Humor Classics

I thought I was a goner after my old frenemy Odin dropped a Ragnarok-sized truth bomb on me at an Asgard Awakening (terrible show - don't watch it) fan convention, but the situation is contained for now, and I'm heading west to search for the runes that make me immortal. Dying is counterproductive, and I, the great god Loki, enjoy living in the twenty-first century, even if I have to do it in a body that prefers men over women. What can I say? Gunnar Magnusson is, as the cool Midgardian kids say, hot AF. We all make sacrifices.

Chuckle along with the best 19th-century humorists, who provide you with tall tales, puns, and witty ripostes. No guarantees of political correctness, but they're sure to tickle your 21st-century funny bone! Beginning with the piece that made Mark Twain famous -- "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" -- and ending with his fanciful "How I Edited an Agricultural Paper," this anthology collects several of Twain's own pieces in addition to tall tales, fables, and satires by 14 of Twain's contemporaries.

Martyrs to hypochondria and general seediness, J. and his friends George and Harris decide that a jaunt up the Thames would suit them just fine. But when they set off, they can hardly predict the troubles that lie ahead with tow-ropes, unreliable weather forecasts, and tins of pineapple chunks---not to mention the devastation left in the wake of J.'s small fox-terrier Montmorency.

Herman Melville’s novel The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1857) is a comedy of masquerades and a blend of allegory, cultural satire, and metaphysics. The book portrays a confidence man who sneaks on board a Mississippi steamboat on April Fool's Day, and sets out to defraud his fellow passengers. He rapidly assumes various guises and the pleasure of trickery seems more important than the monetary gain. Each person is forced to confront that in which they believe.

When Miss. Eve Halliday is caught in an unexpected rainstorm, Mr. Ronald Psmith comes to her rescue with an umbrella. This starts a chain of events that will take the reader on a chaotic journey of fun and adventure. Mr. Psmith is a gallant gentleman who loves to do good deeds for others but especially for beautiful ladies such as Eve. When he snatches an umbrella from the Drone Club to help a lady in distress, he has no idea what he is getting himself into.

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.

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE NATIONAL BESTSELLER NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PEOPLE AND USA TODAY A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK Nobody blows smoke like Nick Naylor. He’s a spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies–in other words, a flack for cigarette companies...

Guy Grand, an eccentric billionaire prankster, is rich enough to do whatever he likes. And what he likes is to carefully execute projects where he can cauterize by ridicule what the rest of the world ignores: Complacency, greed, corruption, and idiocy. Determined to "make it hot for people," Grand spends his billions staging a series of hilarious, sometimes bewildering stunts, lampooning along the way the American holy cows of money, status, power, beauty, media, and stardom.

Right Ho, Jeeves sees Bertie Wooster blithely attempting to assume the role of Jeeves himself as a matters-of-the-heart adviser. Very unwise: from Gussie Fink-Nottle's romance with Madeline Bassett, to Tuppy Glossop and his stop/go engagement to Angela Travers, the young master succeeds only in making a bally mess of everyone's love-lives.

Ryan Fleming is a young agnostic reeling from his brother’s death. Though he is deeply angry with God, he makes good on a promise he made to his brother in the final moments of his life: to visit a church at least once. But shortly after his arrival, the slick megachurch’s shoddily installed video projector falls on his head—sending Ryan through a wormhole into another world. To make it back to his own universe, he must partner with a woman named Faith to awaken a long-sleeping King—the World-Maker who can make all things new.

Now with a reimagined look! Join a peasant boy who wants to be a knight in the laugh-out-loud funny, highly illustrated first book of the New York Times bestselling Once Upon a Tim chapter book series from Spy School author Stuart Gibbs. Tim is just a peasant, but he dreams big. He wants more...

O. Henry wove several stories together into this highly episodic narrative, taking his title and inspiration from Lewis Carroll's ballad of the walrus and the carpenter in Through the Looking-Glass. The stories are set in the fictional country of Anchuria in Central America, a banana republic where larceny is rampant and revolution lurking in every impoverished back alley. O. Henry offers a cutting satire of contemporary politics and prejudices.

For once, a novel that isn’t about the heroine getting the guy. It’s about getting rid of the guy, and in the process, finding herself. Helen is nearly forty, and has, for far too long, had an affair with Matthew, a high-powered, much older, attractive, married man who was once, of course...

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.

One of the most beloved novels from the critically acclaimed novelist Laurie Colwin, Goodbye Without Leaving explores a woman’s attempts to reconcile her rock-and-roll past with her significantly more sedate family life as a wife and mother. As a bored graduate student, Geraldine Colshares is...

Harriet is leaving her boyfriend Claude, "the French rat". That at least is how Harriet sees things, even if it’s Claude who has just asked Harriet to leave his Greenwich Village apartment. Well, one way or another she has no intention of leaving. To the contrary, she will stay and exact revenge - or would have if Claude had not had her unceremoniously evicted. Still, though moved out, Harriet is not about to move on. Not in any way. Girlfriends circle around to patronize and advise, but Harriet only takes offense, and it’s easy to understand why.

O. Henry dépeint ici, avec l'humour et l'empathie pour lesquels il est connu, New York au début du vingtième siècle et ses petites gens.

The Provincial Lady Goes Further is the immediate sequel to Diary of a Provincial Lady - and life mirrors art. Our Provincial Lady has found herself, unexpectedly, with a literary success on her hands! She is suddenly 'somebody', both in her Devonshire environs and in London, where she establishes a bolthole - ostensibly so she could concentrate on the much-awaited sequel, but also so that she can enjoy the fruits of being a best-selling author!

At the mercy of an unknown entity, Clyde gets tossed into the anime world. Yes, it exists, we just don't know it. There, he's declared the Stone, the anime main character. One day, he must kill the Viper, or else it's good-bye, Earth. This is the comedic tale of a young man vs. cliche anime tropes.

In this 1919 collection, Wodehouse introduces readers to the iconic duo of Bertie Wooster, an affable but hapless English gentleman, and Jeeves, his brilliant and resourceful valet. From social blunders, hopeless romances and family mishaps, Bertie is saved by Jeeves’s calm intellect time and time again. Also featured in this collection is the wealthy yet helpless Reggie Pepper, a character often considered an early prototype of Bertie.