Most Popular Books by Chuck Palahniuk

Haunted is a novel made up of twenty-three horrifying, hilarious, and stomach-churning stories. They’re told by people who have answered an ad for a writer’s retreat and unwittingly joined a “Survivor”-like scenario where the host withholds heat, power, and food. As the storytellers grow more desperate, their tales become more extreme, and they ruthlessly plot to make themselves the hero of the reality show that will surely be made from their plight. This is one of the most disturbing and outrageous books you’ll ever read, one that could only come from the mind of Chuck Palahniuk.

Twenty one stories and one novella from Chuck Palahniuk, literature''s favorite transgressive author, Make Something Up is a compilation that disturbs and delights in equal measure. In "Expedition," fans will be thrilled to find to see a side of Tyler Durden never seen before in a precursor story to Fight Club. And in other stories, the absurdity of both life and death are on full display; in "Zombies," the best and brightest of a high school prep school become tragically addicted to the latest drug craze: electric shocks from cardiac defibrillators. In "Knock, Knock," a son hopes to tell one last off-color joke to a father in his final moments, while in "Tunnel of Love," a massage therapist runs the curious practice of providing ''relief'' to dying clients. Funny, caustic, bizarre, poignant; these stories represent everything readers have come

Victor Mancini, a medical-school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times. Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: he pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be “saved” by fellow patrons who, feeling responsible for Victor’s life, go on to send checks to support him. When he’s not pulling this stunt, Victor cruises sexual addiction recovery workshops for action, visits his addled mom, and spends his days working at a colonial theme park. His creator, Chuck Palahniuk, is the visionary we need and the satirist we deserve.

"Fight Club''s estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret after-hours boxing matches in the basement of bars."--P. [3] of cover.

Misty Wilmot has had it. Once a promising young artist, she’s now stuck on an island ruined by tourism, drinking too much and working as a waitress in a hotel. Her husband, a contractor, is in a coma after a suicide attempt, but that doesn’t stop his clients from threatening Misty with lawsuits over a series of vile messages they’ve found on the walls of houses he remodeled. Suddenly, though, Misty finds her artistic talent returning as she begins a period of compulsive painting. Inspired but confused by this burst of creativity, she soon finds herself a pawn in a larger conspiracy that threatens to cost hundreds of lives. What unfolds is a dark, hilarious story from America’s most inventive nihilist, and Palahniuk’s most impressive work to date.

Tell-All is many things: A Sunset Boulevard-inflected homage to Old Hollywood when Grand Dames like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford ruled the roost. A Douglas Sirk-inspired melodrama full of big gestures and muted psychic torment. A veritable Tourette''s syndrome of rat-tat-tat name-dropping, from the A-list to the Z-list. A merciless send-up of Lillian Hellman''s habit of butchering the truth that will have Mary McCarthy cheering from the beyond.

"A billion husbands are about to be replaced." From the author of Fight Club, the classic portrait of the damaged contemporary male psyche, now comes this novel about the apocalyptic marketing possibilities of a new product that gives new meaning to the term "self-help." Penny Harrigan is a low-level associate in a big Manhattan law firm with an apartment in Queens and no love life at all. So it comes as a great shock when she finds herself invited to dinner by one C. Linus Maxwell, a software mega-billionaire and lover of the most gorgeous and accomplished women on earth. After dining at Manhattan''s most exclusive restaurant, he whisks Penny off to a hotel suite in Paris, where he proceeds, notebook in hand, to bring her to previously undreamed-of heights of gratification for days on end. What''s not to like? This: Penny discovers that she is a test subject for the final development of a line of feminine products to be marketed in a nationwide chain of boutiques called Beautiful You. So potent and effective are these devices that women by the millions line up outside the stores on opening day and then lock themselves in their room with them and stop coming out. Except for batteries. Maxwell''s plan for battery-powered world domination must be stopped. But how?

