Historical Humor

From the recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature, a "brilliant...enchanting novel" (New York Times Book Review) of romance, deceit, religion, and magic set in 18th-century Portugal at the height of the Inquisition.

Dr. Siri Paiboun is summoned to the mountains of Huaphan Province, where for years the leaders of the current communist government hid in caves, waiting to assume power. Now a major celebration of the new regime is scheduled to take place, but an arm is found protruding from the concrete walk laid from the president’s former cave hideout to his new house beneath the cliffs. Siri must supervise the disinterment of the body attached to the arm, identify it, and determine the cause of death.

Can food lead Tara Taneja to love?Tara Taneja lives in the small town of Siyaka; she runs a Mathematics Tuition Centre and works at her grandfather's sweets shop, Lallan Sweets.Nikku Sabharwal, her long lost best friend and crush, returns to Siyaka after many years. Sparks fly between them, as...

A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER A NEW YORKER ESSENTIAL READ From “one of the most acute and lasting writers of her generation” (The New York Times)—a ghost story set in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, an elegiac consideration of grief, devotion (filial and...

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.

"A stranger could drive through Miguel Street and just say 'Slum!' because he could see no more." But to its residents, this derelict corner of Trinidad's capital is a complete world, where everybody is quite different from everybody else. In this tender, funny early novel, V. S. Naipaul renders their lives (and the legends their neighbors construct around them) with Dickensian verve and Chekhovian compassion.

Mad Jack is in reality Winifrede Levering Bascombe, who, happily, has her name changed very quickly in the story. She arrives in London with the aunts, Mathilda and Maude, of Lord Cliffe, Grayson St. Cyre, to beg his assistance. He welcomes the aunts, briefly spots the valet, Jack, and proceeds very quickly after their arrival to fall down the rabbit hole.

Mark Robarts, a young vicar, is newly arrived in the village of Framley. With ambitions to further his career, he seeks connections in the county's high society. He is soon preyed upon by a local member of parliament to guarantee a substantial loan, which Mark, in a moment of weakness, agrees to, even though he knows the man is a notorious debtor; it brings Mark to the brink of ruin.

A charmingly exuberant comic debut from an exciting new literary voice, and a “quirky, hilarious, elegantly written farce” (The Daily Telegraph), The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who Got Trapped in an Ikea Wardrobe is the globetrotting story of a trickster from rural India and his...

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.

Now with a reimagined look! Join a peasant boy who wants to be a knight in the laugh-out-loud funny, highly illustrated first book of the New York Times bestselling Once Upon a Tim chapter book series from Spy School author Stuart Gibbs. Tim is just a peasant, but he dreams big. He wants more...

In the summer of 1942, Hermie is 15. He is wildly obsessed with sex, and passionately in love with an "older woman" of 22, whose husband is overseas and at war. Ambling through Nantucket Island with his friends, Hermie's indelible narration chronicles his frantic efforts to become a man, especially one worthy of the lovely Dorothy, as well as his glorious and heartbreaking initiation into sex.

Beatrice Hyde-Clare est unique : sous la Régence anglaise, les jeunes filles de son âge sont rares à être encore célibataires... Et encore moins nombreuses à enquêter sur des meurtres. Beatrice a désespérément besoin de détourner ses pensées du séduisant mais inaccessible duc de Kesgrave. Miracle : monsieur Skeffington surgit du passé avec une demande peu orthodoxe. Il voudrait que ce soit Bea qui enquête sur la mort suspecte de l'amant de sa future belle-mère, plutôt que de faire appel aux autorités.

A #1 New York Times bestselling author delivers a sexy and scandalous Regency romance about an adventurous woman and the mysterious son of a Duke who finds his way into her life—perfect for Bridgerton fans. It's 1814 and nineteen‑year‑old Eliza Melrose is about to be launched into London's...

Mrs Tim goes to the Highlands of Scotland and is involved in a plot to rescue a naval officer from the toils of a siren; but, alas, the best laid plans "gang aft agley". The characters are skilfully drawn, from the fierce Mrs London, with her heart of gold, to the garrulous Mrs Falconer, whose muddled stories of her girlhood make excruciatingly funny reading.

One of the most beloved novels from the critically acclaimed novelist Laurie Colwin, Goodbye Without Leaving explores a woman’s attempts to reconcile her rock-and-roll past with her significantly more sedate family life as a wife and mother. As a bored graduate student, Geraldine Colshares is...

Gravedigger John Gascoigne lives in Downfell Hurst with his wife, Florrie, their three children and his mother, Gran. John is a deep thinker but extremely taciturn - a man of few words and many grunts. Which is why everyone is alarmed when he's hit on the head by a cricket ball, and it suddenly seems as if the words won't stop. What's more, he says he is talking to Saint Christopher - only no one else can see the saint, and they're beginning to worry John's not quite right in the head.

At the turn of the 20th century, as he composes a treatise on melancholy, Jacov Reinhardt sets off from his small Croatian village in search of his hero and unwitting mentor, Emiliano Gomez Carrasquilla, who is rumored to have disappeared into the South American jungle - "not lost, mind you, but retired." Jacov's narcissistic preoccupation with melancholy consumes him, and as he desperately recounts the myth of his journey to his trusted but ailing scribe, hope for an encounter with the lost philosopher who holds the key to Jacov's obsession seems increasingly unlikely.

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!

Two hundred years after her death, Jane Austen is still surrounded by the literature she loves, but now it's because she's the owner of Flyleaf Books in a sleepy college town in Upstate New York. Every day she watches her novels fly off the shelves along with dozens of unauthorized sequels, spin-offs, and adaptations. Jane may be undead, but her books have taken on a life of their own.