Humorous Fiction Family

The Spring Creek Elementary School PTA Board, a coven of Mean Moms dressed in Uggs, yoga pants, and dermal filler, is up to no good, and Wynn Butler (middle-aged, uncool, and not bringing sexy back) is determined to find out what’s going on. With help from her two kids, a Roomba vacuum-turned-mobile surveillance drone, and a few close friends, Wynn launches a covert investigation that leads to the mother of all revenge capers at the school’s annual Fall Festival.

Meet the Devohrs: Zee, a Marxist literary scholar who detests her parents' wealth but nevertheless finds herself living in their carriage house; Gracie, her mother, who claims she can tell your lot in life by looking at your teeth; and Bruce, her step-father, stockpiling supplies for the Y2K apocalypse and perpetually late for his tee time. Then there's Violet Devohr, Zee's great-grandmother, who they say took her own life somewhere in the vast house, and whose massive oil portrait still hangs in the dining room.

Back in the long ago '90s, Rachel Walsh was a mess. But a spell in rehab transformed everything. Life became very good, very quickly. These days, Rachel has love, family, a great job as an addiction counsellor, she even gardens. Her only bad habit is a fondness for expensive trainers. But with the sudden reappearance of a man she'd once loved, her life wobbles. She'd thought she was settled. Fixed forever. Is she about to discover that no matter what our age everything can change? Is it time to think again, Rachel?

Kathryn Erskine won the National Book Award for her mesmerizing novel Mockingbird. In The Absolute Value of Mike, a young man grows up during an unlikely adventure. Despite his best efforts, Mike has a hard time communicating with his calculus-loving father - and having a math learning disability certainly doesn’t help. But when Mike is sent to Pennsylvania to work on an engineering project, the young man learns valuable lessons from the colorful characters he meets.

When Abby and Jonah's magic mirror brings them into the story of Hansel and Gretel, they're determined not to fracture this tasty fairy tale. They figure it'll be a piece of gingerbread cake - until Hansel and Gretel turn out to be not so sweet. The brother and sister end up trapping Abby and Jonah in the witch's candy house. So now it's up to the Smithville siblings to escape - and find their way back to home sweet home!

The holiday film A Christmas Story, first released in 1983, has become a bona fide Christmas perennial, gaining in stature and fame with each succeeding year. Its affectionate, wacky, and wryly realistic portrayal of an American family's typical Christmas joys and travails in small-town Depression-era Indiana has entered our imagination and our hearts with a force equal to It's a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street.

When grandmother Maureen Phelan is surprised in her home by a stranger, she clubs the intruder with a Holy Stone. The consequences of this unplanned murder connect four misfits struggling against their meager circumstances. Ryan is a fifteen-year-old drug dealer desperate not to turn out like his alcoholic father, Tony, whose feud with his next-door neighbor threatens to ruin his family. Georgie is a sex worker who half-heartedly joins a born-again movement to escape her profession and drug habit.

Cornelius P. "Fatty" O'Leary and his wife, Betty, plan a vacation in Ireland for his 40th birthday, where they will tour his ancestral homeland and relax in the countryside. Almost immediately, things go terribly wrong: the seats in economy class on the plane are too small; the country hotel's dinner spread and bathroom fixtures leave much to be desired; and the down-to-earth O'Learys find their fellow guests are more than a little snobbish.

After their adventures in China and Germany, the Kidd family is ready for some rest and relaxation. But when you're an ace treasure hunting team, there's always another adventure waiting around the corner! This time the Kidds head to Russia, where a set of priceless paintings by Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt has gone missing. Hot on the trail of the daring thieves, the Kidds race through the sinister streets of St. Petersburg and the wild Arctic tundra to track down the stolen treasure.