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of the New York Times bestseller Choke and the cult classic Fight Club, a cunningly plotted novel about the ultimate verbal weapon, one that reinvents the apocalyptic thriller for our times. "A harrowing and hilarious glimpse into the future of civilization.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune Ever heard of a culling song? It’s a lullaby sung in Africa to give a painless death to the old or infirm. The lyrics of a culling song kill, whether spoken or even just thought. You can find one on page 27 of Poems and Rhymes from Around the World, an anthology that is sitting on the shelves of libraries across the country, waiting to be picked up by unsuspecting readers. Reporter Carl Streator discovers the song’s lethal nature while researching Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and before he knows it, he’s reciting the poem to anyone who bothers him. As the body count rises, Streator glimpses the potential catastrophe if someone truly malicious finds out about the song. The only answer is to find and destroy every copy of the book in the country. Accompanied by a shady real-estate agent, her Wiccan assistant, and the assistant’s truly annoying ecoterrorist boyfriend, Streator begins a desperate cross-country quest to put the culling song to rest.

"Brilliantly satiric and savagely funny, Survivor is a wild amphetamine ride through the vagaries of fame and the nature of belief." —San Francisco Chronicle Tender Branson—last surviving member of the Creedish Death Cult—is dictating his life story into the recorder of Flight 2039, cruising on autopilot at 39,000 feet somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. He is all alone in the airplane, which will crash shortly into the vast Australian outback. But before it does, Branson will unfold the tale of his journey from an obedient Creedish child and humble domestic servant to an ultra-buffed, steroid- and collagen-packed media messiah.

Chuck Palahniuk’s world has always been, well, different from yours and mine. In his first collection of nonfiction, Chuck Palahniuk brings us into this world, and gives us a glimpse of what inspires his fiction.At the Rock Creek Lodge Testicle Festival in Missoula, Montana, average people perform public sex acts on an outdoor stage. In a mansion once occupied by The Rolling Stones, Marilyn Manson reads his own Tarot cards and talks sweetly to his beautiful actress girlfriend. Across the country, men build their own full-size castles and rocketships that will send them into space. Palahniuk himself experiments with steroids, works on an assembly line by day and as a hospice volunteer by night, and experiences the brutal murder of his father by a white supremacist. With this new direction, Chuck Palahniuk has proven he can do anything.

New York Times Bestseller "An irreverent satirical fantasy about a sudden and violent upheaval.…Think Tom Robbins channeling Jonathan Swift." —David Takami, Seattle Times Adjustment Day is an ingenious darkly comic work in which Chuck Palahniuk does what he does best: skewer the absurdities in our society. Geriatric politicians bring the nation to the brink of a third world war to control the burgeoning population of young males, while working-class men dream of burying the elites. Adjustment Day’s arrival makes real the logical conclusion of every separatist fantasy, alternative fact, and conspiracy theory lurking in the American psyche.

Think adolescence is hell? You have no idea... Welcome to Dante''s Inferno, by way of The Breakfast Club, from the mind of American fiction''s most brilliant troublemaker. "Death, like life, is what you make out of it." So says Madison, the whip-tongued 11-year-old narrator of Damned, Chuck Palahniuk''s subversive homage to the young adult genre. Madison is abandoned at her Swiss boarding school over Christmas while her parents are off touting their new film projects and adopting more orphans. Over the holidays she dies of a marijuana overdose--and the next thing she knows, she''s in Hell. This is the afterlife as only Chuck Palahniuk could imagine it: a twisted inferno inspired by both the most extreme and mundane of human evils, where The English Patient plays on repeat and roaming demons devour sinners limb by limb. However, underneath Madison''s sad teenager affect there is still a child struggling to accept not only the events of her dysfunctional life, but also the truth about her death. For Madison, though, a more immediate source of comfort lies in the motley crew of young sinners she meets during her first days in Hell. With the help of Archer, Babette, Leonard, and Patterson, she learns to navigate Hell--and discovers that she''d rather be mortal and deluded and stupid with those she loves than perfect and alone.

