Historical Humor

When his teacher sets the class a History project, Sam cannot choose which bit of History he prefers, so decides to do all of it. His version of History is a rumbustious collection of half remembered facts, assembled roughly in the right order, and glued together with alarmingly confident misunderstanding. Sam takes us from Ancient Egypt right up to Last Week with the flair of a bright eyed nine year old.

The year is 1517. Dismas is a relic hunter: one who procures "authentic" religious relics for wealthy and influential clients. His two most important patrons are Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony; and soon-to-be Cardinal Albrecht of Mainz. While Frederick is drawn to the recent writing of Martin Luther, Albrecht pursues the financial and political benefits of religion and seeks to buy a cardinalship through the selling of indulgences.

June 1957. One hot afternoon in the backwaters of the Deep South, a young black farmer named Tucker Caliban salts his fields, shoots his horse, burns his house, and heads north with his wife and child. His departure sets off an exodus of the state’s entire black population, throwing the established order into brilliant disarray. Told from the points of view of the white residents who remained, A Different Drummer stands, decades after its first publication in 1962, as an extraordinary and prescient triumph of satire and spirit.

Oscar Hopkins is a high-strung preacher's kid with hydrophobia and noisy knees. Lucinda Leplastrier is a frizzy-haired heiress who impulsively buys a glass factory with the inheritance forced on her by a well-intentioned adviser. In the early parts of this lushly written audiobook, author Peter Carey renders the seminal turning points in his protagonists' childhoods as exquisite 19th-century set pieces.

This novel centers on the figure of Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, a member of the dying class of the landed gentry, who spends most of his time lying in bed gazing at life in an apathetic daze, encouraged by his equally lazy servant Zakhar and routinely swindled by his acquaintances. But this torpid existence comes to an end when, spurred on by his crumbling finances, the love of a woman, and the reproaches of his friend, the hardworking Schtoltz, Oblomov finds that he must engage with the real world and face up to his commitments.

Where did the Brothers Grimm get the inspiration for their classic fairy tales? Maybe from their own encounters with the strange and magical… Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm never believed in magic—until their mother fell ill, and tales of a rare and powerful magic that can bring back the dead became their only hope. Desperate to save her, the brothers venture into the dark forest, where myths come to life and danger lurks behind every tree. A water sprite speaks in riddles of love spells and lost souls. A witch lures children to a house covered in breads and cakes. An infuriating girl named ...

Chuck's Dead. Apparently that's good news. There are rules, though. Apparently, that's bad news. Chuck's mentor in Hell, Lucky, really isn't that good at his job and failed to mention to him that there was a big taboo about being intimate with the denizens of Heaven, succubi, and even the angels. That's not going to stop the two of them from having a great time in the afterlife, though! As he learns to navigate the pitfalls and the rewards, he continues to realize that the women of Hell want all the hard, fast, unprotected sex he can muster, their fertile bodies craving anything their man ...

It's the summer of 1989. Jack McGuinn is a dockporter, transporting tourists' luggage piled high in the basket of his bike on Mackinac Island, Michigan. It's a summer resort where cars are outlawed and pedal power rules. He's got the season wired tight: a family cottage on the bluff, a dream job, and a loyal crew of hell-raising, tip-hustling buddies. When his old friend turned rival challenges him to ride a record-setting load of luggage, he takes the bet. Soon, he realizes he's not just carrying suitcases; he's carrying the island's future, which is about to be paved over for profit.

In 1962, Jackie Hart moved to Naples, Florida, from Boston with her husband and children. Wanting something personally fulfilling to do with her time, she starts a reading club and anonymously hosts a radio show, calling herself Miss Dreamsville. The racially segregated town falls in love with Miss Dreamsville, but doesn't know what to make of Jackie, who welcomes everyone into her book club, including a woman who did prison time for allegedly killing her husband....

From the original Greek financial crisis (when the profligate Gods of Olympus were punished by Odin and the other Norse Gods for their unchecked spending) to a handy unintended benefit of cosmetic surgery; from Pope Ron (the first Australian pope, who wants nothing more than to live quietly) to a rather droll cat named Stanley to Good President Wenceslas (benevolent leader of a snowy land) - these stories are by turns funny, poignant, and deliciously wicked, each one a gift begging to be unwrapped and enjoyed again and again.

