Family Humor

So much to see! So much to do! Listen to this audiobook and...meet people and animals in such far-flung places as Minot, Minneapolis, Tuscaloosa, Tucumcari, and the Grand Canyon.... Smell the tall flowers in Aunt Giraffe's garden, sip juice with a big blue goose, eat oodles of noodles with some poodles, and much, much more!

Best friends and unofficial brothers since they were six, ninth-graders T.C. and Augie have got the world figured out. But that all changes when both friends fall in love for the first time. Enter Alé. She's pretty, sassy, and on her way to Harvard. T.C. falls hard, but Alé is playing hard to get. Meanwhile, Augie realizes he's got a crush on a boy. It's not so clear to him, but to his family and friends, it's totally obvious!

Stevie, a recovering alcoholic and kitchen manager of Chappy’s, a small-chain restaurant, is frantically trying to prevent the people around her from going supernova: her PTSD-suffering veteran son, her uproariously demented parents, the polyglot eccentrics who work in her kitchen, the blind geriatric dog she inherits, and a damaged 5-year-old who landed on her doorstep and might just be her granddaughter. In the tight grip of new corporate owners, Stevie battles corporate’s “restructuring” to save her kitchen.

When Carey Browne decides it's time for a holiday and flies into New York City - one of her favourite shopping destinations - she knows she'll have a good time. What she doesn't know is that she's about to have the biggest adventure of her life. Within days she's met and married Ben Russell, and a week later they're heading back together to Dublin, where they both live, to share the happy news with family and friends. Except not everyone's thrilled. And not everyone's convinced this is really more than a holiday romance. Carey and Ben are about to discover whether they've found the kind of love that can survive a blast of reality....

It's the summer of 1947, and peacetime has brought new challenges to Barsetshire. Beliers Priory, once a military hospital during the War, has now become a flourishing preparatory school for boys run by Leslie and Philip Winter. When Charles Belton is hired as the new school master, six young people are thrown together in a web of flirtations and misunderstandings: Charles and his elder brother, Naval Captain Freddy Belton; Susan Dean, now Red Cross Depot Librarian, and her glamorous sister Jessica, an actress in thrall to the theatre; pragmatic Lucy Marling and her brother Oliver.

Georgia Khatchadorian plans to excel at Hills Village Middle School in all the places her troublemaking brother failed. She's even bet him that she'll quickly become one of the most popular girls in school. But Rafe left a big mark at HVMS, and no one will give Georgia a chance! Even worse, Rafe has sneakily signed up her band to play at the school dance, and she's terrified to embarrass herself in front of the snooty "Princesses" who run the school and the boy who's caught her eye. Will she be able to overcome her fears and win her bet with Rafe?

Eugene Duffy is turning 70; his son Jim is turning 40. For decades now, they’ve been running the family hardware shop and living in good-natured bachelor harmony. But time is marching on, and with thoughts of old age weighing heavily on his mind, Eugene is growing increasingly concerned about his son’s future. He resolves to help in the best way possible: by finding Jim a wife. And he’s not going to let anyone—let alone Jim himself—stand in his way.

The fire is on, sherry poured, presents wrapped, and claws are being sharpened. In a seaside cottage perched on a cliff, one family reunites for Christmas. While snow falls, a tyrannical widowed matriarch presides over her unruly brood. Her niece tends to her whims, but fantasises about eloping; and as more guests arrive, each bringing their secret truths and dreams, the Christmas tree explodes, a brawl erupts, an escape occurs - and their 'midwinter madness' climaxes.

In the autumn of 2015, 40-something journalist Liz is working at a national newspaper in Washington, DC, where Hillary Clinton’s run for the presidency is the talk of the town. The divorced parent of a college-age son, she appears to lead a full, happy life: devoted friends, a job she adores, a breezy dating life. But deep inside, Liz is stalled in neutral, stuck in a clandestine affair with her boss and still brooding on her marriage, which ended in betrayal, hurt and anger 10 years ago.