Madison Spencer, the liveliest and snarkiest dead girl in the universe, continues the afterlife adventure begun in Chuck Palahniuk’s bestseller Damned. Just as that novel brought us a brilliant Hell that only he could imagine, Doomed is a dark and twisted apocalyptic vision from this provocative storyteller. The bestselling Damned chronicled Madison’s journey across the unspeakable (and really gross) landscape of the afterlife to confront the Devil himself. But her story isn’t over yet. In a series of electronic dispatches from the Great Beyond, Doomed describes the ultimate showdown between Good and Evil. After a Halloween ritual gone awry, Madison finds herself trapped in Purgatory—or, as mortals like you and I know it, Earth. She can see and hear every detail of the world she left behind, yet she’s invisible to everyone who’s still alive. Not only do people look right through her, they walk right through her as well. The upside is that, no longer subject to physical limitations, she can pass through doors and walls. Her first stop is her parents’ luxurious apartment, where she encounters the ghost of her long-deceased grandmother. For Madison, the encounter triggers memories of the awful summer she spent upstate with Nana Minnie and her grandfather, Papadaddy. As she revisits the painful truth of what transpired over those months (including a disturbing and finally fatal meeting in a rest stop’s fetid men’s room, in which . . . well, never mind), her saga of eternal damnation takes on a new and sinister meaning. Satan has had Madison in his sights from the very beginning: through her and her narcissistic celebrity parents, he plans to engineer an era of eternal damnation. For everyone. Once again, our unconventional but plucky heroine must face her fears and gather her wits for the battle of a lifetime. Dante Alighieri, watch your back; Chuck Palahniuk is gaining on you.

Renowned, bestselling novelist Chuck Palahniuk takes us behind the scenes of the writing life, with postcards from decades on the road and incredible examination of the power of fiction and the art of storytelling. In this spellbinding blend of memoir and insight, bestselling author Chuck Palahniuk shares stories and generous advice on what makes writing powerful and what makes for powerful writing. With advice grounded in years of careful study and a keenly observed life, Palahniuk combines practical advice and concrete examples from beloved classics, his own books, and a "kitchen-table MFA" culled from an evolving circle of beloved authors and artists, with anecdotes, postcards from the road, and much more. Clear-eyed, sensitive, illuminating, and knowledgeable, Consider This is Palahniuk''s love letter to stories and storytellers, booksellers and books themselves. Consider it a classic in the making.

“Begins here first account of operative me, agent number 67 on arrival midwestern American airport greater _____ area. Flight _____. Date _____. Priority mission top success to complete. Code name: Operation Havoc.” Thus speaks Pygmy, one of a handful of young adults from a totalitarian state sent to the United States, disguised as exchange students, to live with typical American families and blend in, all the while planning an unspecified act of massive terrorism. Palahniuk depicts Midwestern life through the eyes of this thoroughly indoctrinated little killer, who hates Americans with a passion, in this cunning double-edged satire of a xenophobia that might, in fact, be completely justified.

"A harrowing, perverse, laugh-aloud funny rocket ride of catastrophes…Gutsy, terse and cunning, Invisible Monsters may emerge as Palahniuk’s strongest book." —Greg Berkman, Seattle Times She’s a fashion model who has everything: a boyfriend, a career, a loyal best friend. But when a sudden freeway "accident" leaves her disfigured and incapable of speech, she goes from being the beautiful center of attention to being an invisible monster, so hideous that no one will acknowledge she exists. Enter Brandy Alexander, Queen Supreme, one operation away from becoming a real woman, who will teach her that reinventing yourself means erasing your past and making up something better. And that salvation hides in the last places you’ll ever want to look.

Want to know where Chuck Palahniuk’s tonsils currently reside? Been looking for a naked mannequin to hide in your kitchen cabinets? Curious about Chuck’s debut in an MTV music video? What goes on at the Scum Center? How do you get to the Apocalypse Café? In the closest thing he may ever write to an autobiography, Chuck Palahniuk provides answers to all these questions and more as he takes you through the streets, sewers, and local haunts of Portland, Oregon. According to Katherine Dunn, author of the cult classic Geek Love, Portland is the home of America’s “fugitives and refugees.” Get to know these folks, the “most cracked of the crackpots,” as Palahniuk calls them, and come along with him on an adventure through the parts of Portland you might not otherwise believe actually exist. No other travel guide will give you this kind of access to “a little history, a little legend, and a lot of friendly, sincere, fascinating people who maybe should’ve kept their mouths shut.” Here are strange personal museums, weird annual events, and ghost stories. Tour the tunnels under downtown Portland. Visit swingers’ sex clubs, gay and straight. See Frances Gabe’s famous 1940s Self-Cleaning House. Look into strange local customs like the I-Tit-a-Rod Race and the Santa Rampage. Learn how to talk like a local in a quick vocabulary lesson. Get to know, I mean really get to know, the animals at the Portland zoo. Oh, the list goes on and on.

