Humor Classics

The Labyrinth of the World is about a fellow named Pilgrim who treks through the world in order to find the best way to live, aided by two guides: Mr. Ubiquitous and Mr. Delusion. Pilgrim finds much to be concerned about in the world. Ultimately, he finds something he had not planned upon in his journey: The Paradise of the Heart. This original pilgrim allegory was penned 55 years before Pilgrim's Progress. Find out how an educator and theologian, with real-life experience, penned a profound story that is still contemporary today.

A foundling of mysterious parentage, Tom Jones is brought up by the benevolent and wealthy Squire Allworthy as his own son. Tom falls in love with the beautiful and unattainable Sophia Western, a neighbor’s daughter, whose marriage has already been arranged. When Tom’s sexual misadventures around the countryside get him banished, he sets out to make his fortune and find his true identity.

From the author, whom The Times called 'a comic genius' and ' an old master of farce', are eleven further stories featuring such eccentric characters as Freddie Widgeon, Cyril (Barmy) Fotheringay Phipps, Percy Wimbolt and Pongo.

This motley crew of “Pickwickians” is led by Samuel Pickwick, the philosopher without any great ideas. He is joined by Tracy Tupman, the romantic who cannot hold down a relationship; Augustus Snodgrass, the poet who has never written poetry; and Nathaniel Winkle, the sportsman without any skill. Together, they encounter a series of misadventures that will leave listeners laughing out loud.

The peaceful slumber of the Worcester village of Rudge-in-the-Vale is about to be rudely disrupted. First there's a bitter feud between peppery Colonel Wyvern and the Squire of Rudge Hall, rich but miserly Lester Carmody. Second, that arch-villain Chimp Twist has opened a health farm - and he and Soapy and Dolly Molloy are planning a fake burglary so Lester can diddle his insurance company.

Eighteen of the very best American short stories, each a classic in its own right. Stories include "The Little Frenchman and his Water Lots", by George Pope Morris; "The Angel of the Odd", by Edgar Allan Poe; "The Schoolmasters’s Progress", by Caroline M.S. Kirkland; "The Watkinson Evening", by Eliza Leslie; "Titbottom’s Spectacles", by George William Curtis; "My Double and "How He Undid Me", by Edward Everett Hale; "A Visit to the Asylum for Aged and Decayed Punsters", by Oliver Wendell; and more.

It isn't just Nanny who finds it difficult in France when Grace and her young son Sigi are finally able to join her dashing aristocratic husband Charles-Edouard after the war. For Grace is out of her depth among the fashionably dressed and immaculately coiffured French women and shocked by their relentless gossiping and bedhopping. When she discovers her husband's tendency to lust after every pretty girl he sees, it looks like trouble. And things get even more complicated when little Sigi steps in.

A mysterious pyramid appears in Chicago, oozing fantastic creatures and sucking humans into our own mythological past. It's an alien invasion from within! When a special forces team sent to capture an AWOL official gets into deep trouble with a certain one-eyed Norse god, redoubtable comparative mythologist Jerry Lukacs must rescue them, strike a deal with the droll and dangerous Loki, and risk bringing on Ragnarok itself to once again save human myth from alien domination.

Set in a small Cotswold town, Inspector Hobbes and the Blood is a fast-paced comedy cozy mystery fantasy about the adventures of Andy, an incompetent reporter, when he is reluctantly working with Inspector Hobbes, a police detective with a reputation. Andy soon finds himself immersed in a world where not everyone is human, and a late-night visit to a churchyard nearly results in grave consequences, and a ghoulish outcome. An accidental fire leads to Andy having to doss in Hobbes's spare room.

A tour de force of black humor and imaginary erudition, Nazi Literature in the Americas presents itself as a biographical dictionary of writers who espoused extreme right-wing ideologies in the 20th and 21st centuries.

The Collected Blandings Short Stories. Blandings Castle is the home of Lord Emsworth, who likes nothing better than to potter at home in his enormous castle garden. But his rural idyll is once again set to be disturbed in these nine hilarious fables. No peace is possible when his sister Constance is let loose, and she is constantly trying to reorganise the household and its inhabitants! Without great success…

One of Faulkner's comic masterpieces, The Reivers is a picaresque story that tells of three unlikely car thieves from rural Mississippi. Eleven-year-old Lucas Priest is persuaded by Boon Hogganbeck, one of his family's retainers, to steal his grandfather's car and make a trip to Memphis. The priests' black coachman, Ned McCaslin, stows away, and the three of them are off on a heroic odyssey.

June 1957. One hot afternoon in the backwaters of the Deep South, a young black farmer named Tucker Caliban salts his fields, shoots his horse, burns his house, and heads north with his wife and child. His departure sets off an exodus of the state’s entire black population, throwing the established order into brilliant disarray. Told from the points of view of the white residents who remained, A Different Drummer stands, decades after its first publication in 1962, as an extraordinary and prescient triumph of satire and spirit.

Mr Chipping is a quiet, unassuming teacher at Brookfield Grammar School. Wholly conventional, he never veers from his established routines. Until, that is, he meets Katherine, who charms him and his students and teaches Mr Chipping that education is about more than just the hours spent in the schoolroom. As his love for Katherine blooms, Mr Chipping develops a sense of humour and a broad view of his role as a teacher and a friend to his students, becoming the beloved 'Mr Chips' to generations of schoolboys.

Anne of Green Gables is a 1908 novel by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery (published as L. M. Montgomery). Written for all ages, it has been considered a children's novel since the mid-20th century. It recounts the adventures of Anne Shirley, an 11-year-old orphan girl who is mistakenly sent to Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, a middle-aged brother and sister who had intended to adopt a boy to help them on their farm in the fictional town of Avonlea on Prince Edward Island. The novel recounts how Anne makes her way with the Cuthberts, in school, and within the town.

From money-making schemes involving placing wagers on vicars to poor Bingo having to produce the village school Christmas entertainments, every one of Wodehouse’s superb short stories are guarantee to raise a smile from even the most stony-faced listener!

Once, when young Nasruddin was acting up in class by distracting his classmates with endless antics, jests, and stories, his irate teacher uttered a curse: ''Whatever you do or say, wherever you go or stay, whether it's night or day - people will only laugh at you.'' Now, eight centuries later, people everywhere are still laughing at the immortal Mullah Nasruddin, one of the world's most beloved folk characters.

What begins as an idyllic new society built for the freedom and equality of all who walk on four legs quickly becomes a nightmare. The cleverest animals take on more and more control while the hard working common animals are manipulated into doing all the work. Best intentions are twisted by the lure of power, and no animal is immune to the terrible consequences of its corrupting influence.

Лауреат Букеровской премии Джулиан Барнс — один из самых ярких и оригинальных прозаиков современной Британии, автор таких международных бестселлеров, как "Одна история", "Шум времени", "Предчувствие конца", "Артур и Джордж", "История мира в 10½ главах", "Попугай Флобера" и многих других. Возможно, основной его талант — умение легко и естественно играть стилями и направлениями. Тонкая стилизация и едкая ирония, утонченный лиризм и доходящий чуть ли не до цинизма сарказм, агрессивная жесткость и веселое озорство — Барнсу подвластно все это и многое другое.

An early 20th century American story written in the Theodore Dreiser style of each word and chapter building on the previous ones, telling the saga of evangelical religion & people with irony throughout.