Humor Anthology

Three short stories by Anton Chekhov including "The First-Class Passenger", "The Harmfulness of Tobacco", and "A Transgression".

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.

For sheer unpredictable brilliance, Gogol may come to mind, but no author alive today takes a listener as far as Helen DeWitt into the funniest, most yonder dimensions of possibility. Her jumping-off points might be statistics, romance, the art world’s piranha tank, games of chance and games of skill, the travails of publishing, or success.

In You Will Never Be Forgotten, Mary South explores how technology can both collapse our relationships from within and provide opportunities for genuine connection. Formally inventive, darkly absurdist, savagely critical of the increasingly fraught cultural climates we inhabit, these 10 stories also find hope in fleeting interactions and moments of tenderness. They reveal our grotesque selfishness and our intense need for love and acceptance, and the psychic pain that either shuts us off or allows us to discover our deepest reaches of empathy.

When gentlemen's tailor Albert Rossi hits an unsuspecting pedestrian in his Nissan Micra, he is amazed to escape the seemingly inevitable knock on the door from the police. Instead he receives a mysterious phone call from a man who tells him that his money will be left in the "usual" place. At that very moment, Albert Rossi decides to change careers. Albert Rossi’s life is about to get a whole lot more interesting....

For the first time ever, hear Woody Allen’s Mere Anarchy in the author’s own distinctive and hilarious voice. Here, in his first short-story collection since his three classics Getting Even, Without Feathers, and Side Effects, Allen has managed to write a book that answers the most profound questions of human existence.

"Stranger's Thing" by Robert Bevan: Four friends get more than they bargained for when they break into a seemingly abandoned research lab. "The Shingling" by Steve Wetherell: Johnny Terry, a recovering meth addict, is excited to start his new life as the caretaker at the Underpass Motel. Unfortunately, the Underpass is haunted by the ghosts of dead porn stars. "The Haunting of Whore House" by Robert Bevan: Lucy and her brother, Junkie, find out that moving was only the beginning of their troubles when they encounter the ghost of a little boy in the woods. Plus three more!

J. Harris Anderson's popular character Thumper Billington is at a crossroads in his life. A brief and impetuous marriage has ended, a new person has captured his interest. Has she captured his heart too? How can he assure this new relationship will be the one he's always hoped for? An avid foxhunter, he comes to a compelling realization: Life is about The Chase. Through a series of stories and lessons, told with wry humor and sprinkled with a wealth of practical tips, Thumper brings the listener along on his journey of discovery. It's Dave Barry meets Rita Mae Brown meets Dr. Phil!

Nada Alic's women—the perverts, nobodies, reality TV stars, poetic hopefuls, shameless party girls, and self-help addicts of Los Angeles and its environs—are all wrestling with a shared stark reality: the modern world. To cope, they live in their baddest thoughts: the lush, strange landscape of female make-believe.

For all those craving more adventures of their favorite bookseller-by-day and burglar-by-night, The Burglar in Short Order for the first time ever collects all of Bernie Rhodenbarr's short-form appearances in one complete volume. From the story in which a prototype of Bernie first appeared (“A Bad Night for Burglars”) to his appearances in Playboy and (maybe? It's kinda complicated) Cosmopolitan...from an essay discussing Bernie's misadventures in Hollywood to a piece commissioned by a European publisher for a tourist guide to New York....

Kevin Wilson’s characters inhabit a world that moves seamlessly between the real and the imagined, the mundane and the fantastic. “Grand Stand-In” is narrated by an employee of the Nuclear Family Supplemental Provider—a company that supplies “stand-ins” for families with deceased, ill, or plain mean grandparents. And in “Blowing Up On the Spot,” a young woman works sorting tiles at a Scrabble factory after her parents have spontaneously combusted. These wonderfully inventive stories explore the relationship between loss and death and the ways we try to cope with both.

It's a question as old as time itself: which is better, the zombie or the unicorn? In this anthology, edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier (unicorn and zombie, respectively), strong arguments are made for both sides in the form of short stories. Half of the stories portray the strengths - for good and evil - of unicorns and half show the good (and really, really bad-ass) side of zombies.

The time is the early '80s. The characters go to the same schools and eat at the same restaurants. Their voices enfold us as seamlessly as those of DJs heard over a car radio. They have sex with the same boys and girls and buy from the same dealers. In short, they are connected in the only way people can be in that city.

A stunning new talent in literary fiction, Nafissa Thompson-Spires grapples with black identity and the contemporary middle class in these compelling, boundary-pushing vignettes. Each captivating story plunges headfirst into the lives of new, utterly original characters. Some are darkly humorous while others are devastatingly poignant. Thompson-Spires fearlessly shines a light on the simmering tensions and precariousness of black citizenship.

Marcovaldo is an unskilled worker in a drab industrial city in northern Italy. He is an irrepressible dreamer and an inveterate schemer. Much to the puzzlement of his wife, his children, his boss, and his neighbors, he chases his dreams - but the results are never the expected ones.

Mark Twain's "Extracts from Adam's Diary" first appeared in 1893. He based Adam and Eve on himself and his beloved wife Olivia ("Livy") to create a humorous counterpoint the traditional Garden of Eden story, this time centered on what life may have been like for the first man. In this story, we hear Adam trying to work out what the "new creature with long hair" is all about. She names things, much to Adam's annoyance. She follows him around. Then suddenly, there's another creature, which eventually Adam decides is his son Cain. It's all about confusion and curiosity, and finally, love for Eve.

Installing Linux on a Dead Badger (and other Oddities) is a collection of Lucy Snyder's humorous essays, fiction, and articles, some culled from places like Strange Horizons and Spacesuits and Six-Guns and some brand new. This collection of 13 short stories, articles, and essays from Lucy A. Snyder will appeal to any fan of zombies, aliens, or installation manuals.

The Diaries of Adam and Eve is Twain's humorous take on the myth of the Garden of Eden, as told by the participants. The joys and conflicts described will be familiar to all who labor with and love the opposite sex.

L'ogre Gras Goulu est malheureux : à part sa plante carnivore et son bélier, il n'a pas d'amis et se sent seul. Jusqu'au jour où il trouve un ordinateur chez la sorcière Farfouille.

One obnoxious English teacher. Twelve tales of his death. Norton Edwards, English department head, is the reigning despot in Canterbury High. This year, his colleagues have had enough. This year, they're getting rid of Mr. Edwards. In this collection of darkly tongue-in-cheek stories, Mr. Edwards dies, tale after tale.