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. What was Harry Flashman doing on the slopes of Little Bighorn, caught between the gallant remnant of Custer's 7th Cavalry and the attack of Sitting Bull's braves?

Heroic bookseller Laurent Letellier comes across an abandoned handbag on a Parisian street. There's nothing in the bag to indicate who it belongs to, although there's all sorts of other things in it. Laurent feels a strong impulse to find the owner and tries to puzzle together who she might be from the contents of the bag. Especially a red notebook with her jottings, which really makes him want to meet her. Without even a name to go on, and only a few of her possessions to help him, how is he to find one woman in a city of millions?

Uptight elfin historian Brangwain Spurge is on a mission: survive being catapulted across the mountains into goblin territory, deliver a priceless peace offering to their mysterious dark lord, and spy on the goblin kingdom - from which no elf has returned alive in more than 100 years. Brangwain's host, the goblin archivist Werfel, is delighted to show Brangwain around. They should be the best of friends, but a series of extraordinary double crosses, blunders, and cultural misunderstandings throws these two bumbling scholars into the middle of an international crisis.

Off the coast of Maine, Ruth Thomas is born into a feud fought for generations by two groups of local lobstermen over fishing rights for the waters that lie between their respective islands. At 18, she has returned from boarding school - smart as a whip, feisty, and irredeemably unromantic - determined to throw over her education and join the "stern men" working the lobster boats.

The road to true love is made rocky with horse thieves, highwaymen, former fiances, and a very determined Bow Street Runner. "Melanie Jackson is a talent to watch." —WritersWrite.com With the letter breaking his engagement, Stephan Kirton's hopes for respectability and happiness went up in smoke. It was inevitable that his travels abroad and "interaction with the lower classes" would put him beyond the scope of polite society. That and he was born a bastard. Ormstead Park was a place for dancing and flirting, for drinking and gambling, and for less innocent sports. It was a place where he...

Norman Mailer fused fact and fiction to create indelible portraits of such figures as Marilyn Monroe, Gary Gilmore, and Lee Harvey Oswald. In The Gospel According to the Son, Mailer reimagines, as no other modern author has, the key character of Western history. Here is Jesus Christ's story in his own words: the discovery of his divinity and the painful, powerful journey to accepting and expressing it, "as if I were a man enclosing another man within."

It is 1860, and while China seethes through the bloodiest civil war in history, and the British and French armies hack their way to the heart of the Forbidden City, Harry Flashman hoodwinks them all. Once again, that supreme anti-hero of the Victorian era, the one and only Harry Flashman, is ready to rise to the occasion no matter what depths of dishonor he must plumb. This is the inimitable Flashman at his very worst. And, as all Flashman fans know, that means he's at his irresistible best in this, his most exotic and erotic, uninhibited and hilarious adventure yet.

Oliver Dasenby is the most infuriating man Primrose Garland has ever known. He may be her brother's best friend, but he has an atrocious sense of humor. Eight years in the cavalry hasn't taught him solemnity, nor has the unexpected inheritance of a dukedom. But when Oliver inherited his dukedom, it appears that he also inherited a murderer. Oliver might be dreadfully annoying, but Primrose doesn't want him dead. She's going to make certain he survives his inheritance - and the only way to do that is to help him catch the murderer!

Earthy, raunchy and high spirited, this story of larkabout Jeeter Lester’s struggle to keep his farm is one of the most poignant and humorous in Depression-era literature and an American classic.

In his eagerly anticipated sequel to Jeeves and the King of Clubs, Ben Schott leads Jeeves and Wooster on another elegantly uproarious escapade. From the mean streets of Mayfair to the scheming spires of Cambridge, we encounter a joyous cast of characters: chiseling painters and criminal bookies, eccentric philosophers and dodgy clairvoyants, appalling poets and pocket dictators, vexatious aunts and their vicious hounds.