Comedy Humor World

Australia is a proud country full of proud people, but exactly what are we proud of? Comedian and history buff Ben Pobjie delves deep into Australia's past and has a good old rummage amongst the nation's personal effects. With wit, perspicacity and a healthily elastic attitude to historical accuracy, the great saga of Australia is unravelled like an old woolly jumper. For anyone who snoozed through history class at school, this is the book to get you all caught up.

After her husband's unexpected departure a year ago, poor Valentina is stuck. Help arrives in the form of an unwelcome guest: her mother, who shows up unannounced at Valentina's doorstep to take her on a 12-day Mediterranean cruise full of unexpected detours. If you've always longed to go on a cruise, ship out with Valentina. And if you've never wanted to go on a cruise, go anyway. You are likely find yourself alternately delighted and surprised by her quirky encounters at sea and alluring ports of call.

A best-selling author of books for adults and children, Mark Childress pens his most outrageous work yet with Georgia Bottoms. The titular heroine is the epitome of the church-going Southern belle, except for one teeny-tiny aspect of her life. Georgia’s family inheritance has long since evaporated, and to maintain her genteel lifestyle, Miss Bottoms has taken six affluent lovers—the fly in the ointment being that one is a married preacher who’s about to reveal their infidelity to the whole congregation.

Israel Bond may seem like a simple-if-sexy salesman for Mother Margolies' Old World Chicken Soup, but when the Holy Land needs his skills - his quickness with a pun, his second-to-none semitic seduction techniques, and (if absolutely necessary) his abilities at actual espionage - then the man known by the code name Oy-Oy-7 (licensed not only to kill, but to say prayers over the corpse) is there to do what needs be done. In a land surrounded by its enemies, Oy-Oy-7 is called on to guard the nation's great benefactor, the generous but odd Lazarus Loxfinger.

Drowning in mounting financial problems and apparent mental illness, Travis tries booze, pills, even golf to stay afloat, but nothing works. His wife and friends are forced to stage an intervention. Travis is in danger of losing his family, his career, and ultimately, his sanity. That is, until he meets a Hindu holy man in rehab who claims to be the final incarnation of Lord Vishnu. Suddenly, the tragically shallow Travis is saddled with the responsibility of bettering mankind and saving the world.

After dealing with killer whales, evil scientists, the return of her long-lost mother, and, certainly not least of all, the challenges of breastfeeding, Elvie Nara has just about had it. And then the Jin'Kai (along with the aforementioned estranged mom) kidnap her baby. And before she knows it, another Jin'Kai attack puts her on the run again, but not before discovering that Olivia was implanted with a genetic tracking device.

Born in 1623 as the youngest child of a wealthy Essex family, Margaret Cavendish became a Maid of Honour to Queen Henrietta Maria before going on to marry the widowed William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle. She was a prolific writer whose work encompassed a range of genres. The Blazing World is part fiction and part feminist text in which a lady is shipwrecked and seeks to ensure that the Blazing World in which she finds herself is transformed into a Utopia - free of war, sexual discrimination, and religious discord.

When the palace of Arabesque's aide d'camp, a cat named the Tremblees, stumbles upon a translation of an ancient language that reveals the existence of a fabled stone, he vows to find it for reasons of greed and vengeance. With a dead dog stuck to a car bonnet, some burst luggage, a blind bus driver, and an enormous number of olives, it becomes a race for Oscar, his colleague Meesha, and the Tieress of Arabesque to prevent the Tremblees plunging Arabesque back into the Era of Bedlam.

Faulkner’s second novel follows a bohemian cast of artists, socialites, and dilettantes as they set sail on a four-day excursion aboard the Nausikaa. Faulkner’s quick wit and endless appetite for satire make this audiobook a fascinating exploration of character, as well as a rare glimpse into the author himself. The novel explores questions of sex and sexuality, as well as the societal role of the artist. Inspired by his own participation in the arts community in New Orleans, Mosquitoes is an engaging and delightful novel from one of America’s greatest writers.

Listed in the BBC's "100 Novels That Shaped Our World", Psmith, Journalist takes Wodehouse's immaculate hero to the apparently dull city of New York, where he takes command of twee family periodical Cosy Moments, converts it to the yellowest of yellow journals, and embarks upon a crusade to unmask the owner of the notorious Pleasant Street tenements. But soon the staff of Cosy Moments find themselves dodging ambushes and assassination attempts, as the mysterious tenement owner tries to put them out of business - permanently; and war breaks out among New York's notorious street gangs.

A fun-loving, young bull in Spain who tries to escape his troubled past instead must confront his destiny to help his friends in their time of need, proving why he truly is the national animal of Spain.

This is the tale of an average modern American man riding the freeways and living high in the peaks of the American southwest. Frank is seeking the love of a beautiful American woman, the dream of wealth, the thrill of adventure, the misfortune of murder, and the longing to be a part of this life everyone else seems to be so comfortable with. Aren't we all?

Hailed by Time as an “extravagantly comic” novel, A Woman Named Drown is a wild and strange journey through America’s South that follows a young PhD dropout who falls in with an amateur actress-cum–pool shark. On the brink of earning his doctorate in chemistry, the unnamed narrator decides to chuck it all away in favor of real life. So begins an odd pilgrimage through the American South.

With tongue firmly implanted in cheek, Benson introduces us to a world full of snobs, hypochondriacs, faddists, and social climbers. Some of the titles include "The Compleat Snob", "Aunt Georgie", "The Poison of Asps", "The Eternally Uncompromised", "The Grizzly Kittens", and "The Praisers of Past Time".

Most people think the reason Prudy Millings married the best-looking preacher in the Carolinas—who inexplicably turned psychotic and mowed her down with the church van—is that she was raised all wrong. So not true. Prudy's reclamation of her life begins two years after the crime spree that nearly stopped her heart. She packs up her two precocious children and settles in her parents' South Carolina hometown where she deals with a delightful Proverbs-spewing mama who pretends her grown daughters are virgins.

Victor Svensson, un tipo ambicioso y sin escrúpulos, se casa con la hija de un multimillonario galerista en los últimos momentos de la vida de este. Cuando el hombre fallece, Victor engaña a su mujer y logra hacerse con el negocio y ver colmadas por fin sus ansias de dinero y poder. Sin embargo, la aparición en escena de un hijo bastardo de Victor, fruto de una antigua relación, podría dar al traste con sus planes, y no está dispuesto a permitirlo.

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.