Historical Humor

Leaving behind the rural charms of Finnshire, Miss Penelope Fairweather arrives in London with hope in her heart and a dream in her eye. The dowager, no less, has invited her for a season in London, where she will attempt to catch a husband. Thus begins our heroine’s tale as she attempts to tackle the London season with all her rustic finesse. Unfortunately her rustic finesse turns out to be as delicate as a fat bear trying to rip apart a honeycomb infested with buzzing bees.

Iseult Wince is a Victorian woman perilously close to spinsterhood whose distinctly unpleasant father is trying to marry her off. She is awkward, plain, and most pertinently, believes that her mother, who died in childbirth, lives in the scar on her neck. Iseult’s father parades a host of unsuitable candidates before her, the majority of whom Iseult wastes no time frightening away. When at last her father finds a suitor desperate enough to take Iseult off his hands - a man whose medical treatments have turned his skin silver - a true comedy of errors ensues.

Everyone’s heard of Nostradamus. No one’s heard of Philibert Montmorency. One was a legend. The other, not so much.... A newly discovered Nostradamus prophecy has taken the internet by storm thanks to "The Oblivion Doctrine", a group of online conspiracy theorists. Apparently the end is nigh. And in case anyone’s interested, nigh is definitely a Tuesday. Doctor Ally Oldfield, professor of Medieval Languages, is summoned to Lyon for a second opinion. She’s not happy about it. But then again she’s rarely happy about anything.

It's 2006 in the fictional East London borough of Leytonstow. The UK’s pub smoking ban is about to happen, and 38-and-a-half year old John Torrington, a mopper and trolley collector at his local DIY store, is secretly in love with the stylish, beautiful, and middle-class barmaid Lois. John and his hapless, strange, and down-on-their-luck friends, Gabby Longfeather and Glyn Hopkins, live in Clements Markham House - a semi-derelict Edwardian villa divided into unsanitary bedsits, and (mis)managed by the shrewd, Dickensian business man, Mr Kapoor.

There have always been Mountain Men. Their names are legendary. Their motives unknown. Until now. Over four centuries, one by one, they changed the course of human history. Occasionally, some of them were even quite good at it. Like most things in life, successful revolutions take a bit of practise. Only they knew their identity and purpose, but someone has discovered their secrets. Now the actions of the Mountain Men are being re-enacted in the 21st century and there’s twelve billion dollars up for grabs for anyone willing to help.

33 episodes from Series 8-10 of the much-loved Civil Service sitcom, plus the 1971 Special For fifteen years between 1962 and 1977, The Men from the Ministry kept audiences laughing over the course of 13 series, plus a fourteenth series recorded for overseas in 1980. This third volume features...

“A scorchingly brilliant, wildly funny, and deeply moving epic.” —John Green, #1 globally bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars Two unlikely heroes embark on quests to win God’s favor in this outrageously entertaining, profoundly heartfelt novel that announces an ingenious new...

'How I love a story of sisters, and Michelle Kenney has conjured up four sparky modern-minded Fairfax girls. The dialogue is quick-fire, plot complex and satisfying, the men heroic and rich' Jane Dunn, Sunday Times bestselling author Perfect for Bridgerton and Jane Austen fans! Fall in love with...

George Sperryhawke, the bombastic rogue and forgotten founding father, chronicles life in 18th-century America as he clambers and swindles his way up the social ladder. After running away from home and being expelled from the seminary, Sperryhawke went to sea and would go on to become one of the wealthiest men in the colonies by the age of 25, and a pivotal figure in the founding of the Republic. A thoroughly unreliable and mostly unlikable figure, the discovery of the Sperryhawke manuscripts has given students of American history great cause for rejoicing.

1870s, Sicily. Much to the displeasure of Vigàta's stubborn populace, the town has just been unified under the Kingdom of Italy. They're now in the hands of a new government they don't understand and definitely don't like. Eugenio Bortuzzi has been named prefect for Vigàta, a regional representative from the Italian government to oversee the town. But the rowdy and unruly Sicilians don't care much for this rather pompous mainlander nor the mediocre opera he's hell-bent on producing in their new municipal theater.

Round about the second anniversary of the start of World War 1, Roger Waterlow is still stuck ashore in charge of the ramshackle British naval intelligence effort in a sweltering notionally "neutral" country in South-eastern Europe. As rumor follows rumor and the situation becomes daily more confused, Waterlow and his organisation learn of three couriers trying to carry correspondence to Berlin—correspondence that might give the Entente powers vital insights into German intentions for the region, if only they can be intercepted and their papers seized....

David O. Strickland's darkly comic novel is set during Egress Recap - the return of American POWs from Vietnam's "Hanoi Hilton" in 1973. Like Kurt Vonnegut's classic Slaughterhouse-Five, The First Man off the Plane features POWs bombed by their own planes.

Athens, 460 B.C. Life's tough for Nicolaos, sole investigating agent in Athens. His girlfriend's left him and his boss wants to fire him. But when an Athenian official is murdered, Pericles has no choice but to put Nico on the job. The case takes Nico, with a beautiful slave girl, to the land of Ionia within the Persian Empire. The Persians will execute him on the spot if they think he's a spy.

Alltid ska det drabba oss, protesterar Porta från förarsätet. Oss fattiga kulier jagar de så det ryker om strumporna. Man är så motbjudande oförskämt rask och sund och alla grannens kulor viker undan för en så man aldrig kommer ifrån det här skitkriget och får vräka sig på lasarett. Och man riskerar att bli ihjälslagen på alla möjliga sätt för en ynka Mark om dagen, fyller Lillebror i. Men en dag, på permission hos vackra Wera, anar Porta plötsligt en möjlighet att välbärgad kunna dra sig ur kriget.

Rachael O'Brien, a girl from the cornfields of Canton, Ohio, returns to college in North Carolina in her old Ford. Before the engine has cooled she finds herself in a passionate lip-lock with the man she's been fantasizing about, making sophomore year seem full of promise.

Lord Darrell, duque de Lennox, necesita comprar una esposa con urgencia y abandonar Inglaterra para siempre, pues los cargos que pesan contra él pueden provocar que termine con los huesos en una celda de la Torre de Londres en el momento más inesperado. Mientras don Íñigo intenta encontrar una solución que haga que su yerno reconsidere su firme idea de divorciarse, Leonor ve en Lennox una oportunidad para ganar la partida y salirse con la suya. Aunque algo importante le pasa por alto: que el corazón no sabe de reglas.

From the acclaimed author of The Shakespeare Wars and Explaining Hitler comes a stirring manifesto on love in the modern age. Who wrote the book of love? In an impassioned polemic, Ron Rosenbaum—who has written books on the mysteries of Hitler’s evil, the magic of Shakespeare’s words, and...

The David Gemmell Award-shortlisted author of Age of Iron returns with the second book in his epic West of West trilogy, in which a mismatched group of refugees must battle animals and monsters, an unforgiving land and each other as they cross a continent to fulfill a prophecy. Welcome to the...

When Lionel Savage, a popular poet in Victorian London, learns from his butler that they're broke, he marries the beautiful Vivien Lancaster for her money, only to find that his muse has abandoned him. Distraught and contemplating suicide, Savage accidentally conjures the devil - the polite "Gentleman" of the title - who appears at one of the society parties Savage abhors. The two hit it off: The devil talks about his home, where he employs Dante as a gardener; Savage lends him a volume of Tennyson.

The hilarious, bawdy and touching story of a good man who loved too well and dared challenge the absolute power of the Sun King himself.