Comedy Humor World

David Brenner draws on highlights from his "Laughter to the People" tour's stand-up material to show how humor can give us the power to transcend personal and world problems, from the unavoidable, like aging, to the uncontrollable, like war. His observations cover a wide range of issues, including fear of flying, going bald, marriage and divorce, pets, politics, terrorism, losing and gaining weight, money problems, and religion.

Andrea Hoffman is an overeducated, underemployed, and unmotivated recent college graduate until a harrowing robbery blasts her out of her funk and into a job in the finance world of early 1980s Chicago. At first, it seems like a bad fit. But the world of finance has its own weird charm, and she grows increasingly fascinated by the strange language of trading, the complexity of the stock market, and her colleagues, who navigate it all with ruthless confidence. Even though she has two strikes against her—Jewish and female—Andrea’s quick wit and strong work ethic propels her.

Nasrudin is the greatest of all Arab folk heroes, and is found across the Islamic World, from Morocco to Pakistan, and beyond. He is said to have been the wisest fool who ever lived - that is if he ever did live at all. Stories of Nasrudin’s many incarnations are studied by Sufis for their hidden wisdom, and are universally enjoyed for their humor. Sometimes Nasrudin is an impoverished itinerant or stallholder, and at others, he is the mayor, judge, vizier, or even the King.

Fourteen year-old Daniel Harwick's powerless days bullied at Ekhart Academy are about to end. Traumatically catapulted into a beautiful but terrifying world within, Daniel finds himself on the run from Pirates, Dragons, Shapeshifters, Spider-Elves, Griffins, Krakens, Cyborgs and even "Death" himself. Reluctantly, Daniel joins with a strange band of ragtag warriors questing for the legendary Wielder who alone can defeat the spread of the Necrom Void across the Living Land.

A multilayered masterpiece of fevered imagination and eroticism, Liebestod soars as the consummate work by one of America's greatest comic geniuses. As hilarious as it is heartbreaking, Liebestod returns us to Leslie Epstein’s most compelling literary character, that European emigrant and meagerly successful musician, Leib Goldkorn, whose final years as a randy centenarian in New York City end in one of the most memorable swan songs in recent fiction.

The United States prides itself on being the world’s melting pot, but during a long, hot summer in coastal North Carolina, three young people will put that theory to the test. A German named Tillmann is vacationing in the States with his girlfriend and corresponding with an African American colleague about the evolution of blues music.

From the No1 Bestselling author who brought you Gucci Gucci Co, Neurotica and A Catered Affair comes a hilarious new novel about falling in love, hating your job, and getting what you want out of life - without ever smudging your lipstick! When it comes to men, beauty columnist Rebecca Fine always seems to be on the scruffy end of the mascara wand. But all that changes the morning she meets Max Stoddart, her new colleague at the Daily Vanguard.

Everything in life has always come easily to me. Except Virginia, the art student studying abroad in Sicily where I’m helping at my cousin's restaurant. Now that I’ve met her, I can’t get her out of my head. She’s too good for me and we both know it. And even though it feels like it could be the worst thing for both of us, I can't help but want every part of her. Now if only we both knew how bad we were for each other.

It’s the end of summer 2003. George W. Bush has recently declared the mission in Iraq accomplished, the unemployment rate is at its highest in years, and Martha Stewart has just been indicted for insider trading. Meanwhile, somewhere in the Midwest, Troy Augustus Loudermilk (fair-haired, statuesque, charismatic) and his companion Harry Rego (definitely none of those things) arrive at America’s most prestigious creative-writing program, to which Loudermilk has recently been accepted for his excellence in poetry. Loudermilk, however, has never written a poem in his life.

Seth Bisen-Hersh’s third book Millennials Are Ruining the World! features 24 humorous essays on the generational divide. Topics include railing against millennials’ solipsistic entitlement, their lack of responsibility and reliability, and their outsized, outrageous outraging.

