Historical Humor

As usual, the RAF top brass don't know what to do with maverick flying ace and well-known loose cannon Major Bartholomew Bandy. They pack him off to a squadron where the flying record barely registers, thinking it'll keep him out of their hair. But after a shaky start, Bart gets a firm grip on things - one of those things being the adjutant, who jealously guards his own private and baroquely magnificent WC. With old pal Dick Milestone, Bart reinvigorates the superbly turned-out but demoralized pilots, who start doing some serious flying and very serious damage to the enemy.

Mrs. Harris is a salt-of-the-earth London charlady who cheerfully cleans the houses of the rich. One day, when tidying Lady Dant's wardrobe, she comes across the most beautiful thing she has ever seen in her life—a Dior dress. In all the years of her drab and humble existence, she's never seen anything as magical as the dress before her and she's never wanted anything as much before. Determined to make her dream come true, Mrs. Harris scrimps, saves, and slaves away until one day, after three long, uncomplaining years, she finally has enough money to go to Paris.

When Adeline Bertrand-Verdon, the haughty, conniving president of the Proust Association, is murdered, Inspector Jean-Pierre Foucheroux is called on to lead the investigation. Soon Inspector Foucheroux is overwhelmed by a seemingly endless list of suspects: from her assistant to her colleagues, her fiancé to her lover, almost everyone Adeline knew had motive to kill her.

When first published in 1759, Candide became an instant best seller and is now regarded as one of the key texts of the Enlightenment. Voltaire’s preoccupations with evil and with various kinds of human folly and intolerance found a perfect vehicle in this philosophical tale. A master storyteller, he combined often wildly entertaining action with profoundly serious sense, parodying the traditional chivalric and oriental tales with which his public was more familiar.

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. Flash Harry is back! The first new Flashman novel since Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, this is the long-awaited new installment of the Flashman Papers.

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.

Bartholomew Bandy has become an air ace. On the ground, he causes disasters wherever he goes, but in the air, he's deadly, shooting down dozens of German planes in the course of thrilling aerial combats. As a handy but disposable war hero, he encounters a number of hair-raising adventures, not to mention English plumbing and an unforgettable honeymoon night.

Written in a voice that’s alternately humorous, lacerating, and wise, Long Division features two interwoven stories. In the first, it’s 2013: after an on-stage meltdown during a nationally televised quiz contest, fourteen-year-old Citoyen “City” Coldson becomes an overnight YouTube celebrity. The next day, he’s sent to stay with his grandmother in the small coastal community of Melahatchie. Before leaving, City is given a strange book without an author called Long Division. He learns that one of the book’s main characters is also named City Coldson—but Long Division is set in 1985.

The author of the acclaimed Crooked Heart returns with a comic, charming, and surprisingly timely portrait of a once-pioneering suffragette trying to find her new passion in post-WWI-era London.

Dermot McEvoy sweeps his listeners into the midst of one of the most heated political races in New York City history, where an unlikely player decides to make her presence known. First it hits the papers that the Virgin Mary has appeared to Jackie Swift, an affable G.O.P. congressman with a couple of nasty habits. She then appears in a dream to Wolfe Tone O'Rourke, a liberal political consultant who is still haunted by the ghost of Bobby Kennedy, whose death he feels responsible for.

With his disturbingly horse-like face and a pious distaste for strong drink and bad language, young Bartholomew Bandy doesn't seem cut out for life in the armed services, as we meet him at the start of World War I. Yet he not only survives the dangers and squalor of the infantry trenches, he positively thrives in the Royal Flying Corps, revealing a surprising aptitude for splitarsing Sopwith Camels and shooting down the Hun. He even manages to get the girl.

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.

A searing portrayal of Vienna's bourgeoisie, it begins with the arrival of an unnamed writer at an 'artistic dinner' hosted by a composer and his society wife-a couple he once admired and has come to loathe. The guest of honor, a distinguished actor from the Burgtheater, is late. As the other guests wait impatiently, they are seen through the critical eye of the writer, who narrates a silent but frenzied tirade against these former friends, most of whom have been brought together by Joana, a woman they buried earlier that day.

The one thing you can depend on in Cold Sassy, Georgia, is that word gets around fast. If the preacher's wife's petticoat shows, the ladies will make the talk last a week. But on July 5, 1906, things take a scandalous turn. That is the day E. Rucker Blakeslee, proprietor of the general store and barely three weeks a widower, elopes with Miss Love Simpson, a woman half his age and, worse yet, a Yankee!

The delightfully irreverent eldest daughter of the not-so-ill-fated Romeo and Juliet returns to sleuth another day in fair Verona, in this hugely entertaining historical mystery series with a refreshingly bold premise.

Sherlock Holmes is an unparalleled genius. Warlock Holmes is an idiot. A font of arcane power, certainly. But he's brilliantly dim. Frankly, he couldn't deduce his way out of a paper bag. The only thing he has really got going for him are the might of a thousand demons and his stalwart companion. Thankfully, Dr. Watson is always there to aid him through the treacherous shoals of Victorian propriety and save him from a gruesome death every now and again.

In this slyly funny and lavishly inventive novel, Nobel Prize winner V. S. Naipaul traces the unlikely career of Ganesh Ramsumair, a failed schoolteacher and impecunious village masseur who in time becomes a revered mystic, a thriving entrepreneur, and the most beloved politician in Trinidad. Witty, tender, filled with the sights, sounds, and smells of Trinidad's dusty Indian villages, The Mystic Masseur is Naipaul at his most expansive and evocative.

Set in the years around 1492, Yiddish for Pirates recounts the compelling story of Moishe, a Bar Mitzvah boy who leaves home to join a ship's crew, where he meets Aaron, the polyglot parrot, who becomes his near-constant companion. From a present-day Florida nursing home, this wisecracking yet poetic bird guides us through a world of pirate ships, Yiddish jokes, and treasure maps. But Inquisition Spain is a dangerous time to be Jewish, and Moishe joins a band of hidden Jews trying to preserve some forbidden books.

In this witty, charming follow-up to the acclaimed Crooked Heart, the life of lies a small time scammer and her adopted son have constructed in London becomes endangered during the tumultuous final months of World War II.

The only work he finds is flying bootleg liquor into the USA. In desperation (what else?), he stands as a local MP and in desperation (why else?), they vote him in. But after spilling the beans on a bunch of government members indulging in Prohibition corruption, Bart’s soon cordially hated by everyone up to the Prime Minister - can he really be naïve enough to believe party propaganda that the people must be told the truth? So Bart’s goose - or gander - is cooked, and the resulting mess can be summed up as whisky galore!