Historical Humor

Edith Lavery is a woman on the make. The attractive only child of a middle-class accountant, she leaves behind her dull job in a Chelsea estate agents and manages to bag one of the most eligible bachelors of the day: Charles Broughton, heir to the Marquess of Uckfield. But is life amongst the upper echelons of 'good' society all that it seems? Edith soon discovers there's much more to the aristocracy than dancing in Anabel's, shooting small birds and understanding which fork to use at dinner.

Sherlock Holmes is an unparalleled genius. Warlock Holmes is an idiot. A font of arcane power, certainly. But he's brilliantly dim. Frankly, he couldn't deduce his way out of a paper bag. The only thing he has really got going for him are the might of 1,000 demons and his stalwart companion. Thankfully, Dr. Watson is always there to aid him through the treacherous shoals of Victorian propriety and save him from a gruesome death every now and again.

Picture it: Pine Grove, Louisiana. The year is 1986. A clueless divorced man stumbles into a world he never knew existed: aerobics class. Stacy I’ve always been the practical one in my friend group. Level-headed. Responsible. Cautious. Until the day HE came into my aerobics class… Jessie After I got divorced I decided it was time to get back into shape. I’d let myself get a bit soft over the years I was married. I was lifting weights at the community center when another guy said that aerobic exercise was the key to burning fat. When I saw a sign for Aerobics class, I figured that was ...

She’s a scandal with a soft spot for stray animals. He’s England’s most eligible beast tamer. What could possibly go wrong? Lady Beatrice Thornfield has three passions in life: rescuing wounded creatures, ignoring societal expectations, and avoiding marriage like the plague. Unfortunately, her eccentric father just gambled away the family’s fortune—on her so-called talent for animal training. Now she’s stuck in a very public contest against England’s most famous (and infuriatingly handsome) animal expert. If she loses, her family is ruined. If she wins… well, she might lose ...

Movimenti sospetti nella notte a Bellano: forse allucinazioni, forse faccende private, forse non proprio reati. Forse. "Un uomo in mutande?" chiese il maresciallo Ernesto Maccadò. Nessuna traccia di sorriso. Anzi, un'espressione che valeva un punto interrogativo. Il Misfatti l'aveva messa sullo scherzo, ma quello, niente, aveva preteso i dettagli invece di riderci su. "Si spieghi meglio, appuntato", disse il Maccadò. "Dicevo tanto per..." annaspò il Misfatti. "L'ascolto comunque", insisté il maresciallo.

Born in 1799, Cashel Greville Ross experiences myriad lives: joyous and devastating, years of luck and unexpected loss. Moving from County Cork to London, from Waterloo to Zanzibar, Cashel seeks his fortune across continents in war and in peace. He faces a terrible moral choice in a village in Sri Lanka as part of the East Indian Army. He enters the world of the Romantic Poets in Pisa. In Ravenna he meets a woman who will live in his heart for the rest of his days.

A Kasey Michaels Alphabet Regency Romance. Candice Murphy and her uncle Max con their way through the world impersonating Italian counts and African princes, duping the greedy into parting with their money in hopes of fattening their fortunes. Mark Antony Betancourt, Marquess of Coniston, is sure he knows their game. What he doesn't quite yet know is that Candie will win his heart. 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 ...

Five hundred years ago Henry VIII had a fearsome temper and bloodthirsty reputation to match; more beast than human, some might say. . .Henry the Eighth was the bloodiest king ever to have sat on the throne of England. This fast-paced, exciting, inventive, and just plain bloody retelling of his reign will bring to light the real man behind the myth. Be dragged back kicking and screaming five hundred years into Tudor England.

Dr. Siri might finally be allowed to retire (again). Although he loves his two morgue assistants, he’s tired of being Laos’ national coroner - a job he never wanted in the first place. Plus, he’s pushing 80 and wants to spend some time with his wife before his untimely death, which has been predicted by the local transvestite fortune teller. But retirement is not in the cards for Dr. Siri after all. He’s dragged into one last job for the Lao government: supervising an excavation for the remains of a US fighter pilot....

