Bøger af Robert Rodi

Robert Rodi's follow-up to THE SUGARMAN BOOTLEGS once again finds him mixing lethal social satire and nail-biting suspense, in the classic Alfred Hitchcock tradition. When financial collapse hits Marcus Hyde - a fussy, high-end art dealer - he's forced to give up his spacious apartment and move in with his sister Pamela, who's large, slovenly - and titanically pregnant. But there's even worse in store for Marcus when Baby is born. He's never seen anything more horrifying than this scarlet, steaming, shrieking lump of raw greed and unchecked will, with yellow eyes and fingernails like teeth. And when things start happening - terrible things; deadly things - Marcus alone understands why. And Marcus alone realizes that for his own safety and sanity ... Baby must go. A wry, wicked tale of psychological (and biological) horror, BABY is endlessly addictive - a postmillennial mash-up of "Rosemary's Baby" and "Psycho." Hommages à Alfred is a series of novels inspired by the films of Alfred Hitchcock, incorporating mystery, menace, murder, and mordant wit.

Avery Overman has a very high temperature. In fact, his mom says he's "burning up" and makes him stay in bed in the middle of the day. Avery doesn't like being treated like a baby, but he has to admit he isn't feeling very good; he's dizzy and he's sweating a lot. When he accidentally falls out of his covers, he notices how much nicer it looks under the bed: darker, quieter, and cooler. So he shimmies beneath the box spring...and discovers that Underbed is actually a bigger place than he ever imagined-a strange world filled with cattle rustlers and mobsters and robots and alligators, and a slippery menace called Copperhead who seems to be after Avery himself. His only hope of survival is a charming but mysterious protector who is never quite what he seems to be. Wickedly funny, fast-paced and suspenseful, Avery Overman's Adventures In Underbed is a 21st-century descendant of Alice In Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz, with more crazy changes of scene than you can get from flipping TV channels. It's a wild ride through sheer imagination, with an ending that warms the heart.

Rodi's relentlessly acid satire of modern celebrity was a cult hit in 2002. Told entirely in the form of emails, interview transcripts, magazine articles, TV scripts, even Christmas cards, it's now back in print-and timelier (and funnier) than ever. Viola Chute, a seethingly ambitious actress who's graduated from Grade Z movies to network TV superstardom, hires failed novelist E. Manfred Harry to ghostwrite her (largely fictionalized) memoirs. Harry finds himself immersed in Viola's world of parties, planes, and paparazzi. But when he gets too close to discovering a real secret in her past, she fires him-and he continues his investigation with the help of her greatest rival. Two burning questions: Can he discover what she's hiding before she torpedoes her own career? And what scandal is even possible at the turn of the millennium? Adultery, illegitimate children, a sex change, even a criminal record-all are things a celebrity might boast about. The answer, when he finds it, blows even Harry's jaded mind. "The publisher should print a warning on this one: 'DANGER: Reading this book in designated quiet spaces risks rousing the wrath of others with chuckles, giggles, belly laughs, and outright guffaws.'" - Kirkus

When two friends discover old video footage of an unknown saloon singer, they try to pass it off as bootlegs of a long-lost cabaret legend. But their prank backfires when the viral sensation takes on a vivid - and lethal - life of its own...and as its fame increases, so does the body count. Scaldingly funny, brutally unsentimental, nerve-shreddingly suspenseful - and featuring a mid-story switcheroo on par with Hitchcock's "Psycho" - THE SUGARMAN BOOTLEGS reads like the bastard child of "All About Eve" and "Frankenstein." It's a highly addictive cross-cultural mash-up as only Robert Rodi (FAG HAG, BABY) could do it. Hommages à Alfred is a series of novels inspired by the films of Alfred Hitchcock, incorporating mystery, menace, murder, and mordant wit.

