Historical Humor

Welcome to the world of Steamboat Willie’s Whistlestop Puzzle Mysteries! It’s the 1920s, and you’re the new first mate of a steamboat, the SS Wilkinshire. Willie is a talking mouse who you’ll encounter on your first mystery! Together, the two of you will solve crimes. And there’s a lot of them! The SS Wilkinshire is a magnet for unfortunate events: murder, blackmail, thievery. There’s always a puzzle that needs to be solved. If you think playing detective is going to be easy, think again! These puzzle mysteries are tricky. It takes a very sharp eye to recognize the clues, so ...

Spreading democracy takes more than cutting-edge military hardware. Winning the hearts and minds of a troubled nation is a special mission we give to bewildered young soldiers who can't speak the native language, don't know the customs, can't tell friends from enemies, and, in this wonderfully outrageous Iraq-era novel about Vietnam, wonder why they have to risk their lives spraying peanut plants, inoculating pigs, and hauling miracle rice seed for Ho Chi Minh.

Donald Cameron, a young Scotsman, is commissioned to write a book on the outsider's view of the English. He sets about his task with enthusiasm, encountering along the way an array of richly comical characters including civil servants, newspaper editors, minor poets, a glamourous movie star, politicians, and many more. This satire of English eccentricity has become a classic of 20th century literature.

There was a time when the Red Gods ruled the land. The Dark Lady and her horde dealt in death and blood and fire. That time has long since passed, and the neighbouring kingdoms of Mireces and Rilpor hold an uneasy truce. The only blood spilled is confined to the border, where vigilantes known as Wolves protect their kin and territory at any cost. But after the death of his wife, King Rastoth is plagued by grief, leaving the kingdom of Rilpor vulnerable.

Recently widowed from her marriage of convenience, Eliza, now Countess of Somerset, is bequeathed a fortune, hers to keep as long as she can steer clear of scandal. It should be simple – Eliza has spent a lifetime following the rules – but now that she is rich, titled and independent, misbehaviour is much more tempting…

Look who's on the Dick Gibson Radio Show: Arnold the Memory Expert ("I've memorized the entire West Coast shoreline - except for cloud cover and fog banks"). Bernie Perk, the burning pharmacist. Henry Harper, the nine-year old orphan millionaire, terrified of being adopted. The woman whose life revolves around pierced lobes. An evil hypnotist. Swindlers. Con-men. And Dick Gibson himself. Anticipating talk radio and its crazed hosts, Stanley Elkin creates a brilliant comic world held together by American manias and maniacs in all their forms.

Oliver Vice, 41, prominent philosopher, scholar, and art collector, is missing and presumed dead, over the side of Queen Mary 2. Troubled by his friend’s possible suicide, the unnamed narrator of Lawrence Douglas’ new novel launches an all-consuming investigation into Vice’s life history. Douglas, moving backward through time, tells a mordantly humorous story of fascination turned obsession, as his narrator peels back the layers of the Vice family’s rich and bizarre history.

This novel is about a woman called Martha. She knows there is something wrong with her, but she doesn't know what it is. Her husband Patrick thinks she is fine. He says everyone has something, the thing is just to keep going. Martha told Patrick before they got married that she didn't want to have children. He said he didn't mind either way because he has loved her since he was fourteen and making her happy is all that matters, although he does not seem able to do it. By the time Martha finds out what is wrong, it doesn't really matter anymore.

"All's fair in love and war", according to airship captain Josette Dupre, until her hometown of Durum becomes occupied by the enemy and her mother a prisoner of war. Then it becomes "nothing's fair except bombing those Vins to high hell". Before she can rescue her town, however, Josette must maneuver her way through the nest of overstuffed vipers that make up Garnia's military and royal leaders in order to drum up support.

Beatrice Hyde-Clare est unique : sous la Régence anglaise, les jeunes filles de son âge sont rares à être encore célibataires... Et encore moins nombreuses à enquêter sur des meurtres. Beatrice a désespérément besoin de détourner ses pensées du séduisant mais inaccessible duc de Kesgrave. Miracle : monsieur Skeffington surgit du passé avec une demande peu orthodoxe. Il voudrait que ce soit Bea qui enquête sur la mort suspecte de l'amant de sa future belle-mère, plutôt que de faire appel aux autorités.

The setting is Seattle's Lake City neighborhood during the 2001 holiday season. In the wake of the 9/11 tragedy and at the peak of Seattle's first wave of tech-boom gentrification - a wave that never quite made it to his neighborhood - Lane Bueche schemes how to win back his wife (and her trust fund). In his childhood bedroom in his mother's decrepit old house, the idealistic but self-serving striver Lane licks his wounds and hatches a plot.

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!

Flashman must choose - politcs in London or slave trading in Africa - not that it matters really in this hilarious third installement of the Flashman Papers. When Flashman was inveigled into a game of pontoon with Disraeli and Lord George Bentinck, he was making an unconscious choice about his own future - would it lie in the House of Commons or the West African slave trade? Was there, for that matter, very much difference?

Mrs. Harris is a salt-of-the-earth charlady, content with her lot, cleaning the homes of the rich. However, her knack of setting things straight often has the tendency to stray beyond keeping things neat and tidy. In Mrs Harris MP, the honest as-ever old char impresses her employer with her no-nonsense political views to such an extent that he—an MP, no less—encourages her to become a voice for the people of Battersea and stand for election herself.

A Kasey Michaels Alphabet Regency Romance. Orphaned but quite independent Alexandra Saxon had promised her dying father she'd travel to England and present herself to her curmudgeon of a grandfather, who was certain to take her in. Well, a certain English nobleman did ... Kasey Michaels Alphabet Regency Romance Titles: The Belligerent Miss Boynton The Tenacious Miss Tamerlane The Rambunctious Lady Royston The Lurid Lady Lockport The Savage Miss Saxon The Questioning Miss Quinton The Mischievous Miss Murphy The Playful Lady Penelope The Anonymous Miss Addams Moonlight Masquerade The Dubious ...

A pretty but spiteful young actress with a talent for destroying men's lives is found dead in a college room just yards from the office of the unconventional Oxford don Gervase Fen. Anyone who knew the girl would gladly have shot her, but can Fen discover who did shoot her and why?

Renee is from a small town, in provincial France, who flees to Paris, only to find that it has been overrun by Nazis. He returns to his hometown of Brassac to discover that the fiancé he abandoned on the night of their wedding has joined the local convent. He finds himself mayor of the town he abandoned when the former officeholder flees to avoid working with the Vichy government.

When a woman yearns to be reunited with an aviator she met in WWI, fun-loving 1920s detectives and their cool cats pounce on the case. Praise for Magical Cool Cats Mysteries: “FUN! Step back into the days when you needed a password to get that drink, veterans had come home from the Great War, and the electric double decker trolley was the Bee's Knees of public transportation. Travel along with a well polished debutante, a rough hewn veteran pilot, and the deaf Persian cat, who is actually the brains of this detective agency, as the humans try to keep up! “The Magical Cool Cats Mystery ...

Welcome to the world of Steamboat Willie’s Whistlestop Puzzle Mysteries! It’s the 1920s, and you’re the new first mate of a steamboat, the SS Wilkinshire. You encounter Willie, a talking mouse, on your first mystery! Together, the two of you team up to solve crimes. And there’s a lot of them! The SS Wilkinshire is a magnet for unfortunate events: murder, blackmail, thievery. There’s always a puzzle that needs to be solved. If you think playing detective is going to be easy, think again! These puzzle mysteries are tricky. It takes a very sharp eye to recognize the clues, so ...

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?