Funny Biography

She's spent thirty-five years in the public eye: 'Vanessa's Friends Say She's Drinking Custard!' Vanessa seizes her chance to set the record straight in this warm, witty, intensely human story. She spares no one's blushes, including her own. How could someone so clever make such cataclysmic mistakes? Vanessa's often wrong, but always relatable. She puts the 'Oh my goodness, I can never unread that paragraph!' into celebrity autobiography.

Have you ever wondered what really happens during the day when your precious little angels are at school? In this book, the Two Mr Ps take you on a side-splittingly funny journey through the weird and wonderful world of primary schools. They also explore the pressures of modern-day teaching, revealing exactly what it takes to wrangle a chaotic classroom (or seven) on a weekly basis. From the absolute characters found in the staffroom to school-trip mishaps and everything else in between, Put a Wet Paper Towel on It is a must-hear for teachers and parents alike.

A deeply textured and compelling biography of comedy giant Mel Brooks, covering his rags-to-riches life and triumphant career in television, films, and theater, from Patrick McGilligan, the acclaimed author of Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane and Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light.

Stand-up comic, broadcaster and actress Ellie Taylor is relatable, clever and interested in how women can have it all. Her honest, hilarious and moving account of the whys and hows of having a baby makes perfect listening for expectant mothers and fathers everywhere, as well as those who've been there, done that, and wonder how on earth they did.

Running with Scissors is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of being Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her psychiatrist, a dead ringer for Santa and a lunatic in the bargain.

Six weeks before her eighth birthday in May of 2024, my granddaughter Paige Schilling was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Paige underwent a 14-hour brain surgery at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. The tumor was successfully removed and Paige began a lengthy period of rehabilitation. During this time, Paige received so many gifts from friends and family that her father considered renting a storage unit. Instead of giving her another stuffed toy, I decided to write letters to Paige. The letters describe real events from my own life beginning from a time before television existed.

Featuring personal tales originally prepared for a radio audience, My Time With You Has Been Short But Very Funny is infused with frenetic humour along with undertones of wistfulness and edgy sadness. In a series of sketches spanning two continents and seven decades, the author introduces listeners to a rollicking cast of characters from everyday life, including the iconic Pesticide Pete and Barbecue Billy, as well as a series of off-kilter incidents, both hilarious and disquieting.

Andrew Sean Greer can’t wait to get home to San Francisco after a writer’s residency in Kansas. But when his mother, Sandra, decides to come along for the ride, he has a new goal: get her to crack a smile at every stop, whether breathtaking or breathtakingly kitschy. He’s always known his mother to be as efficient and serious as a chemist (which she happens to be), always in gray, eyebrow cocked, and handling challenges with grace. To mix things up, Andrew develops an elaborate itinerary of planned chaos.

Packed with over 200 “Would you rather?” questions, this is a book that will fire up your kids’ imaginations and have them in stitches as they choose whether they’d rather have fingernails for eyelashes or eyelashes for fingernails (just one tiny example from a wealth of mind-bending questions). If you’re looking for inspiration to peel your kids away from their devices and find something fun that will include the whole family, “Would you rather?” questions are your answer - and Cooper has come up with the very best.

Michael Morpurgo is one of Britain's most beloved novelists, best known for enchanting children with his books like War Horse and Private Peaceful. Here, collected for the first time, are his thoughts on nature, childhood, education, war, and getting older. Full of gentle humour and sharp observation, Funny Thing Getting Older is a book to ponder and treasure.

The famed Internet personality - named one of Rolling Stone's Funniest People on Twitter and creator of the viral #notokay for women to share their stories of sexual assault - and best-selling author of Everything Is Perfect When You're a Liar turns her laser-like wit to anxiety, parenthood (or "the sheer insanity of being in charge of the safety and livelihood of three people besides myself"), popular culture, and more in this razor-sharp essay collection.

In A Surgeon under Israeli Occupation, author Dr. Shawki Harb chronicles his experiences about life, Palestine, and medicine that he’s witnessed throughout 50 years of a surgical practice.

From the creator of the New York Times best-selling Sad Animal Facts series, Brooke Barker, comes a quirky, hilarious memoir-in-essays about her journey from a childhood in the Mormon church to a Jewish adulthood, and all the wonder and weirdness of faith.

Leslie Gray Streeter is not cut out for widowhood. She's not ready for hushed rooms and pitying looks. She is not ready to stand graveside, dabbing her eyes in a classy black hat. If she had her way she'd wear her favorite curve-hugging leopard print dress to Scott's funeral; he loved her in that dress! Looking at widowhood through the prism of race, mixed marriage, and aging, Black Widow redefines the stages of grief, from coffin shopping to day-drinking, to being a grown-ass woman crying for your mommy, to breaking up and making up with God....

If you thought Dennis Miller was done ranting, guess again. In Still Ranting After All These Years, recorded in early 2002, Miller is in fine form, commenting on everything from "War and Terrorism" to Enron; from "Obsessed Parents" to the "End of Class"; to "Truth in the Media" and so much more. Throughout, Miller is what we have come to expect from him: smart, cutting, laugh-out-loud funny, and more times than not...right.

The superb classic memoir from a dazzlingly eccentric and endlessly fascinating author - a woman very much ahead of her time - including her time spent on the glorious island of Skiathos. Nancy Spain was one of the most celebrated - and notorious - writers and broadcasters of the '40s, '50s and '60s. Hilarious, controversial and brilliant, she lived openly as a lesbian (sharing a household with her two lovers and their various children) and was frequently litigated against for her newspaper columns - Evelyn Waugh successfully sued her for libel...twice.

I never planned to write about my life with cerebral palsy (CP), but after years of absurd, frustrating, and hilarious experiences, I had to share them. This book is part memoir, part guide to navigating an able-bodied world when your body has its own agenda. From my mom almost being mistaken for a prostitute to a first date disaster in a movie theater, my life is full of bizarre encounters. Doctors talk over me, cops have been afraid of me, and strangers treat me like a sideshow.

When Angeline Jackson was a child, she wondered if there was something wrong with her for wanting to kiss the other girls. But as her sexuality blossomed in her teens, she knew she wouldn’t “grow out of it” and that her attraction to girls wasn’t against God. In fact, she discovered that same-sex relationships were depicted in the Bible, which she read devoutly, even if the tight-knit evangelical Christian community she grew up in believed any sexual relationship outside of marriage between a man and woman was a sin, and her society, Jamaica, criminalized homosexual sex.

The Funny Thing About Death is a hilarious memoir of two unconventional girls growing up in the 1970s. They didn't fit in at the Air Force bases they were raised on or the strict convent boarding school they were sent to. The Air Force was obsessed with communists and the nuns were obsessed with the Virgin Mary, neither of which were of interest to Jo or Annie.

When satirist John Clarke died, in 2017, many people mourned his passing as if they had lost a friend or a member of the family. Many of us felt we grew up with him. After all, for the best part of half a century, since he burst into our lives as Fred Dagg in 1974, he was a performer, an actor, a writer, a satirist and as a commentator in both Australia and New Zealand. In this fascinating memoir, Lorin Clarke tells the story of growing up with her famous father, her art historian mother Helen and her little sister Lucia. Much has been written about John Clarke, but this is the insider’s view.