Historical Humor

York, 1988. Dr Tom Frith is beginning his first term as a tutor at the University of Eboracum. After teaching primary school children for several years, he's sure shaping the minds of young adults will be a welcome change. But that's before considering the pressures he'll face outside the lecture hall, from helping three hapless students who've been surviving exclusively on porridge, to fielding inappropriate propositions from students chasing higher grades. And then there's the particular challenge of Edna Wallop, the Acting Head of Faculty.

It's the heatwave summer of 1976 and 14-year-old would be poet Jackie Chadwick is newly fostered by the Walls. She desperately needs stability, but their insecure, jealous teenage daughter isn't happy about the cuckoo in the nest and sets about ousting her. When her attempts to do so lead to near-tragedy—and the Walls' veneer of middle-class respectability begins to crumble—everyone in the household is forced to reassess what really matters.

Mortimer’s father, a philandering titan in the shipping business, has been murdered, leaving Mortimer as the unbefitting benefactor of the Centennial Shipping Line. However, Mortimer’s singular mission in life is to attain the title Admiral (issued by the Bottle Boat Club of Chicago) and remove himself from society.

It's Halloween night, when the ghost of bygone poet Renée Vivien haunts the legendary premises at 20 Rue Jacob. Natalie Clifford Barney, the seductive American writer and saloniste, known to all as the Amazon, has invited the who's who of literary Paris 1926 to her 50th birthday party. Never mind that half the guest list is comprised of Natalie's current lovers and exes.

The true test for surviving war lies in the mind, not on the battlefield. Inspired by the author’s own experiences of US military operations during the Vietnam War, Boot is a debut literary novel that charts the journey of marine George Orwell Hill, known affectionately as G.O. by his brothers-in-arms, as he comes to grips with the psychological impacts of war in the jungles and rice paddies of Southeast Asia.

The year is 1969, and Jack Sheffield is a young teacher in need of a job. In a room full of 29 other newly qualified teachers, he's overjoyed when he's appointed to Heather View Primary. Jack is excited to start his first year there and to begin shaping young minds in a beautiful new location on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales. But Heather View isn't as idyllic as it first sounds.

Florida, circa 1980. Reed Crowe, the eponymous Florida Man, is a middle-aged beach bum, beleaguered and disenfranchised, living on ill-gotten gains deep in the jungly heart of Florida. When sinkholes start opening on Emerald Island, not only are Reed Crowe's seedy businesses - a moribund motel and a shabby amusement park - endangered, but so are his secrets. Crowe, amateur spelunker, begins uncovering artifacts that change his understanding of the island’s history, as well as his understanding of his family’s birthright as pioneering homesteaders.

One of the great what-ifs among Pride & Prejudice aficionados is: If Mr. Collins married Mary Bennet instead of Charlotte Lucas, how would that influence Mr. Darcy's dogged pursuit of the elusive Elizabeth? In this breezy and hilarious re-telling of Jane Austin's classic novel, the author explores what would have changed - and what would have not - had two of literature's most self-righteous characters found their way together. Elizabeth Bennet goes to Kent with her sister Jane, and the fur flies! A wonderful, mad-cap romp!

Written as an adventure tale, Nicole Burton’s novel Adamson's 1969 is a frolic through the year 1969 as seen through the eyes of a guileless young Englishman, Adamson Henry. Like the characters in the movies Forrest Gump and Zelig, Adamson finds himself caught up in 1969's major historic moments including the Apollo 11 Moon landing, Woodstock, and the massive anti-war protests. Welcome to Adamson's 1969.

June 1813. As the Peninsular War edges toward its climactic battle at Vitoria, a well-bred, newly commissioned, and hopelessly incompetent officer arrives to take charge of a seasoned troop of British cavalry. The troop's eloquent but shifty corporal takes the officer under his wing, and thus begins a journey through the campaign with many laugh-out-loud moments as the less-than-upright members of the troop determine to turn the war against the French to their pecuniary advantage.

Mailand 1493: Der junge Pandolfo liegt mit eingeschlagenem Schädel in einem Abfallhaufen. Der Seidenhändler Bernardino Bellapianta findet den Schwerverletzten und pflegt ihn in seinem märchenhaften Palast gesund. Doch Pandolfo hat sein Gedächtnis verloren. Auf der Suche nach seiner Vergangenheit überlebt Pandolfo einen zweiten Mordanschlag, steigt mit einem Flugmaschinenbauer in die Lüfte auf, verliebt sich zum zweiten Mal in dieselbe Frau und kommt langsam dahinter, dass sein Wohltäter nicht ganz so tadellos ist, wie er scheint.

