Humor Classics

Soon to be an original movie on Disney+. The beloved 2014 Newbery Medal winner by former National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Kate DiCamillo. Holy unanticipated occurrences! It begins, as the best superhero stories do, with a tragic accident that has unexpected consequences...

Abridged novel depicting the sinister affair of the 18th century cow-creamer and the small, brown, leather-covered notebook tests the Wooster soul as it has never been tested before. Friends and relations, in urgent need, queue up to beg for assistance in a variety of troublesome situations, and ruthless enemies stop at nothing in their determination to bring Bertie down.

Four classic episodes from the original TV series: Arrival, Songs of Praise, Easter Special and The Christmas Lunch Incident. Welcome to Dibley, a perfect village full of some perfectly peculiar people - including Alice Tinker and her underactive brain, Owen Newitt and his overactive bowels, and Letitia Cropley and her orange cake with Branston pickle icing.

Dans une Espagne rurale et tranquille, un gentilhomme passionné de romans de chevalerie perd peu à peu le sens des réalités… et se rêve en chevalier errant. Armé d'une vieille armure, juché sur un maigre cheval nommé Rossinante, Don Quichotte part à l'aventure, prêt à défendre les opprimés, affronter les géants — qui ne sont que de simples moulins — et conquérir le cœur de sa dame imaginaire, Dulcinée du Toboso. À ses côtés, Sancho Panza, son fidèle écuyer paysan, le costume entre espoir, bon sens et naïveté.

Un grupo de niños encuentra un cadáver flotando en las aguas turbias de un canal de riego cercano a la ranchería de La Matosa. El cuerpo resulta ser de la Bruja, una mujer que heredó dicho oficio de su madre fallecida, y a quienes los pobladores de esa zona rural respetaban y temían.

Chichikov, a mysterious stranger, arrives in the provincial town of 'N', visiting a succession of landowners and making each a strange offer. He proposes to buy the names of dead serfs still registered on the census, saving their owners from paying tax on them, and to use these 'dead souls' as collateral to re-invent himself as a aristocrat. In this ebullient picaresque masterpiece, Gogol created a grotesque gallery of human types, from the bear-like Sobakevich to the insubstantial fool Manilov and, above all, the devilish con man Chichikov.

A female-centred collection of four dramatisations celebrating Jane Austen’s classic novels - plus bonus series When I Met Jane Austen On 16 December 1775, a literary icon was born. Jane Austen’s groundbreaking novels pioneered the romantic comedy genre and put women front and centre...

Jasper Fforde's delightfully zany Thursday Next series shows no signs of slowing down with its seventh entry, The Woman Who Died a Lot. Despite being semihappily semi-retired from SpecOps, Thursday accepts the head librarian position at the Swindon library. But soon threats from a supreme Deity, a mnemonomorph, and the nefarious Goliath corporation press Thursday back into active duty.

A well-to-do professor working in Moscow strikes up an unlikely friendship with a stray dog and attempts a scientific first by transplanting the testicles and pituitary gland of a recently deceased man into the dog. With a wild, but alarmingly human animal on the loose, the professor's previously respectable life becomes a nightmare beyond his imagination. A superb satirical novel, it is also a sharp and pointed criticism of Soviet society, especially the new rich that arose after the Bolshevik revolution.

When first published in 1759, Candide became an instant best seller and is now regarded as one of the key texts of the Enlightenment. Voltaire’s preoccupations with evil and with various kinds of human folly and intolerance found a perfect vehicle in this philosophical tale. A master storyteller, he combined often wildly entertaining action with profoundly serious sense, parodying the traditional chivalric and oriental tales with which his public was more familiar.

A quest, a war, a ring that would be grounds for calling any wedding off, a king without a kingdom, and a furry little "hero" named Frito, ready - or maybe just forced by the wizard Goodgulf - to undertake the one mission that can save Lower Middle Earth from enslavement by the evil Sorhed. Luscious Elf-maidens, a roller-skating dragon, ugly plants that can soul kiss the unwary to death-these are just some of the ingredients in the wildest, wackiest, most irreverent excursion into fantasy realms that anyone has ever dared to undertake.

Set in Ireland just after World War II, The Ginger Man is J. P. Donleavy's wildly funny, picaresque classic novel of the misadventures of Sebastian Dangerfield, a young American ne'er-do-well studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Dangerfield's appetite for women, liquor, and general roguishness is insatiable - and he satisfies it with endless charm.

April 1812. Miss Elizabeth Bennet, headstrong and usually self-assured, returns home to Longbourn chastened and confused after a surprising marriage proposal from Mr Darcy, a man she thought she despised. When Mr Bingley arrives soon afterwards, sent by his friend Darcy to resume his romantic attentions to Elizabeth's beloved sister Jane, Elizabeth begins to feel something like regret for the man she so cruelly spurned.

Loch is seeking revenge. It would help if she wasn’t in jail. The plan: To steal a priceless elven manuscript that once belonged to her family, but is now in the hands of the most powerful man in the Republic. To do so, Loch - former soldier, former prisoner, and current fugitive - must assemble a crack team of magical misfits that includes a cynical illusionist, a shape shifting unicorn, a repentant death priestess, a talking magical war hammer, and a lad with seemingly no skills.

George and Weedon Grossmith's The Diary of a Nobody paints a detailed picture of life in 1892. Pooter's diary notes his daily business, parties, embarrassments, and his agitated relationship with son Lupin - a strikingly familiar world, brought to life by Keith Wickham, which provides continual amusement.

My Man Jeeves, first published in 1919, introduced the world to affable, indolent Bertie Wooster and his precise, capable valet, Jeeves. Some of the finest examples of humorous writing found in English literature are woven around the relationship between these two men of very different classes and temperaments. Where Bertie is impetuous and feeble, Jeeves is coolheaded and poised.

"Full of invention and ingenuity . . . Great fun." - SFX on Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City This is the history of how the City was saved, by Notker the professional liar, written down because eventually the truth always seeps through. The City may be under siege, but everyone still has to...

Witness the epic battle of the cyclops! Visit the endangered dragon preserve! Please, no slaying. Solve the mystery of The Mystery Cottage, if you dare! Buy some knickknacks from The Fates! They might come in handy later. On a road trip across an enchanted America, Helen and Troy will discover all this and more. If the curse placed upon them by an ancient god doesn't kill them or the pack of reluctant orc assassins don't catch up to them, Helen and Troy might reach the end their journey in one piece, where they might just end up destroying the world.

Born in England in 1869, Stephen Leacock would immigrate to Canada and become a teacher, political scientist, and writer. He would ultimately come to be best known and loved as a humourist. Literary Lapses was first published as a collection of sketches in 1910, although many of the individual stories were first printed in various newspapers and periodicals, such as Punch, New York Life, and the Detroit Free Press.

Mark Robarts, a young vicar, is newly arrived in the village of Framley. With ambitions to further his career, he seeks connections in the county's high society. He is soon preyed upon by a local member of parliament to guarantee a substantial loan, which Mark, in a moment of weakness, agrees to, even though he knows the man is a notorious debtor; it brings Mark to the brink of ruin.