Once upon a time - long, long ago, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth - an egg rolled away from its mother and landed in the ocean, where it froze solid and stayed peacefully for thousands of years. Then one day, Santa and his elves discover the frozen egg, and Santa sits on it to see if it will hatch. But he can't guess what's inside: a dinosaur! Meanwhile, a young boy named William Trundle has only ever wished for one thing for Christmas: a dinosaur! So when Santa accidentally gives William the real Christmasaurus instead of a stuffed replica, it's the best Christmas ever!

Finbar Dolan is lost and lonely. Except he doesn’t know it. Despite escaping his blue-collar Boston upbringing to carve out a mildly successful career at a Madison Avenue ad agency, he’s a bit of a mess and closing in on 40. He’s recently called off a wedding. Now, a few days before Christmas, he’s forced to cancel a long-postponed vacation in order to write, produce, and edit a Superbowl commercial for his diaper account in record time. Fortunately, it gets worse....

Taking us inside one of the 20th century's most ambitious assassination attempts - "making history personal", as one character puts it - High Dive moves between the luxurious hospitality of a British tourist town and the troubled city of Belfast, Northern Ireland, at the height of the armed struggle between the Irish Republican Army and those loyal to the UK government.

Tara Gallagher is knackered. She used to dream of being Beyoncé but suddenly she’s 36—with three kids, a loving husband, a very boring job—and instead of headlining Coachella, she’s in her pyjamas on a Friday night, watching cheesy TV. It’s time for a mommy makeover. She’s going to show her teenage daughter she’s still cool. She’s going to show her husband she’s still an absolute ride. She’s going to show her colleagues she’s still a Boss Bish.

Lord Fredrick Ashton may not feel ready to be a father, but with a little Ashton on the way he's sure about one thing: The wolfish curse on his family must end soon, before the child is born. Penelope willingly takes on the challenge; when Lady Constance's doctor prescribes a seaside holiday, Penelope jumps at the chance to take the three Incorrigible children to Brighton, where she hopes to persuade the old sailor Pudge to reveal what he knows about the Ashton curse.

Unless you are a slug, a sea anemone, or mildew, you probably prefer not to be damp. You might also prefer not to listen to this audiobook, in which the Baudelaire siblings descend into the depths of despair, underwater. The horrors they encounter are too numerous to list, and include mushrooms, a mechanical monster, a distressing message from a lost friend, and tap dancing.

To all appearances, Zachary King is a man with luck on his side. A steady, well-paying job, a rent-free Manhattan apartment, and Hope, his stunning, blue-blooded fiancee: smart, sexy, and completely out of his league. But as the wedding day looms, Zack finds himself haunted by the memory of his best friend, Rael, killed in a car wreck two years earlier, and by his increasingly complicated feelings for Tamara, the beautiful widow Rael left behind.

New York City is on high alert: a gasoline truck is stuck in the Midtown tunnel and the driver has fled. Through panic and gridlock, Alex and Ruth must transport their beloved old dachshund, whose back legs are suddenly paralyzed, to the animal hospital, using a cutting board as a stretcher. But this is also the weekend when Alex and Ruth must sell the apartment in which they have lived for most of their adult lives.

From "one of the funniest writers in America" comes a collection of stories culled from the front lines of the millennial culture wars. Rife with failing rock bands, student loans, and participation trophies,

Spoiled Brats is about a generation of narcissists - and the well-meaning boomers who made them that way.

No new people: that's Annie Mercer's vow. It's bad enough that her boss sabotaged her chemistry career and her best friend tried to cure her with crystals. But after her fiancé, Jon, asks for space while he's gallivanting around Paris, Annie decides she needs space too - from everyone. Yet when Harper moves in next door, Annie can't help but train a watchful eye on the glamorous but fragile young woman. And if keeping Harper safe requires teaming up with Mo, a maddeningly optimistic amateur detective, who is she to mind her own business?

In her own words, Stella Sweeney is just "an ordinary woman living an ordinary life with her husband and two teenage kids", working for her sister in their neighborhood beauty salon. Then one day she is struck by a serious illness that lands her in the hospital for months.