Long out of print, Rodi's 1996 comedy of manners returns to revel anew in the high-stakes (and even higher-hilarity) world of sexual companionship to the rich and famous. Dennis Racine is the beautiful, pampered boy-toy of the powerful Chicago theater impresario, Farleigh Nock-and has been since he was fifteen. Now, however, he's thirty-one, and suddenly aware that his situation may have a shelf life. When Farleigh begins to withdraw his favor-to the point of insisting Dennis help pay for his keep by (gasp) getting a job-Dennis suspects he has a newer, younger rival somewhere. And when he discovers who-and more importantly, why-Dennis finally learns he does have ambition, as he undertakes an all-out campaign to preserve his privileged lifestyle. Ranging from on-the-job slapstick to transatlantic intrigue, Kept Boy is Robert Rodi at his uproarious, subversive, unforgettable best.

A wildly irreverent satire of gender identity and family dynamics, Rodi's 1995 novel has been long out-of-print; now it returns, its NSFW hilarity as timely as ever - if not timelier. Mitchell Sayer, a buttoned-down gay attorney at a prestigious Chicago law firm, discovers he has a long-lost twin. But his well-ordered life comes apart at the seams when the separated siblings finally meet, and Mitchell discovers his brother Donald is better known as Kitten Kaboodle, star of the city's most infamous drag revue. Plunged into a chaotic world where he's forced to confront his own fluid masculinity, Mitchell learns that appearances aren't just deceiving - they're even more disturbingly revealing. Building to a riotous climax in which identities blur and destinies go bust, all to the accompaniment of a cabaret pianist, Drag Queen is a rip-snorting romp through wigs and wardrobes, wit and wantonness. "A plateful of giddy meringue from the undisputed doyen of the effervescent gay novel of manners." - Kirkus

At 53, Jack Ackerly is sitting on top of the world. Thanks to a lifetime of hard work and strategic business deals, he's rich, retired, and set for life. Only trouble is... he can't help regretting the wild oats he never sowed. At 26, Corey Szaslow has been living the life of Jack Ackerly's fantasies: a never-ending round of bars, parties, and one-night-stands. Only trouble is.. he can't help regretting the dead-end future that's ahead of him. If only Jack and Corey could trade places! Enter a brilliant (if rather dithering) witch named Francesca, who helpfully places Jack's mind in Corey's body, and Corey's in Jacks-and each considers his problems solved. But they soon discover that inhabiting each other's bodies is a hell of a lot easier than living each other's lives. Uproariously funny, unexpectedly moving, and uncannily insightful about the arc of a gay man's life, When You Were Me was the culmination of Robert Rodi's exploration of gay archetypes when it was first published in 2007. It's finally back in print... and like Jack and Corey, enjoying a whole new life of its own.

An immediate cult sensation when it was first released in 1992, Fag Hag gave birth to a genre that later reached mainstream popularity in "Will and Grace." Long out of print, the novel finally returns to shock and delight a whole new generation. Natalie Stathis is a big, flamboyant girl with a big, obsessive crush on a gorgeous gay artist, Peter Leland. She's managed to become his best friend and constant companion, and gleefully uses her influence over him to poison every one of his budding romances-on the principle that when he's run through all the men in town, it'll finally be her turn. But when Peter finds true love in the unlikely arms of Lloyd Hood-a taciturn, gun-toting survivalist-none of Natalie's usual plots and stratagems can separate them. She's forced to throw caution to the wind and discretion out the door, and begin a campaign to win back her man that is actively, even dangerously, criminal. Brazenly irreverent, hilariously caustic, and grippingly suspenseful, Fag Hag is a novel you won't easily forget."Absorbing and powerful...Larger-than-life...A one-two punch of outrageous humor and sobering pathos...Succeeds admirably both as satire and as flat-out entertainment." - New York Native

As a teenager, Jane Austen wrote "Edgar and Emma"-a withering satire on sentimental novels running four uproarious pages. Now Robert Rodi has taken the brief text of this early story and expanded it into a full-length novel in the mature Austen style. Here you'll find all the hallmarks of Austen's immortal masterworks: a witty heroine, a hesitant hero, a romantic rival, a charismatic cad, several indefatigable talkers, a shattering crisis, shocking secrets revealed, and moments of the highest hilarity. You'll also find some character types new to the extended Austensphere, including a firebrand preacher, a pair of ardent dog lovers, and a sardonic Oxford don. It's a brilliantly witty homage to a beloved novelist's oeuvre, by the acclaimed author of "Bitch In a Bonnet: Reclaiming Jane Austen from the Stiff, the Simps, the Snobs and the Saps."