Can love make you brave? Hopelessly mismatched lovers, Donny and Ursula, are ignited by their mutual attraction to become unlikely heroes well beyond their imaginations or mere neurotic existences. If good sex can melt fear, and love can inspire leaps, then they’re in trouble because poor earth-loving, travel agent Ursula has never had the Big O, and cynical writer Donny’s heart is in hiding.

From the author of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, this is the story of women becoming inexplicably pregnant. And it happens to every type of woman, regardless of race or creed, from nuns to lesbians.

It happened to Beauford Abel's wife. With her, a perfume tester called; one of his more exotic samples made her black out for a split second. At least, she thought it was a split second.... When Beauford eventually figures out what's going on, he plays amateur sleuth. But instead of finding sex maniacs, he finds brainy apes planning to invade the Earth.

It’s not the end of the world. That’s what 39-year-old Tess Eliot has to remind herself after losing her newspaper column ("Tess Knows Best") and being dumped by her boyfriend for a younger woman (a feng shui expert? Really?). Then Tess is hired to write an etiquette guide preparing readers for the Ancient Mayan doomsday of December 21, 2012, and she has to ask herself: Could the world really be coming to an end? At first, Tess fakes her way through chapters like "Boundaries in the Bunker" and "Cannibalism: Yes or No?" But after uncovering a secret plot for world destruction, she is forced to embark on a life-changing odyssey.

It is not so much that Colin's adult education class is a riot - although lippy Jack and snide Nicola do their best to make it so, and even that nice, demure, octogenarian Miss Tedley has been known to lend a hand - it is more that Colin's own mind is a riot of conflicting thoughts around the luscious Amanda, life, school politics, literature and the rules of English usage, grammar and syntax.

The absurdity and distortion of reality that made Brock Clarke’s previous two novels so outrageously funny and yet so moving are on full display in his newest offering, The Happiest People in the World. Adapting the format of the political thriller and subverting it to tell his story of innocence corrupted, Clarke has delivered a biting and controversial satire on the American obsession with security and the conspiracies that threaten it.

An all-Jewish basketball team barnstorms across Depression-era America, confronting prejudice and point-shaving in this “some-times agonizing, frequently hilarious” novel (Chicago Tribune) by “the game’s foremost chronicler” (Wall Street Journal).

Autumn, 1989. The waning days of the Cold War. A rogue Stasi colonel has acquired a nuclear bomb and threatens to level Berlin if and when the Wall comes down. CIA Agent Nick Harper is called in to foil the plot. Soon after arriving, however, Harper discovers his identity has been compromised. To stay alive, he must go along with a group of passionate young East Berliners who mistake him for their idol, American superstar David Hasselhoff.

In A Vulgar Art, Ian Brodie uses a folkloristic approach to stand-up comedy, engaging the discipline's central method of studying interpersonal, artistic communication and performance. Because stand-up comedy is a rather broad category, people who study it often begin by relating it to something they recognize - "literature" or "theatre"; "editorial" or "morality" - and analyze it accordingly. A Vulgar Art begins with a more fundamental observation: Someone is standing in front of a group of people, talking to them directly, and trying to make them laugh.

Piedra Negra is an isolated village that is home to many soldiers who were injured in the revolution and now pass their time drinking firewater so intense that they all hallucinate and most never recover. The firewater distiller's daughter, Elena, longs to be a poet. After a chance encounter with Daniel Arcilla, Cuba's most important poet, she wins a national poetry prize and leaves Piedra Negra behind for Havana. There, she encounters a population adjusting to a new way of life post-revolution: spies with secret meetings and black marketeers dealing with censorship.

A teenager is diagnosed as terminally ill and given only seven days to live. As he goes to sleep, he travels to a fantasy world where magic, the strange, and absurdity reign. There's a legend in Strange World, one of an artifact that can grant a single wish. Taking on the persona of "Magna", the teen goes on a journey to find the artifact. But there's another legend: To make the wish, you must make a great and terrible sacrifice.