Historical Humor

Courting Death finds Melanie Wilkerson (from Cotton, book two of the Clarkeston Chronicles) and Arthur Hughes working uncomfortably together in the chambers of a famous federal judge. While Melanie neglects her duties as a law clerk to investigate the mysterious death of a young woman in the courthouse five years earlier, Arthur wades through the horrific habeas corpus appeals of two prisoners: an infamous serial killer and a pathetic child murderer.

The author of The End of the Road and Small Comforts returns to his fictional Alaska town, The End of the Road, to present more unforgettable stories about its colorful inhabitants and their doings...

Flatland, like our own world, is on the verge of the millenium. On the last day of the year 1999, a Square—hitherto undistinguished from the other shapes of his two-dimensional world—receives the Gospel of Three Dimensions, revealed to that world's flat inhabitants only once every a thousand...

It was a hot, still Thursday afternoon in 1949 soon after I arrived in California to begin my undergraduate studies at Stanford. Thursday was ice-cream day at the Monterey Home for the Elderly and Indigent in Salinas. As I opened the door, I saw a group of residents encircling a small, wiry man standing on a chair with a hand resting on my Uncle Dans shoulder for support. He held their attention as he animatedly and with a twinkling eye, related a tale which had then all engrossed. Having spotted my uncle Dan in the group, I sidled up to him so I too could hear the story.

"Bones and biscuits! If a cheeky bird didn't fly down to my nose and eat a crumb off my left whiskers! Really, people have no manners at all these days!" In this very funny book, Bobs gives us his opinions on everything from fireworks to frogs, cats to Christmas, in his own words. This...

Flying into action, daredevil photojournalist Johnny Brice is always looking for trouble...and more often than not, finding it. But he doesn’t know what real trouble is until he rescues the beautiful woman he calls Jinx from a sinking ship. They’re made for each other - even if they are a dangerous mix.

Set in a small town of the industrial North of England in the late 1950s, this is a feel-good story about the antics of a young man's attempt to make something of himself with a little help from the lads in his yard. Thwarted with bad luck and inexperience, their journey of persistence never to miss an opportunity through the hardships of the time will make you smile.

Bumbling journalist Henry Henderson is on his next assignment. This time to the sleepy skiing town of Creleon, Spain. Dispatched by his paranoid boss, Henderson goes on a quest for weather altering machine that could change the world as we know it. Jolly japes ensue although a storm seems to be brewing that could be his last on the foreign desk.

Set in 1919, The Greatest Living Englishman tells the comedic adventures of "England's Worst Poet" Colin Gilfeather Millaney: an egotistical - though loveable - rhymer who is wholly untouched with even the faintest speck of talent. He is so awful that people throw rotten produce at him on the streets. They buy his books, just to throw at him. But that does not stop him from penning his doggerel, or inflicting it upon what he claims is the "misguided" public.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a revisionist history of Hollywood's Golden Era and the press that covered it. Harry Pennypacker was a prolific and revered newspaper columnist; a colleague of Louella Parsons, Walter Winchell, and the other great columnists of the day. Unfortunately, nobody has ever heard of him because the papers never ran his articles. They were too hot. Too dangerous. Too likely to tarnish the delicate image of silver screen icons. The newspaper syndicate couldn't fire him because he had an ironclad contract, so Pennypacker wrote his stories...and the editors buried them.

Victorian England. Christmas Eve. Young Jack, a blind boy of 10 years, sits alone by the hearth, making a Christmas wish: Jack would like a dog to keep him company. Suddenly Jack hears a frantic scrambling in the chimney and something plops into the room. Jack is overjoyed! Santa has brought him a dog! Except it's actually a chicken, but don't tell Jack. He's never seen a dog or a chicken, because he's never seen anything. Jack names his pet King and over the next several days they have some wonderful adventures.

Welcome the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the year of our lord 1983. The affable Bethie means well, but at times, she can find herself in dire need of sage advice from her typically taciturn yet positively perspicacious best friend, Paige. Paige's advice may not always seem sound to Bethie, but as we tend to discover in this series of tales, Bethie would do well to follow it. Not that she always does. Follow along on the misadventures, misunderstandings, and comical catastrophes that form the day-to-day lives of Bethie and Paige.

Had J.J. Baskin lived at the same time as Tom Sawyer, they may well have been best friends, or perhaps worst enemies. They would have at least been competitors.

This novelette is an homage to the amazing P. G. Wodehouse and his legendary characters Jeeves and Bertie Wooster. While living in 1920's New York City, Bertie is saddled with looking after the son of one of his Aunt Agatha's best mates, the Lady Mallowan. Bertie thinks that the young Lord Wiltshire is a useless, annoying nitwit, but he has no idea that left on his own a completely different side of the young Dermot will start to emerge, putting Bertie in a serious pickle.

From the original Greek financial crisis (when the profligate Gods of Olympus were punished by Odin and the other Norse Gods for their unchecked spending) to a handy unintended benefit of cosmetic surgery; from Pope Ron (the first Australian pope, who wants nothing more than to live quietly) to a rather droll cat named Stanley to Good President Wenceslas (benevolent leader of a snowy land) - these stories are by turns funny, poignant, and deliciously wicked, each one a gift begging to be unwrapped and enjoyed again and again.

When his teacher sets the class a History project, Sam cannot choose which bit of History he prefers, so decides to do all of it. His version of History is a rumbustious collection of half remembered facts, assembled roughly in the right order, and glued together with alarmingly confident misunderstanding. Sam takes us from Ancient Egypt right up to Last Week with the flair of a bright eyed nine year old.

Donald Cameron, a young Scotsman, is commissioned to write a book on the outsider's view of the English. He sets about his task with enthusiasm, encountering along the way an array of richly comical characters including civil servants, newspaper editors, minor poets, a glamourous movie star, politicians, and many more. This satire of English eccentricity has become a classic of 20th century literature.

On a hot summer day some 20 years after he was famously converted to kindness, Ebenezer Scrooge still roams the streets of London, spreading Christmas cheer, much to the annoyance of his creditors, his nephew, and his employee, Bob Cratchit. However, when Scrooge decides to help his old friend and former partner, Jacob Marley, as well as other inhabitants of the city, he will need the assistance of the very people he's annoyed. He'll also have to call on the three ghosts that visited him two decades earlier.

A humorous and poignant story told through letters from a displaced mill worker to his friend, depicting the changing landscape of rural American life in the 1980s. James E. Moore grew up in western Pennsylvania. A graduate of West Virginia University, he served in the U.S. Navy in the 1960s. Now retired, he lives with his wife, two dogs, and a cat in Connecticut.

Penniless, homeless, and virtually lifeless, the vagrant “Doughface” Jack is about to discover that where medical marvels meet the mysteries of the human mind, amazing things happen. The Tramp acquires a capability beyond his imagination and without equal on Earth. Riding the rails, Jack runs afoul of a local sheriff and ends up with a crushed skull. He’s as good as dead until a savvy country doctor performs a bit of medical magic.