Short Stories Humor

A Selection of Short Stories by Leo Tolstoy read by Bart Wolffe.

The “best short story writer in English” (Time) is back with a masterful collection that explores ideas of power, ethics, and justice, and cuts to the very heart of what it means to live in community with our fellow humans. With his trademark prose—wickedly funny, unsentimental, and perfectly tuned—Saunders continues to challenge and surprise: here is a collection of prismatic, deeply resonant stories that encompass joy and despair, oppression and revolution, bizarre fantasy and brutal reality.

When Sam’s wife first tells him about Vitek, a twenty-first-century fertility lab, he sees it as the natural next step in trying to help their future child get a “leg up” in a competitive world. But the more Sam considers the lives that his child could lead, the more he begins to question his own relationships and the choices he has made in his life.

Close your eyes and you can almost feel the rocking of the chair as you listen. Kathryn Tucker Windham's gentle Southern accent winds its way through these childhood and adult recollections, while her traditional wisdom and sharp sense of humor eventually break the spell she casts like a blanket over her listeners.

A book of brilliant entertainments: 39 stories spanning the entire career of a great modern writer and an undisputed comic genius, "a satirist whose skill at sticking pens in people rates him a roomy cell in the murderers' row (Swift, Poe, Wilde, Shaw) of English letters" ( Time).

Santa. Zombies. The HOA. Life in the suburbs isn’t all birthday parties and bounce houses.

Just when things have finally cooled down for 88-year-old Maud after the disturbing discovery of a dead body in her apartment in Gothenburg, a couple of detectives return to her doorstep. Though Maud dodges their questions with the skill of an Olympic gymnast a fifth of her age, she wonders if suspicion has fallen on her, little old lady that she is. The truth is, ever since Maud was a girl, death has seemed to follow her....

A collection of short story alien erotica featuring the Zeylan species. Come explore the future of arranged marriages with aliens. Humans are compatible with three species, but these girls all chose the Zeylans through the Intergalactic Marriage Council. Each woman has a different reason for wanting to get married, and the Zeylanian home world has unique advantages that make the men an attractive choice. These guys might not be as "alien" as some other species, but the guys know how to please a woman. Bundle includes: Alien Impulses: Mating Luke Alien Impulses: Mating Jared Alien Impulses: ...

Already sold in eight countries around the world, these nine energized, irreverent stories from Nathan Englander introduce an astonishing new talent.

This book was previously published as “The Babysitter’s First Menage” by Reba Bale. Sammie has a big secret – and it involves her older boss! The college co-ed works as a daytime nanny for Mr. and Mrs. Ruiz after her morning classes. While Mr. Ruiz works at home, Sammie watches the baby. Except sometimes when the baby is taking his nap, Sammie takes care of her boss instead. She knows it’s wrong, but the handsome older man makes her feel things that she’s never felt before. Naughty things. Until the day Mrs. Ruiz unexpectedly comes home to find Sammie kissing her husband. The ...

Quench your thirst for drama, mystery, humor, romance, and fantasy with 25 short stories, each with a twist the reader won’t see coming. If you hadn’t had a drink or two before you read this book, you will need it afterwards. With stories ranging from four hundred to seven thousand words, this collection has something for everyone. Audrey is pregnant by someone other than her husband. Renee left the scene of a fatal hit-and-run accident. Barbara’s hook-up with an Internet stranger goes too far. What is Crystal’s secret? How will a jealous girlfriend, a skeptical husband, and an ...

Fair warning: Raised in Captivity does not slot into a smooth preexisting groove. If Saul Steinberg and Italo Calvino had adopted a child from a Romanian orphanage and raised him on Gary Larsen and Thomas Bernhard, he would still be nothing like Chuck Klosterman. They might be good company, though. Funny, wise and weird in equal measure, Raised in Captivity bids fair to be one of the most original and exciting story collections in recent memory, a fever graph of our deepest unvoiced hopes, fears and preoccupations.

Bubba’s back from Fairyland, and sometimes it feels like they shoulda just stayed there! Man, coming back to the real world sucks. Bubba and his whole team have been fired on account of going MIA for a year and a half (yeah, time moves differently in Fairyland - yay), and now they’ve got to…get jobs? Oh, this is going to go well.

The village that Time ignored. A tale of swans, local myths, and mayhem. A year in the life of the not always sleepy Somerset village of Blackney Foloren. Separated from the outside world by the infamous Somerset Levels, Blackney is a place which the modern world has overlooked for centuries, where the inhabitants conduct themselves to their entire satisfaction but not a great deal usually happens. However, they are about to have their feathers seriously ruffled, as this tale takes flight with several rather peculiar goings on. As with any small village, there is a pub, a shop, a church, a ...

A collection of short stories from The Big Garage on Clear Shot chronicles the offbeat lives of the colorful inhabitants of The End of the Road, a small town in Alaska.

Be warned! Awful animals lurk inside. These 10 tales of the world’s craziest creatures will have you shaking with laughter. You’ll never look at pets in the same way again! Marvel at Houdini, the magician’s rabbit. Take a trip around the world with Zoom, the supersonic tortoise. Gasp at the chaos created by Griselda, a grizzly bear with a big secret. And run for your lives! It’s Furp, the monstrous goldfish!

"The Mortician's Daughter& other short stories" is the first collection of short fiction by "Life in the Lion's Mouth" novelist James R. Dubbs. From the author's telling of love found at the exact wrong moment in The Mortician's Daughter, to the Kafkaesque tale of a man's attempt to purchase a movie ticket in Chimera, to the comedic turn of hard-boiled Private Investigator Buzz Schlomer in Penguins Can't Fly, this eclectic collection of stories explores the human condition with pathos, imagination, and a sly, whispered satire.

Discover the lost Seuss! These rarely seen Dr. Seuss stories were published in magazines in the early 1950s and are finally available in audiobook form.

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk is a novel made up of stories: 23 of them, to be precise. Twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales you'll ever encounter, sometimes all at once. They are told by people who have answered an ad headlined "Writers' Retreat: Abandon Your Life for Three Months", and who are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of "real life" that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them.

The stories in this selection, taken from William Peskett’s four collections, Mango and Sticky Rice, Mist on the Jungle, Sweet Song of the Siren and The Day of the Tiger, cover the different ways in which people look at how the world works, for example in the clash between a scientific approach and a traditionalist Buddhist mode of thought. And some deal with the impossible yearnings that can motivate or destroy a person. Sometimes these may be shallow—a lust for drink, for money or for sex—and the characters absurdly comic, self-destructive or psychopathic. Sometimes the yearning may...