Comedy Humor World

Written in a hospital tent to the sound of gunfire and shells falling, Cicely Hamilton drew on her experiences working in France during WW1 to tell the story of William Tully and his new bride Griselda, who are wrenched away from their all-consuming interests – socialism and votes for women – and plunged into the almost dream-like horror of war. As brutal tragedy strikes, their attitude to both pacifism and patriotism is altered and their lives are changed forever.

THE NOW SHOW BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS boldly tackles all the superlatives that other books of world records avoid. It does this by means of making stuff up and scrupulously avoiding too much research, insight, or fact. Unless the fact is funnier. And legal to mention. The download will contain extracts from the selected by the team themselves.

Big Son is a spirit of the times - the times being 1837. Behind his broad shoulders, shiny hair, and church-organ laugh, Big Son practically made Ohio City all by himself. The feats of this proto-superhero have earned him wonder and whiskey, but very little in the way of fortune. And without money, Big cannot become an honest husband to his beloved Cloe (who may or may not want to be his honest wife).

From the rubble-strewn streets of US-occupied Baghdad, the scavenger Hadi collects human body parts and stitches them together to create a corpse. His goal, he claims, is for the government to recognise the parts as people and give them a proper burial. But when the corpse goes missing, a wave of eerie murders sweeps the city, and reports stream in of a horrendous-looking criminal who, though shot, cannot be killed. Hadi soon realises he has created a monster: one that needs human flesh to survive - first from the guilty, and then from anyone who crosses its path.

Joe Smith is average in every way. He is average height. He lives in an average town, on an average street, in an average house, with a very average family. But when a survey identifies him as the most average kid in the country—well that makes him very special indeed. Suddenly, everyone wants Joe to test out their latest products. Overnight he is sent mountains of gifts—the best trainers, the coolest bike, the most exciting new tech, the latest flavours of ice cream—and so much more. He gets special cinema screenings and the entire water park all to himself.

After seven years on the semi-pro wrestling circuit, Ricky Twohatchet, a.k.a. Richard Powell, needs one last match before he gets called up to the big leagues. Unlike some wrestlers who only play the stereotype, Ricky believes he comes by his persona honestly - he’s half White and half Native American - even if he’s never met his father. But the night of the match in Omaha, Nebraska, something askew in their intricate choreography sets him on a course for disaster.

In Bournville, a placid suburb of Birmingham, sits a famous chocolate factory. For eleven-year-old Mary and her family in 1945, it's the centre of the world. The reason their streets smell faintly of chocolate, the place where most of their friends and neighbours have worked for decades. Mary will go on to live through the Coronation and the World Cup final, royal weddings and royal funerals, Brexit and Covid-19. She'll have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Человек в футляре — один из известных рассказов выдающегося драматурга Антона Павловича Чехова (1860–1904). Это рассказ в рассказе о жизни учителя греческого языка Беликова. Он — одинокий, раздражительный и замкнутый в себе, человек в футляре. Его страх перед действительностью не дает ему возможности раскрыться. Но однажды он знакомится с Варенькой, сестрой нового в гимназии учителя... Мастерство А. П. Чехова поражает читателя глубиной описания нелепого существования главного героя. Чехов Антон Павлович — автор знаменитых рассказов, повести "Палата № 6", пьес "Вишневый сад" и "Чайка".

The "Last Best Class" of Fish River Community School had lost one of its members every year since the second grade. Waffle Houses were popping up throughout small-town Alabama with one corporate rule: "Good Food Fast." Struggling to cope with the tragedy that shadowed him most of his life, Dr. Jimmy Ryan dedicated himself to bringing people back from the brink, driven by his own guiding principle "Ain't Dead Yet." Not until Jimmy's own death did the folks at the Waffle House in Penelope, Alabama, learn the full extent of the secrets buried with the dead.

Helen Moran is 32 years old, single, childless, college educated, and partially employed as a guardian of troubled young people in New York. She is accepting a furniture delivery in her shared studio apartment when her uncle calls to break the news: Helen's adoptive brother is dead. According to the Internet, there are six possible reasons why her brother might have killed himself. But Helen knows better: she knows that six reasons is only shorthand for "the abyss".

