Historical Humor

David O. Strickland's darkly comic novel is set during Egress Recap - the return of American POWs from Vietnam's "Hanoi Hilton" in 1973. Like Kurt Vonnegut's classic Slaughterhouse-Five, The First Man off the Plane features POWs bombed by their own planes.

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.

Alltid ska det drabba oss, protesterar Porta från förarsätet. Oss fattiga kulier jagar de så det ryker om strumporna. Man är så motbjudande oförskämt rask och sund och alla grannens kulor viker undan för en så man aldrig kommer ifrån det här skitkriget och får vräka sig på lasarett. Och man riskerar att bli ihjälslagen på alla möjliga sätt för en ynka Mark om dagen, fyller Lillebror i. Men en dag, på permission hos vackra Wera, anar Porta plötsligt en möjlighet att välbärgad kunna dra sig ur kriget.

Rachael O'Brien, a girl from the cornfields of Canton, Ohio, returns to college in North Carolina in her old Ford. Before the engine has cooled she finds herself in a passionate lip-lock with the man she's been fantasizing about, making sophomore year seem full of promise.

The once impoverished medical student Agnes Glock is now the fabulously wealthy Mrs Mulberry. Her estate in the mountains is magnificent, a haven for those too ravaged by the Great War to cope with the society that first condemned them to battle and which now shuns them. The War has, however, stolen Agnes's chance to graduate as a doctor, as well as the fiance she adored. Her husband, Douglas Mulberry, remains shellshocked and unable to speak. Their scandalous marriage is a farce, an act of kindness to keep Douglas's fortune from his uncle's grasp.

Evie Clement has perfected the art of avoiding attention as she works at her family’s bakery and dreams of a life where she can trade dusting flour for designing dresses. Her focus is on honing her sewing skills—she doesn’t need to be fawned over by some teenage boy. Least of all Beau Bellegarde—the playboy of Paris, the second son of the ultra-wealthy Bellegarde family, the most popular guy in their prestigious high school. Others may swoon over his rakish charm and winning smile, but not Evie.

It's 1962, and all across America barriers are collapsing. But when Natalie Marx's mother inquires about summer accommodations in Vermont, she gets the following reply: The Inn at Lake Devine is a family-owned resort, which has been in continuous operation since 1922. Our guests who feel most comfortable here, and return year after year, are Gentiles. For twelve-year-old Natalie, who has a stubborn sense of justice, the words are not a rebuff but an infuriating, irresistible challenge.

When Lionel Savage, a popular poet in Victorian London, learns from his butler that they're broke, he marries the beautiful Vivien Lancaster for her money, only to find that his muse has abandoned him. Distraught and contemplating suicide, Savage accidentally conjures the devil - the polite "Gentleman" of the title - who appears at one of the society parties Savage abhors. The two hit it off: The devil talks about his home, where he employs Dante as a gardener; Savage lends him a volume of Tennyson.

Impossibly beautiful, disarmingly witty, and completely self-absorbed: Meet Lady Susan Vernon, both the heart and the thorn of Love & Friendship. Recently widowed, with a daughter who's coming of age as quickly as their funds are dwindling, Lady Susan makes it her mission to find them wealthy husbands - and fast.

In 1938, Hitler visits Italy. An expatriate Irish art historian is obliged to guide Mussolini and his guest around the galleries. Half fascinated, half repelled, he watches the tyrants, wrestling with the uneasy conviction that he ought to use the opportunity to "do something" about them yet lacking the zeal that might transform misgivings into action. Thirty years later, his daughter comes across a compromising clipping showing her father with the dictators.

It's 1883 - only a few months after Molly Pepper; her mother, Cassandra; and her friend, Emmett, saved New York from an attack by the megalomaniacal Ambrose Rector while managing to preserve the reputations of Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison, whose technology was manipulated in Rector’s scheme. Their selfless heroism will finally earn them a place in the Inventors’ Guild, alongside the greatest minds of their generation. Unless, of course, no one knows that they did any of that.