"A harrowing, perverse, laugh-aloud funny rocket ride." —Seattle Times Injected with new material and special design elements, Invisible Monsters Remix fulfills Chuck Palahniuk’s original vision for his 1999 novel, turning a daring satire on beauty and the fashion industry into an even more wildly unique reading experience. Palahniuk’s fashion-model protagonist has it all—boyfriend, career, loyal best friend—until an accident destroys her face, her ability to speak, and her self-esteem. Enter Brandy Alexander, Queen Supreme, one operation away from becoming a bona-fide woman. Laced in are new chapters of memoir and further scenes with the book’s characters. Readers will jump between chapters, reread the book to understand the dissolve between fiction and fact, and decipher the playful book design, embarking on a ride they’ll never forget.

A father searching for his missing daughter is suddenly given hope when a major clue is discovered, but learning the truth could shatter the seemingly perfect image Hollywood is desperate to uphold. Gates Foster lost his daughter, Lucy, seventeen years ago. He''s never stopped searching. Suddenly, a shocking new development provides Foster with his first major lead in over a decade, and he may finally be on the verge of discovering the awful truth. Meanwhile, Mitzi Ives has carved out a space among the Foley artists creating the immersive sounds giving Hollywood films their authenticity. Using the same secret techniques as her father before her, she''s become an industry-leading expert in the sound of violence and horror, creating screams so bone-chilling, they may as well be real. Soon Foster and Ives find themselves on a collision course that threatens to expose the violence hidden beneath Hollywood''s glamorous façade. A grim and disturbing reflection on the commodification of suffering and the dangerous power of art, The Invention of Sound is Chuck Palahniuk at the peak of his literary powers -- his most suspenseful, most daring, and most genre-defying work yet.

Buster “Rant” Casey just may be the most efficient serial killer of our time. A high school rebel, Rant Casey escapes from his small town home for the big city where he becomes the leader of an urban demolition derby called Party Crashing. Rant Casey will die a spectacular highway death, after which his friends gather the testimony needed to build an oral history of his short, violent life. With hilarity, horror, and blazing insight, Rant is a mind-bending vision of the future, as only Chuck Palahniuk could ever imagine.

This limited edition hardcover in slipcase features 90 pages of bonus content and new cover art by David Mack. Some imaginary friends never go away . . . Ten years after starting Project Mayhem, he lives a mundane life. A kid, a wife. Pills to keep his destiny at bay. But it won''t last long, the wife has seen to that. He''s back where he started, but this go-round he''s got more at stake than his own life.The time has arrived . . . Rize or Die. New York Tomes bestselling novelist Chuck Palahniuk and acclaimed artist Cameron Stewart have collaborated for one of the most highly anticipated comic book and literary events of 2015--the return of Tyler Durden. The first rule of Fight Club 2 might be not to talk about it, but Fight Club 2 is generating international headlines and will introduce a new generation of readers to Project Mayhem. Praise for the comics that comprise Fight Club 2: "At turns deeply poignant and very funny, Palahniuk''s freakish fables capture a twisted zeitgeist and add an oddly inspirational and subversive voice to the contemporary canon.... In the post-9/11 present, a hyperactive, Internet-obsessed, war- and recession-weary America apparently needs Tyler again."-THE ATLANTIC "The book is fantastic, my highest recommendation.... Excellent work by Cameron Stewart and David Mack, and by our awesome friends at Dark Horse Comics."-Brian Michael Bendis "If Tyler Durden needed a resurgence, there''s no time like the present for his return... Fight Club 2 is a comic that taps back into everything great about the source material, and one that makes Tyler Durden''s warm nihilistic embrace a welcome draw back into a familiar world of cynicism, violence, and anarchy...."Tyler Lives," and I couldn''t be happier by the prospect of more bedlam."-NEWSARAMA "Palahniuk is delivering a worthy sequel to his most beloved story."-THE NERDIST "Entertaining."-COMIC BOOK RESOURCES "Excellent."-THE BEAT "An amazing piece of work. You do not want to miss out on this."-COMICVINE "Perfect."-FORCES OF GEEK "We have a worthy sequel on our hands.... A must read."-COMICOSITY "Cameron Stewart truly outdoes himself on every level in this book."-BLOODY DISGUSTING "Clever and beautiful."-COMICS ALLIANCE

