Historical Humor

Orphaned cousins Jane and Lucilla, both 19, receive the exciting news that their guardian is at last allowing them to leave boarding school. But their rosy future is thwarted when they find he has made some bad investments and fled, leaving them with a cottage in the English countryside and a modest bank account.

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.

With echoes of Lonesome Dove and News of the World, the riveting story of a pregnant young mother, her child, and the frontier tradesman who helps them flee across Texas from outlaws bent on revenge, even as an unlikely love blossoms. Texas, 1868. As nineteen-year-old Benjamin Shreve tends to...

Lloyd has a particular set of skills. He writes the small print for prescription drugs, marital aids, and incontinence products. The clients present him with a list of possible side effects. His job is ""to recite and minimize""—sometimes by just saying them really fast and other times by...

"I do not say there is no character as well drawn in Shakespeare [as D'Artagnan]. I do say there is none that I love so wholly." --Robert Louis Stevenson "The lasting and universal popularity of The Three Musketeers shows that Dumas, by artlessly expressing his own nature in the persons of his...

Oscar Hopkins is a high-strung preacher's kid with hydrophobia and noisy knees. Lucinda Leplastrier is a frizzy-haired heiress who impulsively buys a glass factory with the inheritance forced on her by a well-intentioned adviser. In the early parts of this lushly written audiobook, author Peter Carey renders the seminal turning points in his protagonists' childhoods as exquisite 19th-century set pieces.

'How I love a story of sisters, and Michelle Kenney has conjured up four sparky modern-minded Fairfax girls. The dialogue is quick-fire, plot complex and satisfying, the men heroic and rich' Jane Dunn, Sunday Times bestselling author Perfect for Bridgerton and Jane Austen fans! Fall in love with...

*Best New Science Fiction for Summer by The Washington Post *A Most-Anticipated book of 2017 by The Millions Everyone else knows the truth about you, now you can know it, too. That’s the slogan. The product: a junky contraption that tattoos personalized revelations on its users’...

Mr Edgar Finchley, unmarried clerk, aged 45, is told to take a holiday for the first time in his life. He decides to go to the seaside. But Fate has other plans in store...From his abduction by a cheerful crook, to his smuggling escapade off the south coast, the timid but plucky Mr Finchley is plunged into a series of the most astonishing and extraordinary adventures. His rural adventure takes him gradually westward through the English countryside and back, via a smuggling yacht, to London.

Norman Mailer fused fact and fiction to create indelible portraits of such figures as Marilyn Monroe, Gary Gilmore, and Lee Harvey Oswald. In The Gospel According to the Son, Mailer reimagines, as no other modern author has, the key character of Western history. Here is Jesus Christ's story in his own words: the discovery of his divinity and the painful, powerful journey to accepting and expressing it, "as if I were a man enclosing another man within."

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.

It's all here: the story of how Robin lost his birthright as the King's Ranger at Locksley, his archery feats at Nottingham, the outlaws' war with the Sheriff, Robin's pursuit of Marian, and many tales of bravery, rescue, laughter and rivalry with Little John, Friar Tuck, Allan-a-Dale, Much the Miller, Will Scarlett, and all the others.Now you can have this incomparable story read to you, in a gripping full stereo audio book. The story is adapted from the Paul Creswick text. It is faithful to the entire original story.

After 200 years undead, Jane Austen still has bite. But will her most recent literary success be her last? Life was a lot easier for Jane when she was just an unknown, undead bookstore owner in a sleepy hamlet in upstate New York. But now the world embraces her as Jane Fairfax, author of the best-selling novel Constance - and she’s having a killer time trying to keep her true identity as the Jane Austen a secret. Even the ongoing lessons in How to Be a Vampire, taught by her former lover Lord Byron, don’t seem to be helping much.

The start of a brilliantly funny accidental time-travel diary series for tweens. It’s Back to the Future meets Judy Blume, with a 13-year-old girl who tackles timeslip mishaps, laugh-out-loud embarrassing moments, and one unpredictable adventure after another. Hi! I’m Lily. My birthday is in...

In 1729, Swift published A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick known today as A Modest Proposal. In this satire, Swift grotesquely suggests how the poor could solve the problem of their numerous families which they are struggling to feed.

A delightful day in 1910 at the Haxford Spring Fair turns horrifying and deadly when a balloonist plummets to the earth from the blue skies above. However unlikely, it’s soon discovered that this unfortunate corpse was not done in by his precipitous plunge but instead from an arrow fatally lodged in his chest. Unraveling the twisted web of intrigue that took the man’s life requires the expert skills of Haxford’s brilliant and sartorially splendid Chief Inspector Pignon Scorbion. But the quirky detective is not alone. Aiding Scorbion in his dogged pursuit are his chosen deputies.

“A scorchingly brilliant, wildly funny, and deeply moving epic.” —John Green, #1 globally bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars Two unlikely heroes embark on quests to win God’s favor in this outrageously entertaining, profoundly heartfelt novel that announces an ingenious new...

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.

This novel is a virtual time machine that takes the reader back to 11th century England - the time of Saxon domination before and after the disastrous Battle of Hastings in 1066. Step directly into the footsteps of Cuthwin of Alnwick. There are few “great men or women” in this historical novel, but instead the story of an ordinary man and his wife who work to survive.

Após uma década de trabalho mediana, Rick Dalton acha difícil engolir a ideia de que a indústria cinematográfica passa muito bem sem ele, obrigado. Sentindo que sua carreira de ator está cada vez mais próxima do fim e mergulhado em uma crise existencial, Rick está disposto a se submeter ao lobby cruel de Hollywood para tentar adiar sua ruína. Para isso, vai cogitar uma investida no cinema italiano, encarnar um vilão controverso em uma série de faroeste e aceitar conselhos profissionais de uma respeitada atriz de oito anos de idade.