Tennyson's Gift is an imaginative cocktail of Victorian seriousness and farce that reimagines the world of the 19th-century English poet laureate, placing him in the midst of eccentric company that includes Lewis Carroll. Going Loco features a critic trying to write a definitive account of the doppelganger in Gothic fiction, amid the chaos of her domestic life, including paranoia that her cleaning lady is taking over her life.

Milligan and the Samurai Rebels is a humorous historical novel set in the Japan of the 1860s. The Shogun has been forced by the threat of Western firepower to re-open Japan to the outside world, while samurai outraged at this decision are scheming to topple the Shogunate and re-establish Imperial rule. In parallel to this struggle, Britain and France are fighting by every means except open warfare to establish themselves as the leading influence on the government of Japan and secure the accompanying trading privileges.

In the depths of the Sixties and The Days Of Rage, a young newsman, accompanied by his pregnant wife and orphaned teenage brother, creates a paradise of sorts in a sprawling Venice Beach community of apartments, populated by students, artists, budding scientists and engineers, lifeguards, poets, and bikers with a few junkies thrown in for good measure. The inhabitants come to call the place "Pepperland", after the Beatles movie, Yellow Submarine.

Der junge Pandolfo hat einen Schlag auf den Kopf erhalten: Er weiß nicht mehr, wer er ist. Der schwerreiche Seidenhändler Bernadino Bellapianta findet ihn verletzt in einem Misthaufen liegend, nimmt ihn mit sich und pflegt ihn gesund. Wieder genesen erweist sich Pandolfos Geschick fürs Zeichnen und er wird als Musterzeichner für luxuriöse Webstoffe eingestellt. Aber er macht sich auch auf die Suche nach seiner Vergangenheit.

On November 9, 1989, Bernd Zeiger, a Stasi officer in the twilight of his career, is deteriorating from a mysterious illness. Alarmed by the disappearance of Lara, a young waitress at his regular café with whom he is obsessed, he chases a series of clues throughout Berlin. The details of Lara’s vanishing trigger flashbacks to his entanglement with Johannes Held, a physicist who, 25 years earlier, infiltrated an American research institute dedicated to weaponizing the paranormal.

Seventeen-year-old Sean needs a lot of things: He needs his parents to stop hassling him. He needs his Jewfro to grow out into heavy metal hair. But most of all, he needs a band...Without one, he isn’t sure that he’s ever going to make it out of this two-horse town. He’s been trying to put a band together for as long as he can remember, but finding like-minded metalheads in rural America has been challenging. Finally, the stars align and a band is born. It’s magic. But can these five talented metal kids keep things together long enough to play the show of a lifetime?

Mr Finchley takes a fancy to a horse-drawn caravan that he sees for sale, but his new wife does not relish the prospect of a caravan journey, so he sets off alone to explore the countryside and go house-hunting. While learning to handle the horse and the caravan, he encounters a variety of eccentrics and country characters, and several unsuitable houses. It gradually emerges that the caravan contains a secret, and Mr Finchley finds himself in real trouble. This gentle comedy trilogy was a runaway bestseller on first publication in the 1930s and retains a timeless appeal today.

An ebullient Mr Finchley is about to propose marriage to a lady he had rescued from mishap, when he is sent to Paris by his firm. There he manages to upset a boat, adopt a stray orphan, and get himself kidnapped. The fine tangle he gets into takes some unravelling! Only when eventually back in London does he complete the proposal of marriage that was interrupted at the start. This gentle comedy trilogy was a runaway best seller on first publication in the 1930s and retains a timeless appeal today.

Movimenti sospetti nella notte a Bellano: forse allucinazioni, forse faccende private, forse non proprio reati. Forse. "Un uomo in mutande?" chiese il maresciallo Ernesto Maccadò. Nessuna traccia di sorriso. Anzi, un'espressione che valeva un punto interrogativo. Il Misfatti l'aveva messa sullo scherzo, ma quello, niente, aveva preteso i dettagli invece di riderci su. "Si spieghi meglio, appuntato", disse il Maccadò. "Dicevo tanto per..." annaspò il Misfatti. "L'ascolto comunque", insisté il maresciallo.