Historical Humor

People in Adenville are breathing a sigh of relief. It seems that Tom D. Fitzgerald, the Great Brain, has truly reformed. For months, not one kid has been swindled and not one stunt has been pulled. But when he gets a new bike for Christmas, the Great Brain heads full speed into his old ways. And this time his ideas are bigger than ever. He puts all of Adenville in fear of a prehistoric beast from Skeleton Cave, solves a mysterious bank robbery, and captures the ghost of Silverload Mine.

In the summer of 1942, Hermie is 15. He is wildly obsessed with sex, and passionately in love with an "older woman" of 22, whose husband is overseas and at war. Ambling through Nantucket Island with his friends, Hermie's indelible narration chronicles his frantic efforts to become a man, especially one worthy of the lovely Dorothy, as well as his glorious and heartbreaking initiation into sex.

Jason Hutchinson's Bestselling Erotic Adventure in one novel-length volume! Brant's always had trouble with the ladies... ...becoming the Wizard's Apprentice is helping...a bit! Working at Burke and Dunne to pay for college, Brant had always considered the curiosity shop a fun place, where he could unwind. Following the death of one of it's owners, though, things get somewhat more complicated. Dutch Dunne, the surviving owner, seemes to want Brant to be his apprentice...The Wizard's Apprentice. Is the old codger full of it? Brant thinks the downhill slide to dementia is accelerating for his...

1720. The Golden Age of Piracy.After setting out to look for his press-ganged father, fifteen-year old Dan Leake finds himself clinging to a barrel in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. His luck changes when a passing ship saves him from a watery grave, but his joy is short-lived. He soon discovers that his rescuers are not what they seem.Dan is forced to join Calico Jack’s blood-thirsty crew, which includes Anne Bonny and Mary Read. He faces death on a daily basis as they career around the Caribbean lurching from one hair-raising adventure to another. At last he reaches Jamaica, where he ...

Mad Jack is in reality Winifrede Levering Bascombe, who, happily, has her name changed very quickly in the story. She arrives in London with the aunts, Mathilda and Maude, of Lord Cliffe, Grayson St. Cyre, to beg his assistance. He welcomes the aunts, briefly spots the valet, Jack, and proceeds very quickly after their arrival to fall down the rabbit hole.

Phryne Fisher is doing one of her favorite things -dancing at the Green Mill (Melbourne's premier dance hall) to the music of Tintagel Stone's Jazzmakers, the band who taught St Vitus how to dance. And she's wearing a sparkling lobelia-coloured georgette dress. Nothing can flap the unflappable Phryne -especially on a dance floor with so many delectable partners. Nothing except death, that is.

Lacey Yeager is young, captivating, and ambitious enough to take the New York art world by storm. Groomed at Sotheby's and hungry to keep climbing the social and career ladders put before her, Lacey charms men and women, old and young, rich and even richer with her magnetic charisma and liveliness. Her ascension to the highest tiers of the city parallel the soaring heights - and, at times, the dark lows - of the art world and the country from the late 1990s through today.

In this escapade, the Junior Ganymede Club (Jeeves's association of butlers and valets) is revealed to be an arm of the British intelligence service. Jeeves must ferret out a Fascist spy, and only his hapless employer can help. Unfolding in the background are school-chum capers, affairs of the heart, drawing-room escapades, antics with aunts, and sartorial set-tos.

A darkly satirical novel of love, revenge, and 1950s haute couture - now a major motion picture starring Kate Winslet, Judy Davis, Liam Hemsworth, and Hugo Weaving. After 20 years spent mastering the art of dressmaking at couture houses in Paris, Tilly Dunnage returns to the small Australian town she was banished from as a child. She plans only to check on her ailing mother and leave. But Tilly decides to stay, and though she is still an outcast, her lush, exquisite dresses prove irresistible to the prim women of Dungatar.

In 1761, a tiny, odd-looking girl named Marie is born in a village in Switzerland. After the death of her parents, she is apprenticed to an eccentric wax sculptor and whisked off to the seamy streets of Paris, where they meet a domineering widow and her quiet, pale son. Together, they convert an abandoned monkey house into an exhibition hall for wax heads, and the spectacle becomes a sensation. As word of her artistic talent spreads, Marie is called to Versailles, where she tutors a princess and saves Marie Antoinette in childbirth. But outside the palace walls, Paris is roiling....

