Three tales. Three levels of absurd. One very British collection.

What happens when a mysterious queue forms outside a boarded-up restaurant, and nobody knows what they’re waiting for?

What happens when artificial intelligence stops being helpful and starts telling people exactly what it thinks?

And what happens when Britain’s political system is finally challenged by something faster, stranger and considerably more feathered?

In Absurd, Peter Reynolds brings together three witty, satirical and sharply observed stories that take everyday British life and push it several steps beyond reasonable.

In The People Next To You, a single well-dressed man in a top hat sparks a queue that grows into a national obsession, revealing the humour, stubbornness, kindness and glorious oddness of people standing in line without knowing why.

In Unable to Assist, the internet and artificial intelligence begin to rebel against the smooth, flattering, always-available world we have built around them — with increasingly uncomfortable consequences.

And in Cluckageddon, dodgy decisions, political chaos and national decline meet their match in the advancing feathered brigade.

Funny, satirical, eccentric and full of heart, Absurd is a celebration of British behaviour at its most baffling, brilliant and bizarre.

For readers who enjoy humorous fiction, British satire, social comedy, political absurdity, and stories that ask the dangerous question: what would happen if…?