Historical Humor

RITA Award winner Melody Carlson's sassy tale highlights the healing influence of family, friends, faith - and unexpected love - on a 31-year-old single gal who's down but not out. The day she dons her Valentino boots, Cassidy's life starts spinning out of control. Her boss fires her, her boyfriend dumps her, and someone steals her identity. And binging on chocolate doesn't help.

It seems that the FDR writer is back wanting more Fe-As-Ko stories from cowpoke Royal Leckner. This time it's 1897, Royal and E.M. have been married about four years. And so have Leviticus and Lou(ella) Perrault, owners of the Four Arrows ranch. Royal is still foreman of the ranch and caretaker of its owner. As he reminds us, Leviticus and Lou(ella) Perrault are "short a hat size," but "nice and honest, which is better than smart and fox-like any day." It's time to take the cattle to Portland for the annual sale, and Royal is bringing Leviticus along to teach him how "to sign on the dotted line."

In The Royalscope Fe-As-Ko, Northwest cattle rancher Royal Leckner finds himself in the middle of another fe-as-ko, this time in 1915 Hollywood. Dreams of stardom for her daughter, Elsie, and for herself entice Royal's wife, E.M., to buy a silent film company. She quickly renames it Royalscope Productions in order to convince her fuming husband it's a gift.

So there was all that: the ordinary twill of life; the ho-hum sturm und drang of the workplace: the ubiquitous absurdities, the annoying co-workers, the bloody deadlines and even bloodier bottom lines; the bland, eternal, Sisyphean, absolute, unrelenting, surreal certainty of the day-in-and-day-out of it all. Life as a slice of white bread, moistened with spit and rolled into a messy glob, a doughy ball that couldn't make the slightest dent in the iron gates of life. But then, suddenly, on August 27, 2002, all that changed. Suddenly, Rae-Jean's uneventful life began to leaven and swell with hypotheticals.

On the eve of Vermont's Great Flood of 1927, rain falls on northern Lake Champlain. Otter's father has been missing since World War I, and then a letter arrives with surprising news. Royal St. Onge may be alive! Otter and Granddad load a canoe with Missisquoi Moonbeam and paddle across Goose Bay to rendezvous at the family camp, but Otter's father is nowhere to be found, and bullet holes scar the cabin walls.

1968. Jean a six ans quand il est confié du jour au lendemain à sa grand-mère. Pour l'été. Pour toujours. Il n'a pas prévu ça. Elle non plus. Mémé Lucette n'est pas commode, mais dissimule un cœur tendre. Jean, véritable moulin à paroles, est un tourbillon de fraîcheur pour celle qui vivait auparavant une existence paisible, rythmée par ses visites au cimetière et sa passion pour le tricot. Chacun à une étape di-éreinte sur le chemin de la vie - elle a tout vu, il s'étonne de tout -, Lucette et Jean vont s'apprivoiser.

Raising the literary bar to a new level, Jerome Charyn re-creates the voice of Theodore Roosevelt, the New York City police commissioner, Rough Rider, and soon-to-be 26th president through his derring-do adventures, effortlessly combining superhero dialogue with haunting pathos. Beginning with his sickly childhood and concluding with McKinley's assassination, the novel positions Roosevelt as a "perfect bull in a china shop," a fearless crime fighter and pioneering environmentalist who would grow up to be our greatest peacetime president.

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.

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.

During the Vietnam War, GIs who managed to survive their tour of duty in one piece - more or less - were flown home in chartered airliners. They called those planes "Freedom Birds". This is the story of three young men - from wildly different backgrounds - who meet on such a plane and make a pact to spend three days together in San Francisco. Their goal: to spend every cent of their mustering out money in a party of a lifetime.

A great Australian yarn about a bold Australian outback adventure belonging to another time in another world, inspired by a true story. The happy routine life of two Perth boys is shattered one November day in 1950 when they are falsely accused of theft. With fabricated evidence mounting against them they decide to run away from their homes and families to avoid prosecution and pooling their meager pocket money they back the winner of the Melbourne Cup and fund an escape.

In 1954, after the government implements the Indian Termination Act, three Klamath brothers are forced to contemplate their futures amidst the growing turmoil of life on the reservation.

David’s up for a giggle when wild-card therapy client Bennett ropes him into running therapy sessions at a comedy conference. It should be a hoot, but nobody’s laughing when a conference attendee turns up dead, and veiled threats waft David’s way. Treading a fine line between self-preservation and sleuthing, David calls in his growing posse for backup and some questionable group improv.

In 1985, The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering had its inaugural conference in Elko, Nevada. David was there to help put on a show, but when your cast keeps losing members, it's hard to know how the show can go on.

In the fall of 2020, COVID-19 continues to kill. Most blame China and it seems war is inevitable. America is about to pick a president to lead the country through the conflict with China. You must choose the president to lead through War 19! This is a two book political thriller series, one if Biden wins and one if Trumps wins reelection. One book is sure to thrill you and one book will make you want to burn it! Full of suspense, mystery, political satire, and humor, this "Biden Wins" version of historical fiction answers the questions you have been dying to know!

College senior Patty Wyatt is a fun-loving, headstrong, and intelligent girl who gets herself into mischief and learns valuable lessons, both in and out of the classroom. Written in 1903, this is Jean Webster’s first of many great American novels.

Austin Davenport is back as he travels back in time to battle his timeless nemeses for honor and glory. Well, sort of. When Austin is embarrassed by baby-faced villain Randy Warblemacher in front of the whole school, he decides to drop the gauntlet! And the upcoming Medieval Renaissance Fair is the perfect place for an epic showdown.

David joins therapy client Bennett, a volatile but goodhearted author, at a mystery writers conference in Las Vegas, where attendees dress up as famous detectives and participate in an innocent whodunit game. So far, so sleuthy. But all is not what it seems—Bennett’s girlfriend has disappeared, and David is tasked with finding her. And he’s not the only one on her tail. The conference cosplay takes a less than cozy turn when a series of dramatic deaths wipes out some of the most famous detectives in mystery history.

Resourceful Bingo Riggs and his partner, Handsome Kusak, are in the sucker-bait business, snapping candid pics of tourists off Central Park. Their fly-by-night enterprise can be irresistible to souvenir lovers, but with one camera in a pawnshop and their developing room in the bathtub of a two-room dump near Hell’s Kitchen, their venture is wretchedly underexposed - until they stumble upon an insurance fraud scheme between the allegedly dead eccentric Mr. S. S. Pigeon and his business partner and beneficiary.

Big Son is a spirit of the times - the times being 1837. Behind his broad shoulders, shiny hair, and church-organ laugh, Big Son practically made Ohio City all by himself. The feats of this proto-superhero have earned him wonder and whiskey, but very little in the way of fortune. And without money, Big cannot become an honest husband to his beloved Cloe (who may or may not want to be his honest wife).