In his first long-form fiction since Beautiful You in 2014, the author of Fight Club and Choke delivers another biting social satire in this riches-to-rags novella! This hardcover edition features beautiful colorable illustrations by Steve Morris (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), who worked on Palahnuik''s Bait: Off-Color Stories for You to Color, and Mike Norton (Revival, Battlepug), with a cover by another Bait collaborator, Duncan Fegredo (Hellboy). Legacy is sure to engage readers with its boundary pushing story-telling while challenging their creative side through its visionary and twisted colorable imagery. An amoral investment banker named Vincent receives an inheritance promising immortality. Unfortunately for Vincent to obtain imortality he has to contend with a flame-retardant stripper, a ruthless stalker, and a bloodthirsty horde of other aspiring immortals dead set in their desire to separate Vincent from his destiny. Praise for Bait: Off-Color Stories for You to Color: "The conceit is a blast. Ingenious...Palahniuk likes to involve his readers, and maybe even have them be co-conspirators. I loved this book. It''s smart in a new way that deserves to be recognized. Congratulations once again to Palahniuk for showing us a new way to do things...and to make us involved."--FORCES OF GEEK "Chuck Palahniuk is pushing boundaries again."--COMICBOOK.COM

An all-new collection of short fiction from the author of Fight Club, that also doubles as an adult coloring book! New York Times bestselling novelist Chuck Palahniuk presents Bait: Off-Color Stories for You to Color, his first ever coloring book for adults. Bait is both the coloring book debut and the second short story collection for Palahniuk, author of Lullaby and Fight Club. The 8.5 x 11 inch hardcover album contains eight bizarre tales, illustrated in detailed black and white by Joëlle Jones (Lady Killer), Lee Bermejo (The Suiciders), Duncan Fegredo (Hellboy), and more. Each story is paired with pieces of colorable original art, nearly 50 in all! Palahniuk invites readers to collaborate on this unprecedented hardcover edition: "Maybe between your colors, the artists'' designs, and my stories we can create something that endures. Something worth keeping. Let''s create a well-bound book that can sit on any shelf and be available for a new generation to discover and enjoy." Palahniuk''s short stories are provocative and not for the faint of heart. (His public readings are notorious for making audience members pass out.) Kirkus Reviews described Palahniuk''s 2015 short story collection Make Something Up: Stories You Can''t Unread as "Pathos and panic and penitence from one of the darkest and most singular minds in contemporary American lit." Bait continues in that vein with stories about: A passenger on the Titanic who finds a surgical solution to the obstacle of "women and children first". A Hollywood star whose fading brand faces a viral (and scatological) internet campaign. An animal psychic who coaxes a statement from a fish that witnessed a political assassination. Increasingly terrible birthday gifts that place a girl at the center of an extinction-level event. Reviews for 2015''s Make Something Up: "Palahniuk finds sincerity among his characters even in disreputable occurrences."-- Publishers Weekly "He makes it absolutely clear that he''s still the man who wrote ''Guts,'' the infamous story that made fans pass out at readings." --Kirkus Reviews Reviews for Fight Club 2: "At turns deeply poignant and very funny, Palahniuk''s freakish fables capture a twisted zeitgeist and add an oddly inspirational and subversive voice to the contemporary canon . . . In the post-9/11 present, a hyperactive, Internet-obsessed, war- and recession-weary America apparently needs Tyler again."--The Atlantic "Chuck Palahniuk''s Fight Club 2 is as much a kinetic read as it is a pivotal watermark for the comic industry to receive such a high-profile cross-media debut. We are Jack''s eager eyes."--Paste