Harry Flashman: the unrepentant bully of Tom Brown's schooldays, now with a Victoria Cross, has three main talents - horsemanship, facility with foreign languages and fornication. A reluctant military hero, Flashman plays a key part in most of the defining military campaigns of the 19th century, despite trying his utmost to escape them all. When all other trusts fail, turn to Flashman' Abraham LincolnIn China in 1860, a lot of people mistakenly put their trust in Flashman.

When Lionel Savage, a popular poet in Victorian London, learns from his butler that they're broke, he marries the beautiful Vivien Lancaster for her money, only to find that his muse has abandoned him. Distraught and contemplating suicide, Savage accidentally conjures the devil - the polite "Gentleman" of the title - who appears at one of the society parties Savage abhors. The two hit it off: The devil talks about his home, where he employs Dante as a gardener; Savage lends him a volume of Tennyson.

Adrienne Dayton flees from an arranged marriage to a man who doesn't love her. In fact, she is convinced that no man will sincerely love her. So when she ends up in a small town with a group of men wanting to be with her, she seeks escape from their advances. However, Trevor Lewis is intrigued by her and wonders what it will take to win her heart. When she offers to show him what romance is, he turns the tables on her. He'll be the one to romance her...until she agrees to marry him.

Mit präzisem Blick für die tragische Komik des Lebens stolpert Herr Lehmann durchs Leben. Durch jahrelange, ausgefuchste Ausweichmanöver und heroische Trägheit hat der arglistfreie, bis ins Mark ambitionslose Bierzapfer erfolgreich Ansprüche von Eltern, Vermietern, Nachbarn und Frauen ausgesessen. Nun, wir schreiben das Jahr 1989, lebt er weitgehend störungsfrei in seiner Eineinhalbzimmerwohnung in Kreuzberg, wenn er nicht in die nächste Kneipe geht. Doch plötzlich bricht eine unvorhergesehene Störung nach der anderen in seinen heißgeliebten Alltagstrott...

Harry Flashman: the unrepentant bully of Tom Brown's schooldays, now with a Victoria Cross, has three main talents - horsemanship, facility with foreign languages, and fornication. A reluctant military hero, Flashman plays a key part in most of the defining military campaigns of the 19th century, despite trying his utmost to escape them all.

New York socialite Kit McNair decides to host an impromptu dinner party at the home of her friend, Jimmy Wilson, to cheer him up following his divorce. What could possibly go wrong?

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.

Irene Bobs loves fast driving. Her husband is the best car salesman in southeastern Australia. Together they enter the Redex Trial, a brutal race around the ancient continent, over roads no car will ever quite survive. With them is their lanky, fair-haired navigator, Willie Bachhuber, a quiz show champion and failed schoolteacher who calls the turns and creeks crossings on a map that will remove them, without warning, from the white Australia they all know so well. This is a thrilling high-speed story that starts in one way and then takes you someplace else. It is often funny, more so as the world gets stranger, and always compelling, even as you learn a history these characters never knew themselves.

Edi and Ash have been best friends for over forty years, a bond formed by a lifetime of memories. Since childhood they have seen each other through life's milestones: stealing vodka from their parents, REM concerts, unexpected Scottish wakes, marriages, infertility, children. As Ash notes, 'Edi's memory is like the back-up hard drive for mine.' When Edi is diagnosed with the final stages of terminal ovarian cancer, she makes the painstaking decision to leave behind her husband and son to move to a hospice down the road from Ash.

AN ENCOUNTER is the story of Macu, a young man who leaves his tribe on his first solo hunting trip. Hoping to prove himself by killing and carrying home a small deer, his encounter turns out to be of a much more singular and fateful nature. An entertaining and instructive story suitable for readers of all ages.

Chichikov, a mysterious stranger, arrives in a provincial town with a bizarre but seductive proposition for local landowners. He proposes to buy the names of their serfs who have died but who are still registered on the census, saving their owners from paying tax on them. But what collateral will Chichikov receive for these "souls"?