novel by Scottish author William Boyd, which was nominated for a Booker Prize in the year of its publication. The title is derived from a quotation in a letter "Lt Col Stordy says that the war here will only last two months. It is far too hot for sustained fighting, he says, we will all melt like ice-cream in the sun!"
WInfinite Jest is a 1996 novel by American writer David Foster Wallace. The novel is widely noted for its unconventional narrative structure and its experimental use of endnotes.
WKill Your Boyfriend is the title of a comic book one-shot written by Grant Morrison and drawn by Philip Bond and D'Israeli for DC Comics Vertigo imprint in June 1995.
WKomm, süßer Tod is a 1998 novel by Austrian author Wolf Haas. It is named after a musical piece by Johann Sebastian Bach. It was picturised in 2000 as Komm, süßer Tod.
WLetters from the Earth is a posthumously published work of celebrated American author Mark Twain (1835–1910) collated by Bernard DeVoto. It comprises essays written during a difficult time in Twain's life (1904–09), when he was deeply in debt and had recently lost his wife and one of his daughters. The content concerns morality and religion and strikes a tone that is sarcastic, Twain's own term throughout the book. Initially, another of his daughters, Clara Clemens, objected to its publication in March 1939, probably because of its controversial and iconoclastic views on religion, claiming it presented a "distorted" view of her father. Henry Nash Smith helped change her position in 1960. Clara explained her change of heart in 1962 saying that "Mark Twain belonged to the world" and that public opinion had become more tolerant. She was also influenced to release the papers by her annoyance with Soviet reports that her father's ideas were being suppressed in the United States. The papers were selected, edited and sequenced for the book in 1939 by Bernard DeVoto.
WLife for Sale is a 1968 novel by Yukio Mishima. It was first serialised twenty-one times in the weekly magazine Weekly Playboy between 21 May 1968 and 8 October 1968. It was published in hardcover format by Shueisha on 25 December 1968. It was published in paperback by Chikuma Bunko on 24 February 1998. The novel was translated into English by Stephen Dodd and published in paperback format in the United Kingdom by Penguin Classics on 1 August 2019. The English translation received a wider release in paperback by Vintage International on 21 April 2020.
WLolita is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is notable for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, a middle-aged literature professor under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert, is obsessed with a 12-year-old girl, Dolores Haze, with whom he becomes sexually involved after he becomes her stepfather. "Lolita" is his private nickname for Dolores. The novel was originally written in English and first published in Paris in 1955 by Olympia Press. Later it was translated into Russian by Nabokov himself and published in New York City in 1967 by Phaedra Publishers.
WThe M*A*S*H book series includes the original novel that inspired the movie and then the TV series. The first, MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors, was co-authored by H. Richard Hornberger and W. C. Heinz ; it was published in 1968 under the pen name Richard Hooker. It told the story of a U.S. Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in Korea during the Korean War. In 1972, Hornberger published the sequel M*A*S*H Goes to Maine, covering the lives of the surgeons after they returned home from the war.
WThe Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories is a 1997 poetry book written and illustrated by film director Tim Burton. The poems, which are full of black humor, tell stories of hybrid kids, spontaneous transformers, and women who have babies to win over men.
WPortnoy's Complaint is a 1969 American novel by Philip Roth. Its success turned Roth into a major celebrity, sparking a storm of controversy over its explicit and candid treatment of sexuality, including detailed depictions of masturbation using various props including a piece of liver. The novel tells the humorous monologue of "a lust-ridden, mother-addicted young Jewish bachelor," who confesses to his psychoanalyst in "intimate, shameful detail, and coarse, abusive language." Many of its characteristics went on to become Roth trademarks.
WThe Sacred Art of Stealing is a satirical crime novel by the Scottish writer Christopher Brookmyre. It is the author's seventh book and is a stand-alone sequel to A Big Boy did it and Ran Away.
WA Series of Unfortunate Events is a series of thirteen novels written by American author Daniel Handler under the pen name Lemony Snicket. Although they are classified "children's novels", the books often have a dark and mysterious feeling to them. The books follow the turbulent lives of Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire. After their parents' death in a fire, the children are placed in the custody of a murderous relative, Count Olaf, who attempts to steal their inheritance and, later, orchestrates numerous disasters with the help of his accomplices as the children attempt to flee. As the plot progresses, the Baudelaires gradually confront further mysteries surrounding their family and deep conspiracies involving a secret society known as V.F.D., with connections to Olaf, their parents, and many other relatives. The series is narrated by Lemony Snicket, who dedicates each of his works to his deceased love interest, Beatrice, and often attempts to dissuade the reader from reading the Baudelaires' story.