On the outskirts of a small seaside town, Lia and her friend Anna work serious hours running their restored cafe. The summer season is upon them, they have Anna's wedding to plan, and Lia's ex-boyfriend seems not to understand it's over. When a gorgeous stranger taps on Lia's window near midnight and turns out not to be a serial killer, she feels it's a promising sign. But no one comes without a past, and his arrives in the form of a four-year-old son. Just as Lia decides to give things a try, problems from her own past rear up.

Two centuries after his death, Alexander Hamilton is shining once more under America's spotlight - and we need him now more than ever. Orphaned as a kid, this young, scrappy, and hungry self-starter came from nothing and then helped win the Revolutionary War, created the country's financial system, seduced New York's most eligible ladies, ratified the Constitution, and landed his face on our $10 bill. (In his spare time he also formed the Coast Guard and the US Mint.) He is the ultimate underdog.

Sending his human resources manager on a reconnaissance mission to the great Jin city of Rhizun seemed like a good idea to Genghis Khan at the time, until a serendipitous scroll appears with revelations of a secret heir to the khanate. To save his legacy, Genghis sends his Mongol horde into Jin lands with nothing more than the fiercest army the world has ever known and several hundred of Captain Kupcayk’s famous buns. Unfortunately for Genghis, his successor is on the wrong side of the city walls.

In 1902, a radical vegetarian and nudist from Nuremberg named August Engelhardt set sail for what was then called the Bismarck Archipelago. His destination: the island Kabakon. His goal: to found a colony based on worship of the sun and coconuts. His malnourished body was found on the beach on Kabakon in 1919; he was 43 years old. Christian Kracht's Imperium uses the outlandish details of Engelhardt's life to craft a fable about the allure of extremism and its fundamental foolishness.

This is the story of a drug deal gone bad. Having committed the crime of selling a potent poison to a desperate youth, a destitute apothecary must decide how to spend his ill-gained fortune. Resolving to start his career afresh, he flees to the city of Verona to set up a new shop of medicinal healing and alchemical discovery. Plans go awry when he finds himself in the middle of a woeful tragedy he had unwittingly helped to cause.

Sembrerebbe impossibile, perché la posizione è invidiabile, ma anche al caffè dell'imbarcadero di Bellano capita che per una giornata intera entri solo qualche sparuto cliente. Come martedì 5 marzo 1935. Per tirare sera l'oste Gnazio Termoli deve inventarsele tutte, fino a lavare e rilavare bicchieri già puliti. E poi sbadigliare all'ingresso del bar deserto. Eppure questa è una data che non potrà dimenticare, né lui né l'intero paese.

Una sola lettera e anche il terzo segretario bellanese del partito finirebbe nel ridicolo. Le rive del lago di Como sono punteggiate di paesi e paesini accomodati ai piedi delle montagne dove non succede granché. Tranne a Bellano. Nell'ultimo anno e mezzo circa, il Federale del fascio ha dovuto sostituire già due segretari della sezione locale del partito. Il primo a saltare è stato Bortolo Piazzacampo, detto Tartina, per una vicenda legata alle bizzarrie di un toro chiamato Benito in cui il Tartina si è distinto per insipienza.

At the end of the 18th century, two brilliant and eccentric young scientists set out to measure the world. Measuring the World recreates the parallel but contrasting lives of two geniuses of the German Enlightenment - the naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt and the mathematician and physicist Carl Friedrich Gauss.

Things are changing in the Gaither household. After soaking up a "power to the people" mind-set over the summer, Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern return to Brooklyn with a newfound streak of independence. Pa has a girlfriend. Uncle Darnell is home from Vietnam, but he's not the same. And a new singing group called the Jackson Five has the girls seeing stars. But the one thing that doesn't change? Big Ma still expects Delphine to keep everything together.