Historical Humor

Sudden Death begins with a brutal tennis match that could decide the fate of the world. The bawdy Italian painter Caravaggio and the loutish Spanish poet Quevedo battle it out before a crowd that includes Galileo, Mary Magdalene, and a generation of popes who would throw Europe into the flames. In England, Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII behead Anne Boleyn, and her crafty executioner transforms her legendary locks into the most sought-after tennis balls of the time.

Acompañada de tres hombres, una mujer llega a un pueblo en busca del panadero para cobrar venganza. Cuando lo encuentra, lo balacea y le prende fuego al lugar. Las investigaciones del crimen revelarán los oscuros secretos de las conocidas hermanas Baladro, dueñas de cantinas y prostíbulos. Estafas, trata de mujeres, entierros clandestinos y asesinatos conforman el siniestro reino que las dos mujeres, Serafina y Arcángela, han construido a su alrededor.

Norman Mailer fused fact and fiction to create indelible portraits of such figures as Marilyn Monroe, Gary Gilmore, and Lee Harvey Oswald. In The Gospel According to the Son, Mailer reimagines, as no other modern author has, the key character of Western history. Here is Jesus Christ's story in his own words: the discovery of his divinity and the painful, powerful journey to accepting and expressing it, "as if I were a man enclosing another man within."

In 1977, Ickey Jerusalem, San Francisco’s golden-boy poet laureate (based on Blake), is found dead in a locked, first-class toilet on an arriving red-eye flight. Ded Smith, a desperately unhappy, intelligent philistine with a highly developed philosophy to match, is called in to investigate the poet’s death. Thus begins a series of hilarious encounters with the members of Jerusalem’s coterie (updated amalgams of characters from Blake’s work).

Due to financial hardships at Tawcester Towers, the Dowager Duchess has decreed that the only way the family fortunes can be restored is to marry Blotto off...to an American! Reluctantly, Blotto, together with Twinks and his trusty chauffeur Corky Froggett set sail.

Mark Franklin came from the American West to Edwardian England with two long-barrelled .44s in his baggage and a fortune in silver in the bank. Where he had got it and what he was looking for no one could guess, although they wondered - at Scotland Yard, in city offices, in the glittering theatreland of the West End, in the highest circles of society (even King Edward was puzzled) and in the humble pub at Castle Lancing.

Part of a six-instalment comic book series, Mapp and Lucia, which recounts the eccentric tales of various women in the 1920s and their fight for social status, Mapp and Lucia sees the two iconic protagonists – Emmeline Lucas and Elizabeth Mapp – finally cross paths. It is the fourth book in Benson’s hugely successful series. Renowned show-off Mrs Emmeline ‘Lucia’ Lucas decides to take up summer residence in the small seaside resort of Tilling, home to none other than the formidable Miss Elizabeth Mapp.

Undaunted by a threatening storm, Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley insists he must deliver his letter to Miss Elizabeth Bennet - then tragedy strikes. Riddled with guilt, Elizabeth comes to the aid of the comatose Mr. Darcy and stays by his side until he regains consciousness. She soon learns that although Mr. Darcy has awoken, he has not returned to himself. And with no memory of his first disastrous proposal, he has concluded that there is nothing he wants more than to propose to Miss Elizabeth.

What if the history of the transatlantic slave trade had been reversed and Africans had enslaved Europeans? How would that have changed the ways that people justified their inhuman behavior? How would it inform our cultural attitudes and the insidious racism that still lingers today? We see this tragicomic world turned upside down through the eyes of Doris, an Englishwoman enslaved and taken to the New World, movingly recounting experiences of tremendous hardship and the dreams of the people she has left behind, all while journeying toward an escape into freedom.

Set in the time of Charlemagne and narrated by a nun with her own secrets to keep, The Nonexistent Knight tells the story of Agilulf, a gleaming white suit of armor with nothing inside it. A challenge to his honor sends Agilulf on a search through France, England, and North Africa to confirm the chastity of a virgin he saved from rape years earlier.

Delphine Delacroix has lived the life of bird in a gilded cage, kept in a stately home with only her cold autocratic mother for company. At her mother’s death, she finds herself to be a wealthy woman and comes to London to be fretted over by her three maternal aunts determined to have her marry well. But Delphine feels she is once more having to hand herself over to another’s will and seeks to be the mistress of her own destiny.

In this follow-up to Austenland, Charlotte Kinder is eager to escape the numbness she feels after her divorce. Deciding to get away, she visits the Regency-themed Pembrook Park resort in England, where talented actors set the perfect scene. But with everyone playing a role, it’s hard to distinguish reality from fantasy. So when Charlotte’s heart stirs, she wonders if she’s simply caught up in the experience - or if her ability to feel is finally returning.

“Woe, for I am the bug that meets the windshield's might, No longer the speeding glass, smooth, clean and bright . . .” You’re right. I, Rosie Montague of Verona, am lousy at iambic pentameter and Shakespeare speak, but you get the point: Sometimes you’re the windshield and sometimes you’re the bug. I, who for my whole life, have cruised along, unruffled by life’s trials, am suddenly smashed flat and speeding recklessly up the WhattheHellHappened Highway.

Few writers have attempted to explore the natural history of a particular animal by adopting the animal's own sensibility. But Verlyn Klinkenborg, with his deeply empathetic relation to the world around him, has done just that, and done it brilliantly, in Timothy; or Notes of an Abject Reptile.

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.

Author Julie Cannon’s beloved Homegrown series has brought joy through good country living to countless readers. The third in the series, Those Pearly Gates looks in on Imogene Lavender and her family two years after the death of her husband and her marriage to the Rev. Lemuel Peddigrew. For Imogene and her daughter, Jeanette, life as pastors’ wives is proving more difficult than they first imagined. But a family emergency forces everyone to reevaluate relationships with each other and God.

It is 1940. France has fallen, and only a narrow strip of sea lies between Great Britain and invasion. The war could go either way, and everyone must do their bit. Young copywriter Catrin Cole is drafted into the Ministry of Information to help write women into propaganda films - something that the men aren't very good at. She is quickly seconded to the ministry's latest endeavor: a heartwarming tale of bravery and rescue at Dunkirk. It's all completely fabricated, of course, but what does that matter when the nation's morale is at stake?

This is a beautiful, moving tale from the best-selling author of the Flashman Papers. To the young Lady Margaret Dacre, raised in the rich security of Queen Elizabeth's court, the Scottish border was a land of blood and brutal violence, where raid and murder were commonplace, and her broad inheritance lay at the mercy of the outlaw riders and feuding tribes of England's last frontier.

Dorothy Hare, the dutiful daughter of a rector in Suffolk, spends her days performing good works and cultivating good thoughts, pricking her arm with a pin when a bad thought arises. She does her best to reconcile her father’s fanciful view of his position in the world with such realities as the butcher’s bill. But even Dorothy’s strength has its limits, and one night, as she works feverishly on costumes for the church-school play, she blacks out. When she comes to, she finds herself on a London street, clad in a sleazy dress and unaware of her identity.

His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh, KG, KT, OM, GBE has been at the forefront of British public life since he married Princess Elizabeth in 1947. In the 70 years since, his wit (and the occasional 'gaffe') has continued to endear him to the nation, as he travelled the world taking his unique and charmingly British sense of humour to its far-flung corners. In the year in which the Prince has stepped down from his royal duties, this joyous and timely book celebrates his wry humour and supremely wicked wit.