WSimon Snootle and Other Small Stories (ISBN 0985044748) is the first book of children’s short stories by Lorin Morgan-Richards. Published in 2009, the stories are described as being strange, gently absurb, wry, and dark whimsy.
WSlaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death is a science fiction infused anti-war novel by Kurt Vonnegut, first published in 1969. It follows the life and experiences of Billy Pilgrim, from his early years to his time as an American soldier and chaplain's assistant during World War II, to the post-war years, with Billy occasionally traveling through time. The text centers on Billy's capture by the German Army and his survival of the Allied firebombing of Dresden as a prisoner of war, an experience which Vonnegut himself lived through as an American serviceman. The work has been called an example of "unmatched moral clarity" and "one of the most enduring antiwar novels of all time".
WThe Suicide Shop is a 2006 black comedy novel by the French writer Jean Teulé. It is set in a future near-apocalyptic city in a world suffering the ravages of severe climate change, where almost everybody is depressed. Symptomatic of this, the pivotal Tuvache family is named after a trio of celebrity suicides – patriarch "Mishima" Tuvache is meant to evoke Yukio Mishima, while their eldest son Vincent Tuvache is named after Vincent van Gogh and their daughter Marilyn Tuvache is meant to mirror Marilyn Monroe. Their younger son Alain is named after British mathematician and cryptographer Alan Turing, but proves to be the white sheep of the family.
WSummer at Mount Hope is a black comedy romantic novel, written by Australian author Rosalie Ham. Like Ham's debut novel The Dressmaker, it is also set in small rural community but in 1890s Australia. The novel centred on protagonist Phoeba Crupp and her struggle with money and male companionship.
WTampa is the debut novel by author Alissa Nutting, in which middle school teacher Celeste Price recounts her molestation of Jack Patrick, her fourteen-year-old student.
WThere Should be More Dancing is a black comedy novel, written by Australian author Rosalie Ham. It is Ham's third novel and focus on the process of aging, the mistakes of life and the vagaries of family. The novel revolves around Margery Blandon, a woman in her seventies and situations she finds herself due to her lifestyle and choices.
WThe Time: Night is a novella by Russian author Lyudmila Petrushevskaya. It was originally published in Russian in the literary journal Novy Mir in 1992 and translated into English by Sally Laird in 1994. In 1992 it was shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize.
WThe Tin-Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman (ISBN 0241113628) is a 1984 picture book, ostensibly for very young children, written and illustrated by Raymond Briggs and published by Hamish Hamilton. It satirises the Falklands War.
WTransmetropolitan is a cyberpunk transhumanist comic book series written by Warren Ellis and co-created and designed by Darick Robertson; it was published by the American company DC Comics in 1997–2002. The series was originally part of the short-lived DC Comics imprint Helix, but upon the end of the book's first year the series was moved to the Vertigo imprint after DC Comics shut down their Helix imprint. Transmetropolitan chronicles the battles of Spider Jerusalem, infamous renegade gonzo journalist of the future.
WThe Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. is Robert Coover's second novel, published in 1968.
WVacant Possession is the title of the second novel by British author Hilary Mantel, first published in 1986 by Chatto and Windus. It continues the story from her first novel Every Day is Mother's Day and is set some ten years later with the same cast of characters.
WVapor (1999) is the second novel by American writer Amanda Filipacchi. It was translated into French, Italian, Dutch, Russian, and Polish.
WThe Wimbledon Trilogy consists of three books written by Nigel Williams set in Wimbledon, London and published by Faber & Faber:
WThe Wrong Box is a black comedy novel co-written by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne, first published in 1889. The story is about two brothers who are the last two surviving members of a tontine.
WYouth in Revolt: The Journals of Nick Twisp is a 1993 epistolary novel by C. D. Payne. The story is told in a picaresque fashion and makes heavy use of black humor and camp. The book contains parts one through three of an eleven-part series.
WYummy Fur (1983–1994) was a comic book by Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown. It contained a number of different comics stories which dealt with a wide variety of subjects. Its often-controversial content led to one printer and one distributor refusing to handle it.
WZanesville is a science fiction novel written by Kris Saknussemm and published by Villard Books, an imprint of Random House in 2005.