If You Like Terry Pratchett
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams The Earth is going to be demolished to make way for a galactic freeway any moment. Just before that happens, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by a friend who is out of this world. The novel details their comic adventures as they hitch a ride to unknown destinations, encountering strange creatures along the way.. This is the first in the increasingly inappropriately named
Hitchhikers Trilogy.
The Eyre Affair by Jasper FfordeThursday Next is a literary detective on the trail of the villainous Acheron Hades who has been kidnapping characters from works of fiction and holding them for ransom. Jane Eyre has herself been plucked from the novel of the same name, and Thursday must find a way into the book to repair the damage. She also has to find time to halt the Crimean conflict, persuade a man to marry her, rescue her aunt from a Wordsworth poem and figure out who really wrote Shakespeare's plays.
American Gods by Neil GaimanShadow is a man with a past. But now he wants nothing more than to live a quiet life with his wife and stay out of trouble. Until he learns that she's been killed in a terrible accident. Flying home for the funeral, as a violent storm rocks the plane, a strange man in the seat next to him introduces himself. The man calls himself Mr. Wednesday, and he knows more about Shadow than is possible. He warns Shadow that a far bigger storm is coming. And from that moment on, nothing will ever be the same...
Gun, With Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem
Conrad Metcalf has problems. He has a monkey on his back, a rabbit in his waiting room, and a trigger-happy kangaroo on his tail. (Maybe evolution therapy is not such a good idea.). He's been shadowing Celeste, the wife of an affluent Oakland urologist. Maybe falling in love with her a little at the same time. When the doctor turns up dead, Metcalf finds himself caught in a crossfire between the boys from the Inquisitor's Office and gangsters who operate out of the back room of the Fickle Muse.
Gil’s All Fright Diner by A. Lee MartinezDuke and Earl are just passing through Rockwood county in their pick-up truck when they stop at the Diner for a quick bite to eat. They aren't planning to stick around-until Loretta, the eatery's owner, offers them $100 to take care of her zombie problem. Given that Duke is a werewolf and Earl's a vampire, this looks right up their alley. But the shambling dead are just the tip of a particularly spiky iceberg. Before Duke and Earl get to the bottom of the Diner's troubles, they'll run into such otherworldly complications as undead cattle, an amorous ghost, a jailbait sorceress, and the terrifying occult power of pig-latin. And maybe--just maybe--the End of the World, too.
Fluke: or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings by Christopher MooreJust why do humpback whales sing? That's the question that has marine behavioral biologist Nate Quinn and his crew poking, charting, recording, and photographing very big, wet, gray marine mammals. Until the extraordinary day when a whale lifts its tail into the air to display a cryptic message spelled out in foot-high letters: Bite me. Trouble is, no one else on his team saw a thing. But later, when a roll of film returns from the lab missing the crucial tail shot - and his research facility is trashed - Nate realizes something very fishy indeed is going on.
The Third Policeman: A Novel by Flann O’Brien
This is a comic novel about the nature of time, death, and existence. The novel follows the narrator, who has just committed a botched robbery and brutal murder, on his adventures in a twodimensional police station where, through the theories of a scientist/philosopher, he is introduced to "Atomic Theory" and its relation to bicycles, the existence of eternity (which turns out to be just down the road), and de Selby's view that the earth is not round but "sausage-shaped." With the help of his newly found soul named "Joe, " he grapples with the riddles and contradictions that three eccentric policeman present to him.
The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse by Robert Rankin
Once upon a time, Jack set out to seek his fortune in the big city. But he gets a bit lost and wanders off the map. When he finally arrives, the big city turns out to be Toy City - formerly Toy Town. It's grown considerably and is not at all jolly. There's a killer on the loose and all the old nursery rhyme characters, grown rich and fat on their royalties, are being slaughtered one by one. The police are getting nowhere and private eye Billie Winkie has mysteriously vanished. Only his sidekick Eddie Bear - a battered teddy with an identity crisis - is left to take care of business.
Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins
What if the Second Coming didn't quite come off as advertised? What if "the Corpse" on display in that funky roadside zoo is really who they say it is--what does that portent for the future of western civilization? And what if a young clairvoyant named Amanda reestablishes the flea circus as popular entertainment and fertility worship as the principal religious form of our high-tech age? Another Roadside Attraction answers those questions and a lot more. It tells us, for example, what the sixties were truly all about, not by reporting on the psychedelic decade but by recreating it, from the inside out.
The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil by George Saunders
Welcome to Inner Horner, a nation so small it can only accommodate one citizen at a time. The other six citizens must wait their turns in the Short-Term Residency Zone of the surrounding country of Outer Horner. It's a long-standing arrangement between the fantastical, not-exactly-human citizens of the two countries. But when Inner Horner suddenly shrinks, forcing three-quarters of the citizen then in residence over the border into Outer Horner territory, the Outer Hornerites declare an Invasion In Progress--having fallen under the spell of the power-hungry and demagogic Phil.
Carry on, Jeeves by P.G. WodehouseOne of literature’s most celebrated fictional duos, lovable fop Bertie Wooster and his clever valet Jeeves, take center stage in these hilarious tales. In the first four, Jeeves saves Bertie from some serious scrapes involving stolen manuscripts, unfortunate engagements, marital scandals, and jailbird friends. The other four find Bertie exiled to 1920s New York, where Jeeves rescues him from American aunts, visiting Brits, poetic chumps, and femme fatales.