Historical Humor

When a crotchety, down-on-his-luck old man turns up as a temporary employee in Lindsie's father's bookshop, she and her friend Evan feel sorry for him. But after they follow him to his makeshift home, Mr. S. Kronos (aka Father Time) drags them on a wild ride through 5,000 years of hilarious history, insisting they meet the calendar's creators. Lindsie and Evan will never take the calendar for granted again.

Autumn, 1989. The waning days of the Cold War. A rogue Stasi colonel has acquired a nuclear bomb and threatens to level Berlin if and when the Wall comes down. CIA Agent Nick Harper is called in to foil the plot. Soon after arriving, however, Harper discovers his identity has been compromised. To stay alive, he must go along with a group of passionate young East Berliners who mistake him for their idol, American superstar David Hasselhoff.

The only work he finds is flying bootleg liquor into the USA. In desperation (what else?), he stands as a local MP and in desperation (why else?), they vote him in. But after spilling the beans on a bunch of government members indulging in Prohibition corruption, Bart’s soon cordially hated by everyone up to the Prime Minister - can he really be naïve enough to believe party propaganda that the people must be told the truth? So Bart’s goose - or gander - is cooked, and the resulting mess can be summed up as whisky galore!

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding is a comedic novel that follows the life and adventures of its foundling protagonist, Tom Jones, as he navigates through love, betrayal, and society's expectations. The novel is celebrated for its vivid characters, intricate plot, and exploration of human nature and morality, making it a significant work in the development of the novel as a literary form. Fielding's satirical lens critiques the hypocrisy of 18th-century British society while ultimately advocating for virtue and goodness.

Ostracized as a kid, Edgar Kellogg has always yearned to be popular. A disgruntled New York corporate lawyer, he's more than ready to leave his lucrative career for the excitement and uncertainty of journalism. When he's offered the post of foreign correspondent in a Portuguese backwater that has sprouted a homegrown terrorist movement, Edgar recognizes the disappeared larger-than-life reporter he's been sent to replace, Barrington Saddler, as exactly the outsize character he longs to emulate.

*****Available as a value box set amazon.com/dp/B09X3NM1YW (copy and paste the link into your browser) ***** When they arrive in town, trouble almost immediately arrives in the form of a mysterious stranger. As Hannah hopes and prays Luke will finally propose, she’s caught up in an age-old mystery—one that could claim her life, and the life of all those she loves. Hannah Marsh travels west to Twin Creeks, California, to meet up with the man of her dreams, Luke Anderson. There’s only one hitch: Hannah’s father, who is traveling with her, is very ill. Will Hannah’s father recover? ...

In 1977, Ickey Jerusalem, San Francisco’s golden-boy poet laureate (based on Blake), is found dead in a locked, first-class toilet on an arriving red-eye flight. Ded Smith, a desperately unhappy, intelligent philistine with a highly developed philosophy to match, is called in to investigate the poet’s death. Thus begins a series of hilarious encounters with the members of Jerusalem’s coterie (updated amalgams of characters from Blake’s work).

1968. Jean a six ans quand il est confié du jour au lendemain à sa grand-mère. Pour l'été. Pour toujours. Il n'a pas prévu ça. Elle non plus. Mémé Lucette n'est pas commode, mais dissimule un cœur tendre. Jean, véritable moulin à paroles, est un tourbillon de fraîcheur pour celle qui vivait auparavant une existence paisible, rythmée par ses visites au cimetière et sa passion pour le tricot. Chacun à une étape di-éreinte sur le chemin de la vie - elle a tout vu, il s'étonne de tout -, Lucette et Jean vont s'apprivoiser.

College senior Patty Wyatt is a fun-loving, headstrong, and intelligent girl who gets herself into mischief and learns valuable lessons, both in and out of the classroom. Written in 1903, this is Jean Webster’s first of many great American novels.

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Jonathan Coe's brilliant new comic novel Expo 58, read by the actor Julian Rhind-Tutt. Expo 58 - Good-looking girls and sinister spies: a naive Englishman at loose in Europe in Jonathan Coe's brilliant comic novelLondon, 1958: unassuming civil servant Thomas Foley is plucked from his desk at the Central Office of Information and sent on a six-month trip to Brussels.

Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. The enigmatic and powerful man known only as the Commodore has ordered it, and his henchmen, Eli and Charlie Sisters, will make sure of it. Though Eli doesn't share his brother's appetite for whiskey and killing, he's never known anything else. But their prey isn't an easy mark, and on the road from Oregon City to Warm's gold-mining claim outside Sacramento, Eli begins to question what he does for a living–and whom he does it for.

The story picks up from the end of Blue at the Mizzen when Jack Aubrey receives the news, in Chile, of his elevation to flag rank: Rear Admiral of the Blue Squadron, with orders to sail to the South Africa station. This new novel, unfinished and untitled at the time of O’Brian’s death, would have been a chronicle of that mission, and much else besides. As the novel opens, we are able to visit these friends we have followed so very far in a rare state of almost perfect felicity.

An ebullient Mr Finchley is about to propose marriage to a lady he had rescued from mishap, when he is sent to Paris by his firm. There he manages to upset a boat, adopt a stray orphan, and get himself kidnapped. The fine tangle he gets into takes some unravelling! Only when eventually back in London does he complete the proposal of marriage that was interrupted at the start. This gentle comedy trilogy was a runaway best seller on first publication in the 1930s and retains a timeless appeal today.

He always gets his lady… Billy Darling doesn’t enjoy being a wanted man until the day a duke’s prim and proper granddaughter comes marching into the Tumbleweed Saloon and points her derringer at his heart. Lucky for him, she's a mighty poor shot. She always gets her man… Instead of killing him, Esmerelda Fine hires him to find her runaway brother. Billy knows he should turn down her offer. He should resist her charms. But he doesn't. Because there comes a time in every man's life when he's got nothing left to lose...but his heart. New York Times bestselling author of Heather and ...

Summer 1989: Gunther Fahnstiel, once a tough cop who wasn't averse to taking a little side money from a certain madam, has just escaped the dementia ward of his Wichita nursing home. He's not exactly sure where he wants to go, but wherever it is, it has to do with the bag full of cash belonging to the man he accidentally backed over with his RV in 1979. During his search, Gunther begins to relive the violent fallout of that madam's sex lottery 40 years ago. As Gunther's memories unravel, his past and present will collide in a devastating reckoning.

In 1934, a rabbi's son in Prague joins a traveling circus, becomes a magician, and rises to fame under the stage name the Great Zabbatini just as Europe descends into World War II. When Zabbatini is discovered to be a Jew, his battered trunk full of magic tricks becomes his only hope of surviving the concentration camp where he is sent. Seven decades later in Los Angeles, 10-year-old Max finds a scratched-up LP that captured Zabbatini performing his greatest tricks.

Tennyson's Gift is an imaginative cocktail of Victorian seriousness and farce that reimagines the world of the 19th-century English poet laureate, placing him in the midst of eccentric company that includes Lewis Carroll. Going Loco features a critic trying to write a definitive account of the doppelganger in Gothic fiction, amid the chaos of her domestic life, including paranoia that her cleaning lady is taking over her life.

In China, in 1860, a lot of people mistakenly put their trust in Flashman: the English vicar’s daughter with her cargo of opium; Lord Elgin in search of an intelligence chief; the Emperor’s ravishing concubine, seeking a champion in her struggles for power; and Szu-Zhan, the female bandit colossus, as practised in the arts of love as in the arts of war. They were not to know that behind his Victoria Cross, Harry Flashman was a base coward and a charlatan. They took him at face value. And he took them, for all he could, while China seethed through the bloodiest civil war in history.

The Oaken... Humans long ago turned their backs on magic and the Oaken were charged with keeping it alive. Moving through glittering ballrooms and elegant manor houses, they find the most powerful magic…is love. The touch of souls in a single glance...Lord Archer Sinclair spent his nights among the Echelon and his days running Rowen. And then one night he looked across a ballroom and everything changed. With one glance, he knew that she was meant to be his and nothing would stop him from having her by his side-even Garnet herself. A love too strong to deny...Garnet had been raised to ...

One minute, Joe, Sam, and Fred are shooting hoops in Brooklyn; the next, they're on a court that is definitely not in New York and surrounded by a bunch of players wearing feathered headdresses and not much else. And the other team is saying something about losers being the next blood sacrifices.