Novelist Rodi (Fag Hag, The Sugarman Bootlegs) continues his broadside against the depiction of Jane Austen as a "a woman's writer ... quaint and darling, doe-eyed and demure, parochial if not pastoral, and dizzily, swooningly romantic - the inventor and mother goddess of 'chick lit.'" Instead he sees her as "a sly subversive, a clear-eyed social Darwinist, and the most unsparing satirist of her century." In this volume, which collects and amplifies three years' worth of blog entries, he combs through the final three novels in Austen's canon - Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion - with the aim of charting her growth as both a novelist and a humorist, and of shattering the notion that she's a romantic of any kind. "Hiarious ... Rodi's title is a tribute. He's angry that the Austen craze has defanged a novelist who's 'wicked, arch, and utterly merciless. She skewers the pompous, the pious, and the libidinous with the animal glee of a natural-born sadist' ... Like Rodi, I believe Austen deserves to join the grand pantheon of gadflies: Voltaire and Swift, Twain and Mencken." - Lev Raphael, The Huffington Post

The riotous follow-up to Rodi's cult hit Fag Hag, Closet Case turned the genre of the gay coming-out story inside-out and upside-down. Long out of print, this 1993 comic tour de force now returns to delight and enlighten a whole new generation. Lionel Frank is a workaholic account executive at an upscale advertising agency, in charge of the über-masculine All-Pro Power Tools account. But Lionel has a secret life-one spent huddled in his car, dialing phone-sex numbers like 1-800-BOY-TOYZ, or lurking in the shadows of gay strip clubs with his flamboyant hairdresser friend, Toné. When continued professional success forces a choice between his two lives, Lionel decides to bury his sexuality forever...a task easier said than done. His increasingly calamitous cover-ups finally reach critical mass at a client's retreat on a Wisconsin lake, where Lionel-who's always said he'd rather die than come out-finds himself facing a situation where the choice is exactly that. "A joyride of a book...infectious...hard to put down." - Boston Phoenix "Utterly hilarious...You'll experience anew what it's like to laugh with a book." - NewCity Chicago

Robert Rodi (Edgar and Emma, Bitch in a Bonnet) returns to Jane Austen's juvenilia, adapting yet another of her rollicking teenage farces into a full-length novel in the mature Austen style!The small village of Rovedon, Hertfordshire has a marriage problem: it's home to three eligible brides, but only two available bachelors. And both of these young swains are courting Amelia Webster - the richest, proudest, and most advantageously connected of the three ladies. The love lives of all involved depend on which suitor Amelia accepts - and which one she rejects.Enter a dashing newcomer: a roguish charmer named Henry Beverley, who upsets the fragile romantic equilibrium and makes a serious dent in Amelia's iron-clad self-confidence. It's only the first in a series of upheavals that reaches a crescendo of cringe-inducing humiliation. Will Amelia rise again? And who will want her, if she does? Filled with dazzling wit, sparkling dialogue, over-the-top characters, and wickedly funny set pieces, AMELIA WEBSTER is the perfect fusion of Jane Austen's youthful zaniness, the mature Austen's social satire, and the comic mastery of Robert Rodi.

When the Fell Mists, which have shrouded the borders of Valhalla for time immemorial, rise to expose other Mythlands beyond his own, Sigurd and his brethren Balduur, Honir, and Heimdall revel in the knowledge that they may once again ride abroad into unknown lands, lending arms to those in need.