Historical Humor

The collected short stories of the great Victor Canning, originally written and published in the 1950s and 1960s—full of humor, charm, and in true fashion of classic crime writing. Canning’s heartwarming vignettes and clever mysteries take us from a Welsh valley to a far-off island and across the French countryside—introducing unforgettable characters and stories along the way.

The career of George, the famed Greek mob boss, gets off to a bad start. As a teenager, he kills Joey, the man who might have been his father. Joey's twin brother, Lazarus, vows revenge. All George has to do to survive is to marry a Greek girl picked by his family. Unfortunately, George falls in love with Kelly, a girl who isn't Greek. She loves him. All she asks is that he leave his family. This is the first book in The Saga of George trilogy, a satire of mob novels. Set in the late 1960s, it blends Greek culture, mythology, and religious themes with sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

Clues, quips, and cocktails...that's how Mr. and Mrs. Key always solved crimes. But what happens when their "perfect marriage" falls apart...in the middle of postwar Washington, DC's, most baffling murder?

David reluctantly joins members of his high school bridge club at their 20th class reunion in the hope of solving a personal mystery from his own past. But reuniting soon delivers a few unwelcome truths, and fear sets in when a classmate is found dead. As old rivalries and resentments flare, the gathering on the Queen Mary in Long Beach for a weekend of memory-making brings forth more murder. David enjoys a high school flashback with an old flame but is left with more questions than answers.

Renee is from a small town, in provincial France, who flees to Paris, only to find that it has been overrun by Nazis. He returns to his hometown of Brassac to discover that the fiancé he abandoned on the night of their wedding has joined the local convent. He finds himself mayor of the town he abandoned when the former officeholder flees to avoid working with the Vichy government.

We all come to crossroads in our lives where a step in one direction or another can dictate the rest of our time on the planet. It can happen just once for some, or like Stephen and his son Terry, it can happen often and each time they make a choice, they have half a chance to make the right one. If it is wrong then the next choice, even though it may be fueled by alcohol or drugs, may be a little more complex, and so it goes, life unfolds, and we take what we get.

When David is drafted at the last minute to cover a class on human sexuality, he prepares by attending a sex therapists conference, where a fellow attendee confides that she’s being blackmailed over illicitly obtained sex tapes. Things take a sinister turn when murder is thrown into the mix, and as David fumbles his way through his first mystery, he discovers he has a talent for sleuthing—and for finding himself in sticky situations.

A street-side conman becomes embroiled in high politics when his scheme to relieve the doge of Genoa of a sizable portion of his wealth backfires. He is conscripted to deliver a message to The Cutler, a mysterious figure in the papal city of Avignon. Two English pilgrims are also making their way to the pope, seeking repentance for their sins. Their journey takes a debauched turn, however, and their arrival is one of a pair of wandering drunkards rather than pious pilgrims.

Blandford Candy is sent to London, after an illicit affair, and joins the Roundhead army to fight against the King, taking part in the Battle of Edgehill. A reluctant hero if ever there was one, he becomes a spy for the cause - and, through luck or judgement, uncovers more than one Royalist plot. His love of wine and the fairer sex prove both a curse and a blessing for the agent. Blandford soon earns the enmity of the King’s spy mistress Jane Whorwood, and patronage of the great parliamentarian leader John Hampden.

December, 1939. Having solved the case of the Suffolk Vampire, Inspector Betty Church and her colleagues at Sackwater Police Station have settled back down to business. There's the elderly Mr Fern, who keeps losing his slippers, Sylvia Satin's 13th birthday party to attend and the scintillating case of the missing bookmark to solve. Though peace and quiet are all well and good, Betty soon finds herself longing for some cold-blooded murder.

Having escaped being burnt at the stake, the reluctant sorcerer Fursey is back in this sequel, trying to make a quiet life for himself as a grocer in the realm of King Ethelwulf. But when his old enemies seize his wife, Fursey resolves to embrace evil and return to Ireland to reclaim her. Along the way, he'll have to contend with bloodthirsty Vikings, a melancholy vampire, an alcoholic wizard, a lovesick cow, and Satan himself, who is more determined than ever to get his hands on Fursey's soul.

Last Days of Summer is the story of Joey Margolis, neighborhood punching bag, growing up goofy and mostly fatherless in Brooklyn in the early 1940s. A boy looking for a hero, Joey decides to latch on to Charlie Banks, the all-star third basemen for the New York Giants. But Joey's chosen champion doesn't exactly welcome the extreme attention of a persistent young fan with an overactive imagination. Then again, this strange, needy kid might be exactly what Banks needs.

The setting is Seattle's Lake City neighborhood during the 2001 holiday season. In the wake of the 9/11 tragedy and at the peak of Seattle's first wave of tech-boom gentrification - a wave that never quite made it to his neighborhood - Lane Bueche schemes how to win back his wife (and her trust fund). In his childhood bedroom in his mother's decrepit old house, the idealistic but self-serving striver Lane licks his wounds and hatches a plot.

Autumn, 1989. The waning days of the Cold War. A rogue Stasi colonel has acquired a nuclear bomb and threatens to level Berlin if and when the Wall comes down. CIA Agent Nick Harper is called in to foil the plot. Soon after arriving, however, Harper discovers his identity has been compromised. To stay alive, he must go along with a group of passionate young East Berliners who mistake him for their idol, American superstar David Hasselhoff.

In the polemic spirit of Jane Anger’s The Protection for Women, we publish The Worming of America, as a rebuttal to Joseph Swetnam’s novel published in 1615.

Dr. Siri Paiboun, the ex-national coroner of Laos, may have more experience dissecting bodies than making art, but when he manages to smuggle a fancy movie camera into the country he devises a plan to shoot a Lao adaptation of War and Peace. The only problem? The Ministry of Culture must approve the script first. That and he can't figure out how to turn on the camera. Meanwhile, the skeleton of a woman has appeared under the Anusawari Arch in the middle of the night. Siri assists his friend, the newly promoted Senior Police Inspector Phosy Vongvichai, with the ensuing investigation.

While transporting a woman to an insane asylum, Deputy Kopp discovers something deeply troubling about her story. Before she can investigate, another inmate bound for the asylum breaks free and tries to escape. In both cases, Constance runs instinctively toward justice. But the fall of 1916 is a high-stakes election year, and any move she makes could jeopardize Sheriff Heath's future - and her own. Although Constance is not on the ballot, her controversial career makes her the target of political attacks.

Sir Alanbart avoids action, recoils from romance, and shuns self-sacrifice; yet when he finds himself drawn into a harebrained attempt to rescue King Arthur, he becomes a victim of all three, and then poor Alanbart must fight hard to stay true to his cowardly and indolent nature.

Three Days and Two Knights is a genre crossover that blends fantasy adventure, comedy, and romance in a historical literary setting.

B League Champs evokes a freer time of growing up in the Sixties and is a heartfelt but unsentimental reckoning of one boy's coming of age through his Little League experiences.

Deputy sheriff Constance Kopp is outraged to see young women brought into the Hackensack jail over dubious charges of waywardness, incorrigibility, and moral depravity. The strong-willed, patriotic Edna Heustis, who left home to work in a munitions factory, certainly doesn't belong behind bars. And 16-year-old runaway Minnie Davis, with few prospects and fewer friends, shouldn't be publicly shamed and packed off to a state-run reformatory. But such were the laws - and morals - of 1916.