Historical Humor

A comedy of errors when four octogenarian Egyptology docents steal a mummy which has no value to find artifacts they know do not exist and are mistaken for a band of professional art thieves.

When local baseball player Junior Jones receives death threats over the color of his skin, the team's wealthy owner hires Sam Rockwell to solve the case and stop a murder before it happens. Sam goes undercover as a minor league pitcher to strike out the culprit. Follow the clues along with Sam's curmudgeonly ghost of a father Frank Rockwell, and Sam's wife Amelia, who holds a secret that will forever change the lives of the entire Rockwell family. It's another laugh-filled, madcap mystery in the warm, witty 1950's Hollywood-style of author Jason Anspach.

Thus begins Mycroft Holmes’s valiant, if irregular, attempt to chronicle his doings. Rediscovered in 1976 and now fully translated from an obscure code, Mycroft’s diaries reveal that a brother’s lot is not always a happy one, especially when that brother happens to be London’s only consulting detective. In this humorous look at the world of Sherlock Holmes through Mycroft’s eyes, one question always remains: will Sherlock ever get a proper job?

In The Bible Salesman, Preston Clearwater is scoring cash working a car-theft ring in post-World War II North Carolina. When he picks up 19-year-old Bible salesman Henry Dampier, Preston convinces the kid that he's an FBI spy. And before Henry knows what's up, he finds himself in way over his head with no apparent way out.

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.

Gogol's great comic masterpiece paints an hilariously satirical picture of provincial life in 19th century Russia. Its publication in 1847 not only provided inspiration for succeeding generations of Russian writers, but fanned the already flickering flames of social discontent which were eventually to flare up and consume Russia in the revolution of 1917.

Amid the political turmoil of the French Revolution, another revolution is taking place, an ambitious project to remeasure the Paris meridian, thus determining the precise distance from the North Pole to the equator in order to calculate a new base unit of length - the meter - establishing a rational system of measurement based on nature that will unite all people of all nations for all time.

Ernie Spiegelglass gets high, gets involved, and is about to complete his residency...he hopes. Brash, brilliant, and often profane, Ernie (alias Doc Sparrowgrass) enters the world of a San Francisco clinic and turns the entire place upside down with his riotous romances and his own unique style - which includes treating patients like people. The medical establishment is turned off to his idea of medicine - from the heart, not by the book - but Ernie can’t turn his back on anyone who comes to him for help, even if it means jeopardizing his career.

Do you enjoy Monty Python, PG Wodehouse, and Rowan Atkinson's Blackadder? If so, then you might just enjoy Context Clues, an irreverent new novel from James C. Ferguson that combines both humor and history as it chronicles the fictional exploits of history's worst spy. Set during Sir Francis Walsingham's reign as chief secretary to Queen Elizabeth I, Context Clues follows the adventures of Basil Coventry, an "information gatherer" employed by the Crown.

L'azione, in questo terzo tomo, si svolge nel 1832. Il giardiniere papà Fauchelant è morto, Cosette ha 17 anni e lascia il convento...

Maggie O'Roark knows how to walk, talk, and fight like a man. When Maggie inherits her uncle's profitable silver and gold mines, she's determined to prove she can operate them on her own, even as her wedding date approaches. When Maggie's groom is kidnapped just before the wedding, Maggie is convinced saloon owner C.V. McCready is responsible, in a desperate bid to keep her from reopening the mines.

Oliver Vice, 41, prominent philosopher, scholar, and art collector, is missing and presumed dead, over the side of Queen Mary 2. Troubled by his friend’s possible suicide, the unnamed narrator of Lawrence Douglas’ new novel launches an all-consuming investigation into Vice’s life history. Douglas, moving backward through time, tells a mordantly humorous story of fascination turned obsession, as his narrator peels back the layers of the Vice family’s rich and bizarre history.

On his first night in his new home, Warren spies two figures in the grass outside; when he screws up the nerve to confront them, they disappear. The next day he encounters ghosts of a different kind: In the face of the teenage girl he meets at a comics convention, he sees the mingled features of his white father and his black mother, both now dead. The girl is his daughter, and she thinks she's white.

Russia, 1945: For Petka, a rambunctious 12-year-old boy with dreams too big for his tiny village, the prospect of invasion is dangerously thrilling. He watches the Red Army troops march off to engage the enemy, and wages his own war - against boredom, bullies, and his lot in life as a bastard in a backwoods world. Secretly raising a wolf in his grandmother’s goat barn, happily raising hell with the local troops, stowing away in a shipment of bootleg booze destined for the combat zone, and defying death by the noose, Petka eagerly takes all he can from life.

Chichikov, a mysterious stranger, arrives in a provincial town with a bizarre but seductive proposition for local landowners. He proposes to buy the names of their serfs who have died but who are still registered on the census, saving their owners from paying tax on them. But what collateral will Chichikov receive for these "souls"?

Nel quarto Tomo viene narrato l'amore fra Marius e Cosette e l'insurrezione del 5 giugno 1832...

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.

Oltre alla continuazione della vicenda di Jean Valjean questo secondo tomo del grande capolavoro di Hugo contiene due altri temi che inquadrano la narrazione principale...

Opera di inestimabile valore letterario e di grande rilevanza storica, ambientata nella Parigi post-Restaurazione...

Quinto e ultimo Tomo dell'opera, dedicato alla morte e all'annullamento. Morte dei giovani rivoluzionari sulle barricate...