Humor Anthology

In these and other stories, Tom Bissell vividly renders the complex worlds of characters on the brink of artistic and personal crises — writers, video game developers, actors, and other creative types who see things slightly differently from the rest of us. With its surreal, poignant, and sometimes squirm-inducing stories, Creative Types is a brilliant new offering from one the most versatile and talented writers working in America today.

Eight hilarious satirical essays depicting people who believe they lean forward, believe they know, say they know, give advice with what they know, and try to keep others from accomplishing risky historical challenges. Included are the Antarctic Expedition, Constructing the Panama Canal, The Battle of Trenton, in addition to five more farcical stories exposing the naysayers, all written in the light comical style of Evelyn Waugh, and sure to amuse the listener.

Peter's earned his night off, and there's not a bloody chance he's covering Shelley's shift. He just needs to find some pals for the perfect cover story. Deek is going to be at the forefront of the outsider art movement and do Banksy proud. Davie loves tattoos, and his latest is going to be a masterpiece. Tam is one of the most creative minds in the galaxy (apparently), but creating parallel universes can cause problems. Everybody on Earth wakes up with their knees on backwards.

An entertaining and surprising ride through an India you thought you knew.

More stories from the quirky pen of U.R. Bowie, written expressly for listeners who disdain the dominant modern American insipid genre of "domestic literary fiction." Among other things they feature: (1) a conversation between a 99-year-old man and the Lord God Jehovah; (2) a character who, following the example of Joan of Arc, laughs his way off the earth; (3) a man on Death Row, who tells how they tried to execute him, and failed; (4) a translation from the Russian, the story of how Jesus sins, and repents; (5) the tale of a man hit by lightning, who survives, but comes to regret it.

Set in the author’s native Belfast, the ten stories in Sweet Home lay bare the heartbreak and quiet tragedies that run under the surface of everyday lives. A lonely woman is fascinated by her niqab-wearing neighbours; a middle-aged teacher becomes obsessed with a young Gaelic football player; and an employer covers for his two employees caught having sex in a public toilet.

"Cattivi Soggetti", unica opera letteraria di Luciano Salce per la prima volta in audiolibro letto dal figlio Emanuele, attore e regista. Un'antologia di racconti, di epoche differenti e umori diversi. "Cattivi soggetti" è ovviamente un titolo a doppio uso. Sono cattivi soggetti certi personaggi poco raccomandabili, ma anche soggetti cinematografici cattivi, cioè non piaciuti, non realizzati, cestinati, restituiti (quasi mai) dai produttori ai quali erano stati proposti. E una loro origine cinematografica si può ritrovare nel gusto per l'intreccio, la trovata, la situazione.

Cain’t Do Nothing with Love was the winner of the CIPA EVVY Audio Book Award 2014. All stories treat the most difficult topics - death, religion, family - with sharp humor and urgent respect.

By turns humorous and heartbreaking, this debut collection offers weird and wonderful stories that illuminate the hidden truths of life.

Meet Blu Yunger, a wild and woolly young traveler who will take you for quite a ride in his fast Ford Fairlane. Along the way you’ll meet the beauteous Fakyah Aineedair, Big Roid Bagwith, and Trout Bender. If this picaresque adventure isn’t enough to hold you, there’s a handful of other tales to tug on your brainpan. Yes, Reef Perkins can be downright hilarious!

The thirteen stories in Chris Tarry’s richly imagined debut, How To Carry Bigfoot Home, lay bare the insurmountable forces that determine who we are and who we become. From an out-of-work dragon-slaying father in “Here Be Dragons” to a family arguing aboard a rocket ship in “Topics in Advanced Rocketry,” the stories use fantastic settings, blazing wit, and imaginative circumstances to explore very human truths. The stories work to reconcile the public self with the private heart. To contemplate the monsters we carry home and lay bare for the ones we love the most.