For Sabrina Monroe, moving back home to the Wisconsin Dells - the self-described Waterpark Capital of the World - means returning to the Monroe family curse: The women in her family can see spirits who come to them for help with unfinished business. But Sabrina's always redirected the needy spirits to her mom, who's much better suited for the job. The one exception has always been Molly, a bubbly rom-com loving ghost, who stuck by Sabrina's side all through her lonely childhood.

First published in 1873, The Gilded Age is both a biting satire and a revealing portrait of post-Civil War America - an age of corruption when crooked land speculators, ruthless bankers, and dishonest politicians voraciously took advantage of the nation's peacetime optimism. With his characteristic wit and perception, Mark Twain and his collaborator, Charles Dudley Warner, attack the greed, lust, and naiveté of their own time in a work that endures as a valuable social document and one of America's most important satirical novels.

Twenty-nine-year-old Sophie Diehl is happy toiling away as a criminal law associate at an old line New England firm where she very much appreciates that most of her clients are behind bars. Everyone at Traynor, Hand knows she abhors face-to-face contact, but one weekend, with all the big partners away, Sophie must handle the intake interview for the daughter of the firm's most important client....

The authors of Sh*tty Mom are back with an hilarious guide presenting common parenting scenarios with advice for getting through the year the sh*tty mom way. Told in the same tongue-in-cheek voice as the original, this sequel is full of funny parenting tips and relatable stories for contemporary moms. Sh*tty Mom for All Seasons explores the occasions throughout the year that test every mother's patience and inspire self-deprecating humor and that second glass of wine.

When 40-year-old Rabbit Hayes dies, she leaves behind a family broken by grief: her mother, Molly, her brother, Davey, her daughter, Juliet, her sister, Grace, and her best friend, Marjorie. They all have to learn how to cope with their grief, but despite fighting individual battles, they are drawn together by their love for Rabbit, and their love for each other. Laugh, cry and shout with joy for the colourful, unruly Hayes family as they battle with the loss of their beloved Rabbit, who in her own crazy way taught each of them how to live and goes on showing them how to love.

A young boy comes of age within the confines of post-civil-war Beirut, with conflict and comedy lurking round every corner. Adam dreams of becoming an astronaut, but who has ever heard of an Arab on the moon? He battles with his father, a book-hoarding journalist with a penchant for writing eulogies, his closest friend, Basil, a Druze who is said to worship goats and believe in reincarnation, and a host of other misfits and miscreants in a city attempting recover from years of political and military violence.

Claire and Matt are no longer together but decide that it would be best for their daughter, Scarlett, to have a "normal" family Christmas. They can’t agree on whose idea it was to go to the Happy Forest holiday park or who said they should bring their new partners. But someone did - and it’s too late to pull the plug. Before you know it, their holiday is a powder keg that ends where this novel begins - with a tearful, frightened call to the police.

When Charlotte Rainsford, a retired schoolteacher, is accosted by a petty thief on a London street, the consequences ripple across the lives of acquaintances and strangers alike. A marriage unravels after an illicit love affair is revealed through an errant cell phone message; a posh yet financially strapped interior designer meets a business partner who might prove too good to be true.

Doug Parker is a widower at age 29, and in his quiet suburban town, that makes him something of a celebrity - the object of sympathy, curiosity, and, in some cases, unbridled desire. But Doug has other things on his mind. First there's his 16-year-old stepson, Russ - a once-sweet kid who now is getting into increasingly serious trouble on a daily basis. And then there are Doug's sisters.

Willow Havens is 10 years old and obsessed with the fear that her mother will die. Her mother, Polly, is a cantankerous, take-no-prisoners Southern woman who lives to chase varmints, drink margaritas, and antagonize the neighbors - and she sticks out like a sore thumb among the young, modern mothers of their small conventional Texas town. She was in her late 50s when Willow was born, so Willow knows she's here by accident, a late-life afterthought.

Jeffrey Lockhart's father, Ross, is a billionaire in his 60s with a younger wife, Artis Martineau, whose health is failing. Ross is the primary investor in a remote and secret compound where death is exquisitely controlled and bodies are preserved until a future time when biomedical advances and new technologies can return them to lives of transcendent promise. Jeff joins Ross and Artis at the compound to say "an uncertain farewell" to her as she surrenders her body.