From the bestselling author of Fight Club comes a dark, satirical parable about a string of mysterious high school disappearances, the seedy underbellies of billionaires, and the tough choices we make in the face of an uncertain future. In Shock Induction, the best and brightest students at a seemingly reputable high school are disappearing. Every day it seems another overachiever is lost to an apparent suicide. But something far more sinister is lurking beneath the surface. These kids have been under surveillance since birth, monitored and measured by an online service called "Greener Pastures." It''s here, in Greener Pastures, that billionaires observe and recruit the next generation of talent. The highest test scores, the best grades, and the most niche extracurriculars just might land these teenagers an enticing offer at auction. A couple billion dollars in exchange for the remainder of your life and intellectual labor sounds like a pretty fair deal-doesn''t it? In a high school only Chuck Palahniuk could imagine, students must choose between the risk of following their dreams or the security of money and a lifetime of servitude to the world''s wealthiest and most elite-but how much of a choice do they truly have?

Chuck Palahniuk''s world has been, well, different from yours and mine. The pieces that comprise Non-Fiction prove just how different, in ways both highly entertaining and deeply unsettling. Encounters with alternative culture heroes Marilyn Manson and Juliette Lewis; the peculiar wages of fame attendant on the big budget film production of the movie Fight Club; life as an assembly-line drive train installer by day, hospice volunteer driver by night; the really peculiar lives of submariners; the really violent world of college wrestlers; the underground world of anabolic steroid gobblers; the harrowing circumstances of his father''s murder and the trial of his killer - each essay or vignette offers a unique facet of existence as lived in and/or observed by one of America''s most flagrantly daring and original literary talents.

**Chuck Palahniuk writes the sequel to _Fight Club_!** For the past decade Tyler Durden''s been sneaking out of Sebastian''s subconscious. Sebastian has a nice wife and a nice kid. He has a nice home in the suburbs. Nice-enough neighbors. Now all that''s going up like so much potassium permanganate. * Rize or Die! * One of IGN and io9''s Most Anticipated Comics of 2015! * Variant cover by Francesco Francavilla!

Marla Singer is about to deliver her second child, but the daddy isn''t her husband--it''s Tyler Durden, who''s very invested in his heir, and the world he''ll inherit. Marla, her first son, and her husband--the unnamed narrator in the novel, who now goes by Balthazar--live in a rundown motel with sketchy neighbors. In the FIGHT CLUB 2 graphic novel, Tyler transformed Project Mayhem into Rize or Die--now, as a road to paradise presents itself, a new group has implemented a ruthless and deviant plan to fine-tune mankind, leading Balthazar to forge an unlikely alliance . . . with Tyler Durden. Chuck Palahniuk writes the sequel to the sequel to Fight Club. Chuck Palahniuk & Cameron Stewart reunite!

**Tyler Durden lives!** Some imaginary friends never go away . . . Ten years after starting Project Mayhem, he lives a mundane life. A kid, a wife, pills to keep his destiny at bay. But it won''t last long; the wife has seen to that. The time has come . . . Rize or Die. * Chuck Palahniuk writes the sequel to _Fight Club_! * One of the most anticipated comics of the year. * Named to ComicBook.com''s Top 10 Comic Events We Can''t Wait For in 2015! The first rule of Fight Club might be not to talk about it, but tongues are already wagging about Chuck Palahniuk''s sequel to his 1996 novel.� The Telegraph (London) Just wait until you see what happens next.� Hollywood Reporter Heat Vision, 5 Comics to Look Out For in 2015

Mais qui est donc Buster Casey, alias Rant ? Dans un futur où une partie de la population est " diurne " et l''autre " nocturne " selon un couvre-feu très strict, Peste prend la forme d''une biographie orale faite de rapports contradictoires émanant de témoins qui ont connu le mystérieux Buster de près ou de loin. Garçon aux moeurs étranges, friand de morsures animales en tous genres pour certains, génial tueur en série ou répugnant individu pour d''autres, le véritable Buster Casey semble, au fil des récits, de plus en plus insaisissable et protéiforme. De quoi alimenter le mythe... Évangile subversif et grotesque où le rire donne la réplique à l''horreur, Peste décrit un monde qui marche sur la tête, où la vie est à mourir d''ennui et la mort positive et créatrice. Chuck Palahniuk explore, encore et toujours, les tréfonds de la vie moderne et dresse le portrait en creux d''une Amérique en mal de repères.