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Thrilling Tales of Modern Men by Danny McBride

from $11.99
Hardcover:

Before you knew him as the Gemstones patriarch or Kenny Powers, Danny McBride was quietly filling notebooks with stories — and now, finally, you get to read them.

McBride is the writer, creator, and star behind some of HBO's most celebrated comedies, bringing the same razor-sharp wit and unexpected emotional depth to the page.

Rent new hardcover on Trove: $11.99 - Each rental copy can be rented for 30 days. If you love the book and decide to keep it, the remaining balance applies.

Buy new hardcover on Trove: $30.00
_____________________________________

About the book:

Thrilling Tales of Modern Men is Danny McBride's debut short story collection — a darkly funny, unpredictable, and surprisingly moving tour through the interior lives of American men pushed to their limits. Each story is a standalone world, but together they form something larger: a portrait of fragile masculinity in all its absurdity and ache.

The cast of characters here is unlike anything you'll find elsewhere. An amateur magician stumbles into mortal danger at a local mall. A washed-up sitcom star goes to war with the coyote who killed his dog. Two young runaways share one last big adventure before going their separate ways.

What unites them is McBride's singular voice — hilarious and sharp on the surface, but quietly probing something real underneath. These are men who believe in themselves perhaps a little too much, and whose delusions are both their funniest and most human quality.

Many of the stories date back decades, pulled from McBride's personal notebooks and reworked for this collection alongside newer pieces — all of them previously unpublished. The result feels both lived-in and fresh, like catching up with an old friend who turns out to have a lot more going on than you realized.

Before you knew him as the Gemstones patriarch or Kenny Powers, Danny McBride was quietly filling notebooks with stories — and now, finally, you get to read them.

McBride is the writer, creator, and star behind some of HBO's most celebrated comedies, bringing the same razor-sharp wit and unexpected emotional depth to the page.

Rent new hardcover on Trove: $11.99 - Each rental copy can be rented for 30 days. If you love the book and decide to keep it, the remaining balance applies.

Buy new hardcover on Trove: $30.00
_____________________________________

About the book:

Thrilling Tales of Modern Men is Danny McBride's debut short story collection — a darkly funny, unpredictable, and surprisingly moving tour through the interior lives of American men pushed to their limits. Each story is a standalone world, but together they form something larger: a portrait of fragile masculinity in all its absurdity and ache.

The cast of characters here is unlike anything you'll find elsewhere. An amateur magician stumbles into mortal danger at a local mall. A washed-up sitcom star goes to war with the coyote who killed his dog. Two young runaways share one last big adventure before going their separate ways.

What unites them is McBride's singular voice — hilarious and sharp on the surface, but quietly probing something real underneath. These are men who believe in themselves perhaps a little too much, and whose delusions are both their funniest and most human quality.

Many of the stories date back decades, pulled from McBride's personal notebooks and reworked for this collection alongside newer pieces — all of them previously unpublished. The result feels both lived-in and fresh, like catching up with an old friend who turns out to have a lot more going on than you realized.

  • Publisher: Random House

    Title: Thrilling Tales of Modern Men: Stories

    Author: Danny McBride

    On Sale Date: June 23, 2026

    ISBN-13: 9780593594759

    ISBN-10: 0593594754

    Format: Hardcover

    Retail Price: $30.00 USD / $41.99 CAD

    BISAC: Fiction / Short Stories (single author)

    Page Count: 368

    Dimensions: 9.6 in H | 6.4 in W | 1.2 in T

    Weight: 1.3 lb

  • Danny McBride is the writer, producer, and star of three acclaimed HBO comedy series — Eastbound & Down, Vice Principals, and The Righteous Gemstones — the last of which is one of HBO's most-watched shows and has been renewed for a fourth season. He co-founded Rough House Pictures and has extended his creative reach into horror and sci-fi, producing the Halloween trilogy with David Gordon Green and appearing in films including Tropic Thunder, Pineapple Express, and Alien: Covenant.

    McBride received a 2022 HCA Television Awards nomination for best comedy director and writer for The Righteous Gemstones, cementing his reputation as one of the sharpest creative voices in American comedy. Thrilling Tales of Modern Men is his debut short story collection — a project rooted in a lifelong writing habit he has maintained largely out of public view until now. He lives in South Carolina with his family.

  • Pre-release readers are calling it demented, hilarious, and deeply human:

    • Early readers describe Thrilling Tales of Modern Men as exactly the book McBride's fans have always wanted — funny, sharp, and somehow even better than his TV work.

    • Matthew McConaughey praised the men in these pages as immortal legends lost inside their own minds, surviving on the myths they've built about themselves.

    • Judd Apatow called it precisely what you'd hope for from McBride: as inspired and demented as everything he's made, but reaching new heights.

    • A librarian reader noted that while some stories land harder than others, the collection as a whole is a reminder of why short fiction deserves a place in your regular reading rotation.

This book is for you if:

  • You loved Eastbound & Down or The Righteous Gemstones and enjoy Danny McBride's style.

  • You enjoy short story collections that move fast, hit hard, and leave you laughing — then thinking.

  • You appreciate celebrity literary debuts that actually deliver — this is a passion project decades in the making, not some vanity project.

Quotes:

“Immortal legends on the fragile islands of their own minds, these McBride men more than drink their own Kool-Aid, they swig it to survive. On fever quests to save face and make their myth flesh, they hilariously remind us that, if you ain’t for you, who is?”
— Matthew McConaughey
“Imagine your ideal version of a short story collection written by the legendary Danny McBride. You’re in luck, because that is precisely what this book is. It’s just as demented, hilarious, human, and as inspired as all of his work, but, somehow, even better.”
— Judd Apatow
“Danny McBride possesses a singular and insightful gift for capturing the essence of the imperfect, flawed, vulnerable modern man and the struggle and strife that comes with his internal longing for a better self. You probably wouldn’t want to personally know many of these characters in real life, but from afar, they certainly keep it far more interesting and entertaining. These stories are yet another beautiful example of the assorted collection of tools in the storytelling arsenal of a creative titan.”
— Sturgill Simpson

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