Welcome to the peculiar and headlong world of Brian Doyle's fiction, where the odd is happening all the time, reported upon by characters of every sort and stripe. Swirling voices and skeins of story, laughter and rage, ferocious attention to detail and sweeping nuttiness, tears and chortling - these stories will remind listeners of the late giant David Foster Wallace, in their straightforward accounts of anything-but-straightforward events and of modern short story pioneer Raymond Carver, a bit, in their blunt, unadorned dialogue.

For Alex Davidson, being a celebrity publicist at a Los Angeles PR firm isn't the glamour job she thought it would be. Her love life is zilch, her newest client is an actor fresh out of rehab, and her firm has just been bought out by a rival agency. Suddenly, Alex finds her once-secure job at stake.

Including stories first published in Cosmopolitan and the Saturday Evening Post, this best-selling collection follows the romantic escapades of Max Shulman's famed collegiate Don Juan. Like most undergraduates, Dobie Gillis is a bit scattered - sometimes he's as quick as a whip, other times dull as a doorstop, and his major keeps changing from chemistry to law to journalism. But no matter what subject he should be studying, Dobie always has a girl on his mind.

Imagine being famous. Being recognized on the street, adored by people who have never even met you, known the world over. Wouldn’t that be great? But what if, one day, you got stuck in a country where celebrity means nothing, where no one spoke your language and you didn’t speak theirs, where no one knew your face (no book jackets, no TV) and you had no way of calling home? How would your fame help you then? What if someone got hold of your cell phone? What if they spoke to your girlfriends, your agent, your director, and started making decisions for you?

Früher marschierten sie im Stechschritt, heute besuchen sie Bauchtanzkurse: Die Deutschen haben sich ganz schön verändert - nur mit Gefühlen haben sie es noch immer nicht so. Moritz Netenjakob erzählt die lustigsten Geschichten aus dem Alltag - zum Staunen, Wiedererkennen und Lachen. Dabei gelingt ihm das Kunststück, exakte Alltagsbeobachtung, beißende Satire und warmherzige Figurenzeichnung zu einem Panoptikum deutscher Befindlichkeiten zu verweben, das vor allem eins ist: Sehr, sehr komisch.

An awful poet, dumped by his girlfriend, roams through Italy, where he clearly doesn't belong; an oil delivery man falls in love with a clumsy woman and becomes even clumsier than she is; and a six-year-old and his father kill over 200 flies at a horse farm while the father wonders about life and death. Poor Advice and Other Stories, with its mix of the serious and the absurd, reveals Lou Gaglia's humor, imagination, and range.

Within these diverse stories, you will encounter a magician whose finale is murder, shared nightmares, a magic carpet that lives up to its name, a recipe for a Martian non-vegetarian main course, a cook who purloins the body of a stranger, and other interesting topics and characters. A few can be classified as horror stories, one as science fiction, and the majority just plain quirky. There's a story here to amuse almost anyone.

En la ciudad de Mordasoff, Marya Aleksandrovna Moskalyova, una ambiciosa mujer, intenta casar a su hija Zina, de veintitrés años con el adinerado y noble anciano Príncipe "K", quien tras haber volcado su carruaje pasa por la casa en la que ellas viven para que le asistan. Zina es considerada mayor para estar soltera y, entre las razones que explican por qué aún no se ha casado, la principal es el siniestro rumor sobre algunas extrañas relaciones que tuvo hace un año y medio con un pobre maestro de la escuela del distrito.

Erin Craig "delivers" on a story about a new girl in town and the cute pizza delivery boy, Auriane Desombre captures our hearts with teens communicating through window signs, and Bill Konigsberg takes us along on daily walks with every step bringing us closer to love. There's flirting and romance from Rachael Lippincott, a tale of a determined girl with a mask-making business from Erin Hahn, and a music-inspired love connection from Sajni Patel. Brittney Morris turns enemies to lovers with the help of a balcony herb garden.