"Three Men on the Bummel" (1900) is a comical travelogue by Jerome K. Jerome. The three companions are on a bicycle tour through the German Black Forest. What does Bummel mean? D. C. Browning writes: "The title must be puzzling to many readers, for 'bummel' will not be found in English dictionaries." You can learn its meaning at the last chapter of the book, which is a series of humorous vignettes, each of which builds slowly, through accumulation of layer on layer of detail, through several pages.

Leinster House had been burned to the ground. All that was left was a smouldering ruin and the blackened remains of an Irish flag. The old man was trying to pin the blame on Brussels, but I knew the actual truth? Unfortunately, Sorcha was too angry with me for having sex with our daughter's Irish teacher to listen. But I had, like, other irons in the—pardon the pun—fire. I'd just become Head Coach of the Ireland rugby team—albeit, women. The country might well have been focked. But very soon, we had everyone believing in fairy tales again.

Inspired by a handful of old postcards sent by Uncle Leroy nearly a hundred years earlier, Bird and Mimi attempt to trace Mimi’s long-lost uncle and the family medicine bundle he took with him to Europe. “I’m sweaty and sticky. My ears are still popping from the descent into Vaclav Havel. My sinuses ache. My stomach is upset. My mouth is a sewer. I roll over and bury my face in a pillow. Mimi snuggles down beside me with no regard for my distress. ‘My god,’ she whispers, ‘can it get any better?’”

Hailed by Time as an “extravagantly comic” novel, A Woman Named Drown is a wild and strange journey through America’s South that follows a young PhD dropout who falls in with an amateur actress-cum–pool shark. On the brink of earning his doctorate in chemistry, the unnamed narrator decides to chuck it all away in favor of real life. So begins an odd pilgrimage through the American South.

Salzburg, März 1913. Der Schausteller Otto Witte wird in eine Irrenanstalt eingewiesen, weil er steif und fest behauptet, König von Albanien gewesen zu sein. Der junge Doktorand Alois Schilchegger ist von diesem Mann fasziniert und nimmt sich seiner an. Ottos Version der Weltgeschichte beginnt im Oktober 1912 in Konstantinopel. Das Osmanische Reich droht auseinanderzubrechen. Albanien nutzt die Gunst der Stunde, erklärt sich unabhängig und sucht einen König. Otto und sein Kumpan, der Schwertschlucker Max Hoffmann, riskieren einen waghalsigen Coup: Albanien sucht einen König?

The farmers of Paradise County have been leading a hardscrabble life unchanged for generations. The Communist government has encouraged them to plant garlic, but selling the crop is not as simple as they believed. Warehouses fill up, taxes skyrocket, and government officials maltreat even those who have traveled for days to sell their harvest. A surplus on the garlic market ensues, and the farmers must watch in horror as their crops wither and rot in the fields. Families are destroyed by the random imprisonment of young and old for supposed crimes against the state. Meanwhile, a blind minstrel incites the masses to take the law into their own hands....

You yawn as your friends boast of flying to Mars or poaching endangered species. You're not looking for Ferraris in your driveway or jets on your runway. You want to do something exciting and original. What you crave is your very own nation. It's about time you got one.

David is a blue-collar man, spending his days managing the Albuquerque Wastewater Utility plant, and nights ruminating over his painful past. Not much of import happens in his world, and that's just fine by him. That is, until a severed hand is found among the filtered debris of one of the waste filtration tanks. Thinking a few hours of paperwork will be all it takes to clear the episode from David's life, fate sends a beautiful Sheriff's Deputy named Gina, along with a series of events that drag him deep into something more sinister than he ever could have imagined.

Written in 1911, The Card is the story of Edward Henry (Denry) Machin, who rises from washerwoman's son to the Mayor of Bursley (Burslem in the Potteries town of Stoke-on-Trent) via a mixture of gentle deceit and personal hype. He is literally a trickster of confidence. His rise to fame is begun at an exclusive ball to which he has got himself invited, where he has the audacity to claim a dance with the glamourous but imposing Countess of Chell.

Veronica McCreedy lives in a mansion by the sea. She loves a nice cup of Darjeeling tea whilst watching a good wildlife documentary. And she’s never seen without her ruby-red lipstick. Although these days, Veronica is rarely seen by anyone, because at 85, her days are spent mostly at home, alone. She can be found either collecting litter from the beach, trying to locate her glasses, or shouting instructions to her assistant, Eileen. But today...today, Veronica is going to make a decision that will change all of this.