Humor Classics

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.

At home, work, and out in our ever-changing world, we're all just doing our best. In this modern parody, Frog and Toad are here to commiserate and lend some laughter. Full of wry humor and deep compassion for our modern vulnerabilities, the stories in Frog and Toad Are Doing Their Best perfectly...

Award-winning storyteller Barbara McBride-Smith breathes life (albeit a wizened Texan version) into the old Greek myths. With her incurable Texas drawl, she spins the Greek myths as you've never heard them before, rendering them 99% more fun while retaining 100% of their original insights into the crooked ways of the human heart and the no less crooked ways of the ancient Greek gods.

In this American classic, 17-year-old William is in the throes of first love. Lola Pratt, the object of his affection, is visiting her cousin in William's town for the summer. William finds obstacles at every turn in winning her affections, in the form of other suitors, a pesky little sister, and the necessity of the "perfect outfit". With the pomposity of Frasier Crane and the soul of a poet, William attempts to win Miss Pratt's heart and to be the sole recipient of her charming "baby talk".

Tobias Smollett, in his creation of the Scot Roderick Random, exposes the sheer incompetence and injustice of the Royal Navy, as well as the snobbery and hypocrisy prevalent in English middle-class society at the time. Set in the mid-18th century, this picaresque novel follows the life and adventures of Roderick, the eponymous hero who has been shunned by his gentleman father's family on the basis of the lowliness of his mother's family.

A steamy, best-selling tale of Long Island lust, written as a daring literary hoax by Newsday columnist Mike McGrady and two dozen of his colleagues. For talk show host Gillian Blake, the suburbs have long been a paradise. On the radio, she and her husband are Gilly and Billy, local media stars and "New York’s Sweethearts of the Air". At home they’re the envy of their neighbors. Only in the bedroom is their life less than perfect. When Gillian learns that her husband has a mistress, she takes revenge the only way she can. With each lover she takes, her lust multiplies.

Much like Lin-Manuel Miranda did in Hamilton, the New York Times best-selling author David Elliott turns a classic on its head in form and approach, updating the timeless story of Theseus and the Minotaur for a new generation. A rough, rowdy, and darkly comedic young adult retelling in verse, Bull will have listeners reevaluating one of mythology's most infamous monsters.

As in the original novel, the story follows two relationships: the tragic adulterous romance of Anna Karenina and Count Alexei Vronsky, and the much more hopeful marriage of Nikolai Levin and Kitty Shcherbatskaya. These four, yearning for true love, live in a steampunk-inspired 19th century of...

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (aka PG Wodehouse) wrote in excess of 90 books, 40 plays, and 200 short stories between 1902 and 1974 and is widely regarded as one of the greatest humorists of the 20th century. Right Ho, Jeeves! is his second in a series of books written about a luckless young British millionaire named Bertram Wooster and his sharp valet, Jeeves.

In this slyly funny and lavishly inventive novel, Nobel Prize winner V. S. Naipaul traces the unlikely career of Ganesh Ramsumair, a failed schoolteacher and impecunious village masseur who in time becomes a revered mystic, a thriving entrepreneur, and the most beloved politician in Trinidad. Witty, tender, filled with the sights, sounds, and smells of Trinidad's dusty Indian villages, The Mystic Masseur is Naipaul at his most expansive and evocative.

"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...

This famous satire of life on Main Street, Gopher Prairie, mirrors with devastating honesty life on Main Streets from Albany to San Diego.

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

In the third sequel to The Darling Buds of May, Charley and Mariette decide to get baby Blenheim christened, leading to a wholesale christening of all seven of the Larkin children. Chaos abounds as the vicar, Mr Candy, is run ragged by the naughty twins, Zinnia and Petunia, and finds himself the object of desire for Pop's second eldest, Primrose. To top it all off, Pop buys a fairground on a whim, and Mlle Dupont arrives to discover that Pop is not a Lord, nor does he live in a mansion.

Life at St Cadfan’s is never dull. There’s the cellar full of unexplained corpses. There’s the struggle to find food when the island is placed under quarantine. And there’s that peculiar staircase in the cellar.... Being a demon in Hell has its own problems. There’s the increasingly impossible torture quotas to meet. There’s the entire horde of Hell waiting for you to slip up and make a mistake. And there’s that weird staircase in the service tunnels.

Charged with gross incompetence, Satan is fired from his job as prince of Hell and exiled to that most terrible of places: English suburbia. Forced to live as a human under the name of Jeremy Clovenhoof, the dark lord not only has to contend with the fact that no one recognizes him or gives him the credit he deserves but also has to put up with the bookish war-gamer next door and the voracious man-eater upstairs.

The Diary of Nobody (1892) created a cultural icon, an English archetype. Anxious, accident-prone, occasionally waspish, Charles Pooter has come to epitomize English suburban life. His diary chronicles encounters with difficult tradesmen, the delights of home improvements, small parties, minor embarrassments, and problems with his troublesome son. The suburban world he inhabits is hilariously and painfully familiar in its small-mindedness and its essential decency.

The Cocoanuts is a 1929 pre-Code musical comedy film starring the Marx Brothers (Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo). Produced for Paramount Pictures by Walter Wanger, the film also stars Mary Eaton, Oscar Shaw, Margaret Dumont and Kay Francis. The first sound film to credit more than one director (Robert Florey and Joseph Santley), it was adapted to the screen by Morrie Ryskind from the musical play by George S. Kaufman. Five of the film's tunes were composed by Irving Berlin, including "When My Dreams Come True," sung by Oscar Shaw and Mary Eaton.

Meet Karsten—a little Holden Caulfield, a little Patrick Bateman—in this delirious, darkly comic stream of consciousness from one of Norway’s great literary talents, thrillingly translated by Kari Dickson. For your average fourteen-year-old, it would be a normal, middle-class life...

Celebrate the spooky season with everyone’s favourite bear, Paddington – now a major movie star! Paddington Bear is getting ready for a Halloween party, strictly for family only. He can’t wait for the party to start – as soon as he gets home from trick or treating! But nothing goes quite...