Keeping his secret could expose her own... Cavalier Cove, Cornwall, 1815 Adeline Naughton came to Cavalier Cove to escape her family’s wrath after a failed engagement. Her uncle pays the rent on a small cottage, and in return, expects her to spy on a community-wide smuggling operation. In order to protect her precarious bit of safety, she needs to give her uncle something. When she corners a notorious French smuggler, she’s determined to turn him over. Her charming captive is equally—and annoyingly—determined to talk her out of it... If you enjoy lighthearted, steamy Regency ...

In the town of Night Vale, there’s a faceless old woman who secretly lives in everyone’s home, but no one knows how she got there or where she came from...until now. Told in a series of eerie flashbacks, the story of The Faceless Old Woman goes back centuries to reveal an initially blissful and then tragic childhood on a Mediterranean Estate in the early 19th century, her rise in the criminal underworld of Europe, a nautical adventure with a mysterious organization of smugglers, her plot for revenge on the ones who betrayed her, and ultimately her death and its aftermath.

In this follow-up to Austenland, Charlotte Kinder is eager to escape the numbness she feels after her divorce. Deciding to get away, she visits the Regency-themed Pembrook Park resort in England, where talented actors set the perfect scene. But with everyone playing a role, it’s hard to distinguish reality from fantasy. So when Charlotte’s heart stirs, she wonders if she’s simply caught up in the experience - or if her ability to feel is finally returning.

Gretel has never had any time for sorcerers, considering them nothing more than show-offs with questionable fashion sense. It is with some reluctance and a deal of grumpiness, then, that she agrees to look into the matter of a murdered magician. All that is left of him is a grisly remnant, which the police quack confirms is the murdered man’s appendix. What has become of the rest of him is baffling the local constabulary, the Sorcerers’ Society, and, not least, the hapless trickster’s widow.

Imagine that there are American MIAs who chose to remain missing after the Vietnam War. Imagine that there is a family in which four generations of strong, alluring women have shared a mysterious connection to an outlandish figure from Japanese folklore. Imagine just those things (don’t even try to imagine the love story) and you’ll have a foretaste of Tom Robbins’s eighth and perhaps most beautifully crafted novel--a work as timeless as myth yet as topical as the latest international threat.

Now showing at the Palace: classic movies, ghostly mayhem, and murder! When Nora Paige agrees to use the Palace movie theater for the launch of a new online game, she has no way of knowing that the event will end in murder. But when one of the theater’s owners is accused of the crime, the future of the Palace could be in danger. With help from Trixie, the lively ghost of a 1930s usherette, Nora sets out to solve the crime, all while dealing with the latest manipulations from her lying ex, the meddling of a Hollywood mogul with revenge on his mind, and the mysterious delivery box of ...

A satire of teenage life follows cynical soon-to-graduate Flannery Culp on a raucous journey through high school in the 1990s, covering SATs, college applications, friends, boyfriends, tabloid journalism, and TV talk shows. A first novel.

This is the third book in the Old Filth trilogy ( Old Filth, The Man in the Wooden Hat, Last Friends). Last Friends depicts the marriage of Edward Feathers and Betty as seen through the eyes of Edward’s friend and Betty's lover Terry Veneering.

It is the dawn of the twentieth century when the beautiful, budding feminist Katherine Dexter falls in love with Stanley McCormick, son of a millionaire inventor. The two wed, but before the marriage is consummated, Stanley experiences a nervous breakdown and is diagnosed as a schizophrenic sex maniac. Locked up for the rest of his life at Riven Rock, the family's California mansion, Stanley is treated by a series of confident doctors determined to cure him.

After two rollicking adventures through Western literature, resourceful literary detective Thursday Next definitely needs some downtime. And what better place for a respite than in the hidden depths of the Well of Lost Plots, where all unpublished books reside? But peace and quiet remain elusive for Thursday, who soon discovers that the Well is a veritable linguistic free-for-all, where grammasites run rampant, plot devices are hawked on the black market, and lousy books—like the one she has taken up residence in—are scrapped for salvage.